this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2024
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Original comment behind spoiler tags
I wouldn't want to be head mod because I don't think I could commit the time a community like this deserves, but I would consider throwing my hat in the ring for a lesser mod position.I've also never moderated a Lemmy community, so there may be some challenges there.
I think it's important that any new mods understand Link's vision for the community and what it means to create a space free of liberal/capitalist/colonialist apologia and talking points. It's not easy to build up a community like this, but Link did an excellent job IMO of creating a space for discussion of complex topics without ever allowing the direction of conversation to be dictated by either bad faith actors or people ignorant of basic anarchic principles.
Copying a comment I made deeper in this thread here for visibility
Not sure why my other comment was removed after being up for several days, but this is clear evidence of a group of people organized on another platform to change this community. Grail and others have admitted as much in this thread and elsewhere.
I was willing to give kittenzrulz the benefit of the doubt on this, but silencing formerly active members of this community for calling out an obvious op in progress is a step too far. This is no longer a safe space for anarchists since it's been infiltrated at the highest level by those that do not agree with the community's guidelines or original intent.
To kittenzrulez - I know you reached out to Grail on discord in the immediate aftermath of Their original post on blahaj meta. Have you been colluding with Them since then or even before? No good faith uncompromised moderator of an anarchist space would silence discussion (including evidence) of an active op in progress. Any half well informed anarchist should be able to spot that shit from a mile away and an uncompromised moderator would shut down the offending accounts without prejudice. You chose to do the opposite and it tells me everything I need to know about the state of this community.
Edit: just checked the modlog and all comments critical of the Grail coalition have been removed from this thread for reason: "conspiracy". Is it suddenly against the rules in an anarchist community to point out people actually conspiring against that community? Seriously kittenzrulez? Have you no historical context for this type of thing?
Yeah, this community's carked it. Its ruler is just waiting another day or so to make sure it doesn't get back up before issuing the death certificate and moving on. I wouldn't have thought this would be so easy but Lemmy wasn't made by nor for anarchists so I guess there wasn't much we could've done but watch it happen and get banned/posts deleted for talking about it.
Lemmy was made by and for Marxist-Leninists but they're very openly non-sectarian, meaning any leftist who doesn't instigate in-fighting is welcome.
It's really just blahaj that's this way, I don't know what ada has been doing but this is gonna keep happening until she gets it together.
My point was that a system not (as) dependent on hierarchy might've stood up better. It's not "those icky tankies are so bad even software they wrote magically works against us" but "this software is built in a way that makes our Communities (the subreddit-like construct specific to Lemmy) depend entirely on like three people... when we're lucky." When one of the three gets bullied out of the community he made and the other two don't have the community's interests at heart, the community's screwed unless some specific person steps up to be the authority for a new one.
...On the other paw, perhaps our failure to just go make a new, collaborative Liberty Hub reflects poorly on us. I don't mind blaming the instance a bit, though. Dunno what I'd consider a safer, more sensible one at this point.
Ahh I see what you mean.
Honestly it comes down more to the fact that nobody else stepped up to mod before the drama.
A holdover from reddit culture is having a tight knit group of mods for each community, when it could very well be more open than that.
For example the /c/Trans comm here and /c/traa on hexbear.
/c/Trans here did open recruitment a while ago and pretty much anybody that was interested got added to the team and subsequently the matrix chat.
Hexbears /c/traa will add pretty much anyone that's been active in the community and is trans in order to have moderation available around the clock. As a result any bad apples are culled asap, and the community is much better for it.
I do agree that there could be something that isn't so top heavy though, but I'm not personally sure what such a system would look like.
Followup to my other comment, I remembered reading a comment chain earlier about this very issue
I have to disagree with that bottom critter: every decision gets made by one person. Maybe a ban can be reversed... later, by someone else. Maybe a post can be undeleted... later, by someone else. If the whole community votes for option B and the one mod chooses option A, option A is chosen. Any system built atop the in-code hierarchy is just a coat of paint, some lines on the road. The lines on the road don't stop cars from hitting each other, if you get my meaning.
Now, obviously I'd prefer a "lines on the road" system where someone's formally in charge but expected to do as the community wills, but I find myself excited about systems that build on other forms. Maybe collective ownership through voting, maybe a web of trust that can dynamically exclude people found to be harmful and maybe display a rating for whether someone's a bullshitter or a pillar of the community. Kinda hard to keep that from just being karma but maybe it can be done! Maybe something super cool that I haven't even seen yet. ... Okay I'm kinda weird, honestly. This stuff's neat to me 😅
tl;dr: Code is law and defines the forms authority over a shared resource can take. We should always try to make our systems (social and otherwise) better, not settle for assumptions (that mods/admins will cooperate) and just shrugging when things go wrong. Also there are neat things we can try <.<
At this point im just trying to put out the fire but ive been doing a piss poor job, welcome to the mod team.