Community for moderation accountability? (lemmy.cafe)

submitted 5 months ago by spujb@lemmy.cafe to c/fediverse@lemmy.world

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This is inspired by this advice from a few months ago:

Stop giving shitty mods a free pass. Honest mistakes happen; but if the mod in question is assumptive, disingenuous, trigger-happy, or eager to enable certain shitty types of user, spread the word about their comm being poorly moderated. And don’t interact directly with the comm. I think that at least here in the Fediverse we should demand higher standards from our mods.

(Emphasis mine.)

In the past I have used places like !lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world or !196@lemmy.blahaj.zone to call out mods on other subs, with mid-to-almost-high degrees of success, but I wonder if it would be better to have a dedicated sublemmy?

Here are my thoughts on what would make this effective:

probably shouldn’t be hosted on .world due to the breadth of possible conflicts of interest with admins
probably shouldn’t be hosted on .ml due to federation hurdles
mods of the community shouldn’t moderate any other communities of any significant size, in order to make the whole “accountability” thing work
mods should be willing and able to deal with substantial quantities of garbage posts because there would be a lot of “why won’t c/xyz let me be transphobic/say slurs 😡😡” type submissions which, left unaddressed, would outflood genuine criticism

This is still in conceptual form so I am interested what others think :)

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[-] poVoq@slrpnk.net 11 points 5 months ago

There is also the deep asymmetry of effort. Nearly all moderators are volunteers that put in largely invisible effort every day, for no return. As all humans they sometimes make mistakes and can also have a bad day.

On the other hand there are people that put almost no effort in, but are deeply offended by any moderation action against them and will rise a huge stink about it.

These two factors together make people very reluctant to volunteer for moderation duties in popular communities, which is a major issue for the health of the Lemmyverse as a whole.

[-] serpineslair@lemmy.world 5 points 5 months ago

Yes, I agree. Not only would the proposed community be full of baseless claims etc. But also it may deter potential mods.

[+] MindTraveller@lemmy.ca -7 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

ACAB includes mods. These jobs attract the kind of reddit/lemmy users who want to have power over a petty fiefdom and abuse it. Good mods only get shamed for ridiculous reasons like "Wouldn't let me be transphobic" and "enforced the rules". Bad mods get shame they deserve. Mods get paid in power over others, and as an anarchist, I personally seek to ensure that power is constantly questioned, and abolished if it's abused.

I say all this as the owner of a sublemmy, and I expect to be held to the same standard.

[-] poVoq@slrpnk.net 7 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

As an Anarchist myself: this is the most absurd take on ACAB and moderation I have heard in a while.

And apparently you have been lucky to not have had to deal with bad-faith concern trolling that some narcissist like to do online.

[-] MindTraveller@lemmy.ca -3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

What kind of anarchist uses ableist slurs? People with NPD are not your enemy, they are not the source of conservativism. They're just kids who were abused and are trying to live life as adults without having a mental breakdown over not being good enough. Statistically they are poor, have few friends, and have terrible health problems. Because NPD is a social disability. It interferes with holding a steady job, holding a steady friend group, holding a steady lack of desire to kill oneself. People with NPD are exactly the kind of person you want within a leftist group. They've been failed by the system and they understand the system's flaws. They understand the mechanisms of abuse and have a stunning gift for identifying and calling out right wing bullshit. And they fight like hell against what they perceive as injustice.

You should be trying to get people with NPD to join our movement, not using slurs that degrade them and accusing reactionaries of mental disability.