this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2023

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Community moderation policy (self.lemmyworld)

submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by sunspider to c/lemmyworld

39 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Hey there lemmings!

It's your friendly neighbourhood Sun-Spider here. I recently volunteered as a mod on this community, so I just wanted to introduce myself and let you know my plans.

Many of you will have seen that there are a lot of off-topic posts in this community right now. I suspect that new users, especially ones not yet familiar with how Lemmy and the fediverse work, are seeing it as a kind of default community or a place to generally discuss the world of Lemmy.

However, as it says in the sidebar, this is a community about the lemmy.world instance specifically. If it's going to serve as that, then it can't be drowned in off-topic posts.

To that end, I plan to start going through and removing posts that are not discussing this instance, with two exceptions.

Firstly, I know that some of these posts are providing good info to new users coming from Reddit, so I'd like to not take those down just yet. Since this is such a visible community, keeping them has value. Therefore highly upvoted posts that are specifically for newcomers from Reddit may get left.

Secondly, I know that removing posts with many upvotes and comments could be seen as overly harsh. While we don't have a karma system here, if you had a post that has done well then suddenly seeing it removed is painful. Therefore if a post is off topic, but is nonetheless highly upvoted, then I may instead simply lock the post. This preserves the content, but prevents further engagement. This should mean that it gradually falls off the front page, whose default sort is Active.

TLDR

Posts that are not about the lemmy.world instance specifically will be removed, with the following exceptions:
Some posts providing value to new users will be left
Some posts with high engagement may be simply locked

Update

Check out the new communities [email protected] and [email protected]! These are intended to be a good home for a lot of the content that's getting removed/locked.

top 39 comments

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[–] Jessica 35 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

Can we hold off on this for a bit while things settle? I personally posted a story about investor concerns over Reddit’s blackout here because of the high visibility and because beehaw.org was blocking instances. Lo and behold they have blocked us so I guess it was a good call even though their Tech community would have been a better fit. I could have also made a new community here I suppose, but again, there’s no eyes on that.

Isn't lemmy.world literally like 15 days old? Let's not be too quick to turn this into a Discord server with 50 channels and 10 users. There's nothing wrong with piling everything in one place when there's barely any content to speak of anyways.

EDIT: I just created a new community to repost these locked posts in order of most comments:

General - Lemmy.world

Welcome to Lemmy.World General! This is a community for general discussion where you can get your bearings in the fediverse, discuss topics & ask questions that don’t seem to fit in any other community.

For server-specific announcements & questions, please see Lemmyworld, and if you’re really new to all this, check out the Newcomers community, but anything else? That’s what General’s for!

https://lemmy.world/c/general

[email protected]

[–] sunspider 8 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

That's great, thanks for starting the community! It's good to have place where the content accessible for people to still engage with it.

We'll find a way to promote the visibility of the community so that it can start to become a hub. Probably in a list of recommended communities stickied to the front page.

[–] ElectroVagrant 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Glad I reviewed this thread, lol

I was just about to make a similar-ish community, but with a longer name. I got caught up in making an icon & finding a banner though, so uh, hm. 😅

[–] Jessica 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Feel free to go post somewhere there and mention me, and I'll make you a mod since @[email protected] wants a few mods per community from a post of his I saw elsewhere. I'm sure your icon and banner can still be useful. :) (As far as I can immediately tell, the only way to promote someone to a mod is by doing it on one of their comments in the community you moderate)

[–] PriorProject 15 points 2 years ago

Thank you for stepping in to bring this under control. I'm subbed here for the admin announcements and meta discussions, and the free for all here in recent days has been irritating.

Another thought... I feel like the community name lemmy.world kind of invites confusion as to being about "the whole world Lemmy related topics". Hopefully once the mess is cleaned up the recent posts will make the topic obvious... but other instances often call their equiv community meta or something similar that invites less confusion. Adopting a more specific name might reduce the confusion and moderation load. If that happened, I dunno what happens to this community. Maybe just shut it down, its free for all form seems unsustainable.

[–] j4k3 11 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

I'm a strong believer in moderation should be invisible to most users. The collective, regular participating users ultimately decide what should be in the sidebar/rules, not the mods. Uses evolve and we must evolve with them. I mean the vast majority of us are here because of the issue of authoritarianism. If everyone wants to use this as an r/all, it is not hard to come up with a better descriptive name for a new sub to support the instance info better.

There is far too little total participation at this point to go making major controversial changes that will likely disenfranchise and reduce participation. We should be doing everything possible to bolster participation of anyone willing.

[–] ElectroVagrant 8 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

If everyone wants to use this as an r/all, it is not hard to come up with a better descriptive name for a new sub to support the instance info better.

I don't entirely agree with this reply, but I do agree with this point. I understand the intent behind enforcing what this community was intended to be, but it was left to go on its own course too long to try to redirect it imo. Not to say I'm annoyed or bothered by the change, only that I can easily see where others may be, especially with this occurring back to back with Beehaw's defederation, which some are still only just learning about & understanding the effects of.

Also, a number of the recently locked threads are still lingering at the top of the front page when sort is set to active, so you now have this awkward situation where it looks like the instance (rather than just this specific community) is more heavily moderated than it really is. If that's not a concern, it's no big deal, but I thought it might be worth taking into consideration if one is interested in the perception of the instance.

I think a better course of action may have been to make a sort of meta community as PriorProject mentions other instances have for handling server info and meta discussions. Letting this instance become a sort of all/chat/lounge community for helping new folks get their heading seems a better move.

Just my two cents though!

[–] richie510 9 points 2 years ago (1 children)

One issue I have is that I believe that !lemmyworld is the only default subscribed community when a new user signs up. If the intent of this community is to just talk about the instance, maybe it should not be default subscribed, or maybe it should not be the only default subscribed community. Can the initial default subscribed communities be setup to guide a new user?

[–] HowRu68 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I like this idea. You mean ,like a sub. Then again, like someone else said we must beware not spread out the users to much. Maybe if you apply to world you automatically become member of the intro/new user sub as well?

[–] richie510 2 points 2 years ago

FYI, “subs” are technically called “communities” on lemmy. Hence the address in the url is /c/

[–] _MoveSwiftly 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Hello.

Thanks for making this post and letting us know with transparency what's going on your mind and with this community. :)

I do have a question with you being a moderator: @[email protected] posted here regarding communities with abandoned moderation. I'm starting to encounter that as well. This comment mentioned reaching out to the mods, and I'd hate to do that when that isn't the path forward.

Can you write a guideline for mods in this instance so that we know how to resolve issues going forward? This will help with this instance maturing as we go. :) Maybe a mod only community where we can communicate with the instance owners/mods?

[–] SpezCanLigmaBalls 5 points 2 years ago

would love to know the answer to this

[–] ulu_mulu 6 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Hello and welcome :)

I'm pretty new myself, you plan seems fair to me, but I have a question: is there some other place that would be more suitable than this one to post help for new users?

I ask this because, in my opinion (as a reddit refugee myself), this community would seem the first place where new users seek help, the fediverse is very confusing for us used to centralized platforms and new people do need help to not be discouraged and leave.

Do you know if there's any plan to create a sort of lemmy.world help or support community to "free" this one from off-topic?

[–] sunspider 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Hey! Thanks for your question. There wasn't before, but there's now [email protected]. The plan is to have a stickied post with a list of recommended communities for new users.

[–] ulu_mulu 2 points 2 years ago

Fantastic! Thank you so much :)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

@ulu_mulu @sunspider You can try https://lemmy.world/c/[email protected]

e: https://lemmy.world/c/[email protected]

e2: https://lemmy.world/c/[email protected]

e3: I can't find any support or help communties for lemmy.world anywhere. Those subs i pointed to should give you a general feel or idea on what's going on. I think you just ask the question

[–] ulu_mulu 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I know those communities exist but new users wouldn't, and in my opinion, a new user would seek help on the same server they create their account on, I can't imagine how they would feel if their posts were removed for being off-topic :(

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

@ulu_mulu True. There needs to be a user friendly community. I don't know why somebody hasn't created one yet. I've only been here since June 12th cause of the blackout but i'm here to stay.

e: I admit reddit had r/help and r/newreddit

That's what i'm gonna miss about Reddit. I've been on reddit 6 years I still get stumped and got to ask questions in r/help

[–] ulu_mulu 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I've been on reddit for more than 8 years and I too sometimes still have questions, you never end learning :)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

@ulu_mulu Yep. I'm that type of person though, if I do something and really like it i will research it as much as I can so I have no question that i'm doing something. Like a self validation thing. Have you seen this yet https://joinfediverse.wiki/ I just found it. I'm blown away how big the fedeverse is compared to what we know how. I didn't even know it existed until the blackout on Reddit

[–] Tsunami45chan 5 points 2 years ago

You and the other mods are doing great, keep up the good work on this server. A lot of reddit refugees (also myself) are joining here on lemmy. Especially once the end of the month or July 1st reddits 3rd party app wont be available anymore.

[–] neblem 5 points 2 years ago

Awesome, glad this is finally getting cleaned up, I wanted to hear about announcements, but it was getting so spammy so fast I unsubscribed and was just checking in from the local feed. I'm going to resubscribe.

[–] Tsunami45chan 4 points 2 years ago

[–] BioDriver 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Gonna be completely honest - I joined this server because it was open and recommended on joinlemmy. Shortly after I saw beehive he defederated this server and the concern I have is others will follow suit. I know I could easily join another server, but before I do that, is this one going to make changes to get back on beehive’s good graces and prevent defederation elsewhere?

[–] pleasemakesense 9 points 2 years ago

Beehaw's problem isn't really about the instance, they feel they don't have the moderation tools to keep out the people that see beehaw posts on c/all that they don't want to have comment on their instance. Beehaw's defederation says more about beehaw than about any instance they defederate

[–] Yodadidas 4 points 2 years ago

Congrats @sun-spider and good luck with modding. I appreciate the concise intention-action-justification-exception statement you provided. Nice!

[–] cura 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I don't think people will stop posting general topics here, maybe you guys have to find another way.

[–] positiveWHAT 6 points 2 years ago

Yup, the name and icon invites it as a general chat. Plus, people don't read...

[–] BackOnMyBS 3 points 2 years ago

Thank you! My feed gets overwhelmed with lemmy.world posts, so I have to filter through a lot of personally uninteresting posts to get to my subscribed communities. I appreciate the effort 😀

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Why can't we just let the users decide what gets visibility vs what doesn't?

I know it may be a stupid question. The problem with Reddit was it become to moderated to the point if you didn't read the fine print your post would get removed.

I think users simply agree what is relevant to the community and what isn't and will vote accordingly.

If the content is obviously NSFW take it down, and if they are spamming obviously ban them and remove the spam.

I really would hate to Lemmy become overmoderated.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

Users often don't care whether a post is made in the right community.

You see this on Reddit too: users that browse r/all or their own frontpage will simply upvote the posts they like while only rarely paying attention to whether it fits into the subreddit it's posted to.

[–] Ahmed 1 points 2 years ago

Now I get it! I thought there's a problem with the server and wondering why most of the posts on my feed are from this community. Haha turns out people are just posting a lot here.