There has been a lot of discussion about what we should or should not allow in our community. This is not a thread to tell you about a decision, this is a thread to ask your opinion about what is acceptable, and collate this in one place.
We want this to be a friendly and welcoming community to all who are friendly and welcoming. This means a necessary amount of tolerance for those with other points of view. It also means that by definition we can't have people here that are intolerant of others.
Anyone who has been here for a while knows I am loathe to create a list of what is and isn’t allowed, because I feel that most of it is obvious, and the stuff that isn’t obvious is not simple enough to create a list. But I’ll list some things that I feel aren’t necessary to list, because others think it is necessary. This is not a complete list.
In our friendly community, we obviously don’t allow:
- Things that are illegal for us to host
- Doxing
- Hate speech or other attacks on others
- Spamming
- Trolling
Now the question is: what’s ok in our community, and how should we respond? I’m gonna number them for ease of following.
-
Is it ok to attack public figures? e.g. is it ok to say “Christopher Luxon is an idiot”? “David Seymour is a fascist prick”? “Gareth Morgan should fuck off and die”?
-
Does it count as doxing if the information is public? How public?
-
Are derogatory terms or hateful comments for people known for hate ok? Or do these attitudes contribute to an unfriendly atmosphere? i.e. is it ok to say “Kyle chapman is a fucking nazi”?
-
If what appeared as a genuine discussion turned out to be sealioning or similar, what kind of mod action should happen? Ban the user, leave the posts? Temporary or permanent ban? Ban the user and remove the posts?
-
Similar to 4, are we ok that anything in the obviously list above is removed on sight? Should a trolling post be locked, or completely removed?
-
Is there anything not mentioned yet that you feel should not be allowed, should be encouraged, or that would help turn this community into the kind of place you want to visit?
-
And finally, there have been a lot of voices on this point. Although I’ve made it clear this isn’t what I want, I feel it’s not for me to force on people: Do you think we need an explicit list of rules that state the above?
Over the last week I have heard a lot of concern over the approach that I have been taking to date: We're all adults here (mostly), and we are a small enough group that we can talk though disagreements as long as people approach them in good faith. In my view this is working, the only negative attitudes I have seen are from people not liking this approach.
However, I have heard from many people with more experience at building communities, and they have raised a lot of concern about this approach. Therefore I am willing to hear what the community is looking for in a Lemmy instance, and willing to change the approach if that's what people want.
I'm listening, so give me your feedback.
I think it would be great if we could just stick to the "don't be a dick" rule and let that be that. Any explicit set of rules is going to allow things and/or forbid things it shouldn't. And you're likely to find some bad actors who want to exploit whatever loopholes exist.
But I suppose people have different ideas about what being a dick means, and that's why we need this discussion.
To answer each of your points:
Yes, I think it's OK to attack public figures, though I don't think celebrating or advocating for violence against anyone should be allowed. “Gareth Morgan should fuck off and die” is right on the line for me. It's not always easy to define who is and isn't a public figure though. Attacking anyone for their race, gender, sexuality, etc. would be forbidden as hate speech.
It's really hard to draw the line with doxxing. I know what feels like a violation, but I don't know how I'd define it. Though anything that has been intentionally published or shared by the person or their organisation should generally be fine. Beyond that, it feels like "I know it when I see it" would be better than any stated rules.
I think anyone who promotes hate has made themselves a public figure, and should be subject to the same rules as them. By the way, I doubt Kyle Chapman would actually think being called a fucking Nazi was an insult. That's his ideology, and he's proud of it. It's like trying to offend Hitler by calling him a Nazi.
Attempts at sealioning, etc. really need to be dealt with on a case by case basis. Things like the age of the account, how much disruptive and non-disruptive activity they've engaged in, and how bad the sealioning was all come into it. Removal of content, warnings, and temporary and permanent bans should all be on the table though.
I would lean towards removing anything on the "obviously" list. If it's genuine trolling, leaving it up doesn't seem to add any value. Again, there will be grey areas.
Something that I would like to see encouraged is to conduct arguments in "good faith". This is obviously hard to define, though it's often easy enough to identify a bad faith argument. To be clear, I'm not against "Devil's Advocate" arguments, but arguments should not devolve into ad hominem attacks and name calling. We can disagree and debate in a constructive, non-toxic way. I feel like anyone who persists in using logical fallacies to support their argument - after it's been pointed out - is not arguing in good faith. For examples of the fallacies I'm talking about, see this infographic or the Wikipedia page. Also - information that is demonstrably false (e.g. "vaccines cause autism") should be removed.
I'd really prefer we didn't have a list of explicit rules for the reasons I gave earlier. If we got enough input from the community (say on this thread), it could be linked to for people who feel like they need to see some rules.
These are just my thoughts. What does everyone else think?