Have you and the other active mods considered adding a civility rule in the sidebar?
this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2024
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Rules
The rules for behavior are a straight carry over of Mastodon.World's rules. You can click the link but we've reposted them here in brief, as a guideline. We will continue to use the Mastodon.World rules as the master list. Over all, be nice to each other and remember this isn't a community built around debate. For the rules about formatting your posts, scroll down to number 2.
1. Follow the rules of Mastodon.world, which can be found here.
A. Provide an inclusive and supportive environment. This means if it isn't rulebreaking and we can't be supportive to them then we probably shouldn't engage.
B. No illegal content.
C. Use content warnings where appropriate. This means mark your submissions NSFW if need be.
D. No uncivil behavior. This includes, but is not limited to: Name Calling; Bullying; Trolling; Disruptive Commenting; or Personal Criticisms.
E. No Harrassment. As an example in relation to Transgender people this includes, deadnaming, misgendering, and promotion of conversion therapy. Similarly Misogyny, Misandry, and Racism are also banned here.
2. Include a community or instance title and description in your post title. - A following example of this would be New Communities - A place to post new communities or instances all over Lemmy for discovery and promotion.
3. Follow the formatting. - The formatting as included below is important for people getting universal links across Lemmy as easily as possible.
Formatting
Please include this following format in your post:
[link text](/c/[email protected])
This provides a link that should work across instances, but in some cases it won't
You should also include either:
or instance.com/c/community
FAQ:
Q: Why do I get a 404?
A: At least one user in an instance needs to search for a community before it gets fetched. Searching for the community will bring it into the instance and it will fetch a few of the most recent posts without comments. If a user is subscribed to a community, then all of the future posts and interactions are now in-sync.
Q: When I try to create a post, the circle just spins forever. Why is that?
A: This is a current known issue with large communities. Sometimes it does get posted, but just continues spinning, but sometimes it doesn't get posted and continues spinning. If it doesn't actually get posted, the best thing to do is try later. However, only some people seem to be having this problem at the moment.
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I've been thinking about redoing the side bar but it's going to be a week or so.
You don't want to add civility - that constrains. Best let people be free.
It's actually already a rule. It's in the instance rules. That's what I mean when I say people are having trouble knowing what the rules are here.
Rules shmules
I don't like your ideology.
I laughed.
I cried
It was better than Cats
It has a beter love story than Twilight.
That was the spirit in which it was intended.
I figured, I have that exact same humor reflex.
I’d like to apologize for my part in this toxicity. I think I could have approached that thread in a more civil manner.
But maybe you can give me some advice for the future. What got me fired up was statements by people defending or advocating for indiscriminate mass murder. To me this seems beyond a mere ideological disagreement and it feels wrong to leave this kind of content unchallenged. But would it have been better to just report it and move on? I considered this but wasn’t sure if it constituted rule-breaking content per se. And I was wary of reporting something that might not be against the rules.
What is the best way to respond to this type of content which I unfortunately see all too often on Lemmy?
This is just my opinion but you should leave it unchallenged. When was the last time you changed someone's mind because you posted a reply to it?
I think we are just not being trained for situations like this in the west. People are talking about mass murder really triggers us. But you know, it's designed to do that. More anger, more posts, more attention, and on big tech platforms, more money because more ads and traffic.
Just look at the person writing these things. Are they worth even responding to? Who cares what they think?
Whenever I respond to someone like that, I assume up front that the person I'm responding to will not change their mind. Taking that for granted, I write purely with the intention of providing a well reasoned counterargument for a third party observer of the conversation, I.e. lurkers, hoping that it prevents someone from being deceived by the content I'm responding to, thus giving them a mental handhold to avoid slipping into some deep bullshit.
I say that as someone who was once fully gripped by religion and conspiracy theories, and it was only after I was finally exposed to some irrefutable rational arguments that I could begin my slow crawl out of that dark pit of ignorance.
Yes, this is exactly why it's so important to not leave things unchallenged! Human brains are so susceptible to absorbing ideas through osmosis by just reading statements while scrolling.
Good point!
I was literally typing a reply about how it still is useful to onlookers and how I have had my mind changed as a third party witness to online arguments before, and then I saw this. Thanks for doing that!
There are communities where that's what drives the entire place. This just really isn't the place, especially when it gets like that thread did. So in non political communities it's usually best to just report that stuff and move on. As long as the report is in good faith a mod shouldn't care. And to be clear I'm not saying we can't have side conversations. This isn't some draconian ruling like nobody can mention party or ideology names. But they clearly derailed that comment section for political discussion.
As far as the rules being clearly posted, you're the second person today to mention they may not be. So I'll definitely be looking into that.
OK thanks for your thoughts, I’ll try to stick to that in the future.
You share a community, and get a solid 8 downvotes with people coming into your community to downvote the content you posted in the community you made and shared.
Thank God I have no other communities to share because genuinely what the hell. Why bother sharing a community you made if people that clearly aren't interested in what you're sharing only come in to downvote content they know doesn't appeal to them?
Unfortunately there's not really any way to stop that and have an announcement community. The best thing to do is just wait them out or ban them.
You could get some of the mods from news to come here and moderate civility. It is their favorite thing in the world to do. They don't have any other hobbies or interests besides deleting comments for civility all of the time. Maximum civility moderation efficiency. They are the best mods, the greatest mods, there have never been better mods than these crack elite super elite mods.
Civility is the new pretext for punishing wrong think?