I'm requesting assistance to draft an email to our city council here in small-city-near-a-big-city Canada to help them decide to not allow an AI datacenter to be built. They said they won't read a big long letter with citations and everything which is sort of unfortunate, because it's what I had prepared, but I feel I've got to write something.

Is there a list of punchy and true reasons why a small community would absolutely not want one of these things up in Canada here in a short form? My habit of over-writing things will only hurt, so it needs to make sense to people only barely tech-literate. This is why I need help.

Background: I run a medium-sized IT firm and am very familiar with how they operate and what they entail. In fact, my company was selected to help implement the center until we saw the plans and the future scale (more than 10x) with the lack of care they envisioned and chose to back out completely.

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. We try to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are highly encouraged as no-discussion downvotes don't help anyone learn anything valuable. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

I've had some discussions in real life about what the best options would be for replacing the Canadian "First Past The Post" (and also the more-broken American system of course) system of voting and there are a ton of ideas.

Shout out to !fairvote@lemmy.world for inspiring this post.

Some examples are:

STAR

Single Transferable Vote

I also have come to find that different systems work better for different sizes of vote. For example, local elections vs. federal elections.

Some Starters (and don’t feel you have to speak on all or any of them if you don’t care to):

• What systems do you feel would work better for local, provincial, and federal elections?
• Do you even think about how it could be made better?
• Could you be convinced to vote for a single-issue party that would implement better systems and then abscond? This has been a serious topic of discussion within my local group of mayoral and city council members. Since it would benefit those on all sides, do you think people could be convinced?
• Is there a perfect system, or is every system you've seen lacking in some way?

Not sure if this is the right place for it, but would anyone be interested in assisting an MSP in helping refine our Linux Stack?

Our goal is to take companies that are currently using a Windows stack and move them over without too much retraining on the user's part.

Our current stack is Linux Mint, LibreOffice, a custom RMM agent, and a few bits and bobs that differ per client, but that's all malleable. We have a stack, I'm just interested in anything that may make it better. Of note, we donate to FOSS monthly for roughly the licensing fees of the non-FOSS alternative that the clients would be using.

EDIT: Further info for some incredibly hostile replies who are seeking to purposely get offended...

As an MSP, the monthly client fee remains the same regardless of if the clients are on Linux, MacOS, or Windows. I assure you, we're not winning new converts with Linux and hoping to capture some untapped market. This isn't a money-maker. We are avoiding e-waste and upcycling machines for free on our own dime. If the client doesn't want to convert, we donate the systems when they are discarded to one of the nonprofits we support for free. Again, switching clients to Linux wouldn't make us any money as we don't bill for project fees. If anything it would make us less money because we're not trying to sell new objects to the client and are signing ourselves up to train and deploy to them. There's no sneaky evil hidden agenda here.

I was never looking for someone to design the entire implementation, just one or two comments saying something to the tune of "X distro / software is easier for newbies, take a look!" or something.

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. We try to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are highly encouraged as no-discussion downvotes don't help anyone learn anything valuable. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

We’re back! Instead of putting a neutral topic in the introduction, I'm placing a bit of opinion on an issue to see if it helps spur discussion. We are also actively seeking moderators and people who enjoy discussion (and understand that being wrong is an important part of being a better person)! Send me a message if you’d like to help out.

This week, I'd like to discuss something that I've not seen discussed much elsewhere.

Many on Lemmy are the type to want to see their government go through a revolution of some kind and think that slow change is impossible, but what happens after? Say you get a group and topple the oligarchy or shitty government in power, what then?

Some Starters (and don’t feel you have to speak on all or any of them if you don’t care to):

• How do you defend what you're building from those who have more resources than you?
• What does the government look like?
• Would you keep anything from the old systems?
• What kind of leaders would you need?
• How do you stop it from turning into the NEXT horrible thing?

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. We try to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are highly encouraged as no-discussion downvotes don't help anyone learn anything valuable. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

We’re back! Instead of putting a neutral topic in the introduction, I'm placing a bit of opinion on an issue to see if it helps spur discussion. We are also actively seeking moderators and people who enjoy discussion (and understand that being wrong is an important part of being a better person)! Send me a message if you’d like to help out.

This week, I'd like to discuss something that's been a bit of an issue for me personally.

Lemmy (and Reddit before it) appears to have a problem with overly-aggressive bannings for perceived slights. In the topic linked above there were people permanently banning users from multiple communities (any they moderate - dozens in some cases) for single downvotes, 4 downvotes across a ten-month period, and bannings because a moderator thought they maybe sorta kinda read that a user may have had a negative thought about their pet issue.

I've personally been banned from Communities (and been sent some pretty vile PMs) for posting in our weekly threads here playing devil's advocate where I state hard questions that I do not necessarily feel are correct. They think they've discovered some secret agenda by finding posts I've made here and use them as "receipts" in order to dismiss anything they think they're reading that may be contrary to their opinion. Any context provided for the post falls on deaf ears.

I'm someone who operates on the idea of "If you can not defend an opinion from scrutiny, you should probably not hold that opinion."

To quote myself:

It’s pretty tragic that people can't handle opposing opinions. I think the activist nature of Lemmy is kind of a self-destructive spiral and people need to learn how to live with each other again. But I guess that’s the issue with modern social media as a whole… Nobody has any idea how to convince anyone else, only to yell at them louder.

Some Starters (and don’t feel you have to speak on all or any of them if you don’t care to):

• Are niche Communities correct for banning anyone who downvotes?
• Do downvotes represent a "disagree" button for you (this Community notwithstanding)?
• Most importantly, what would it take to change this?
• Does it help build the Community? What about the platform as a whole?
• Is there a way to build a "safe space" without building an echo chamber online? Is that even a valuable thing to build?

Was recently banned from a whole bunch of DB0 communities for, as best as I can gather, downvoting once when I viewed by All (potentially accidentally while scrolling).

Important notes:

1. I don't use scripts.
2. I don't mass-downvote Communities. If I see a post I generally don't like when browsing All, I may downvote one post, block the Community and move on.
3. Some of the communities I was banned from don't have any posts in them so I wouldn't have been able to downvote anything.
4. Of all of these Communities, in my history I downvoted one post in one of them. Voting in this manner is not vote manipulation. It's quite literally a feature of the platform and as a mod of another Community, I would consider it pretty good etiquette.
5. One of my bans reads "Appeal Granted, not a brigading member" but I'm still banned.
6. I don't troll.

WTF is going on here?

EDIT - Updated Info from the conversation below: In the initial image, you can see two "ban waves."

The 10 bans three months ago stem from a single downvote in one Community. It was @Draconic_NEO@lemmy.dbzer0.com See here: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/34853477

I was called out by name for a single downvote and culled from a score of Communities I did not participate in by them.

The other bans from two months ago are from four total downvotes over a 10-month timeframe in one Community.

I have also stated in this thread that I don't have issues with AI-gen images, but there are shoddy ones and well-done ones.

EDIT 2: Now unbanned from the ten Communities listed as "3 months ago" in my initial image, but have been banned from three more because of this thread with the reason given being "self-proclaimed anti-AI brigader" which are two things I didn't claim to be. God dammit Lemmy...

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. We try to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are highly encouraged as no-discussion downvotes don't help anyone learn anything valuable. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

We're back! We're testing the waters with the new influx of people to see if this is valuable or not. We are also actively seeking moderators and people who enjoy discussion (and understand that being wrong is an important part of being a better person)! Send me a message if you'd like to help out.

This weekly thread will focus on The Future Of The USA. You may not be American (I'm sure not), but what happens with America can impact the world.

Some Starters (and don’t feel you have to speak on all or any of them if you don’t care to):

• How do you feel things are going there?
• How are they impacting relations with your country if you aren't from America?
• Do you think things will get better or worse?
• How do you think things could be made better?
• What should other countries do to mitigate the damage that may be occurring?
• What are your thoughts on tariffs?

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. We try to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are highly encouraged as no-discussion downvotes don't help anyone learn anything valuable. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

We're testing the waters with the new influx of people to see if this is valuable or not. We are also actively seeking moderators and people who enjoy discussion (and understand that being wrong is an important part of being a better person)! Send me a message if you'd like to help out.

This weekly thread will focus on games (board or video) that are fantastic, but have one extremely annoying aspect that doesn't fit, doesn't make sense, or makes the game worse.

No starters this time as there's tons of examples. Let me know yours and maybe what you did as a workaround or house rule (if applicable)!

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. We try to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are highly encouraged as no-discussion downvotes don't help anyone learn anything valuable. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

We're back! We're testing the waters with the new influx of people to see if this is valuable or not. We are also actively seeking moderators and people who enjoy discussion (and understand that being wrong is an important part of being a better person)! Send me a message if you'd like to help out.

This weekly thread will focus on Political Purity Testing. The definition we will use for this discussion is here along with some real-world examples.

The attitude can essentially be summed up with "If you're not 100% with us, then you're against us."

Some Starters (and don’t feel you have to speak on all or any of them if you don’t care to):

• Do you feel it is helpful or harmful to a side of an issue to purity test?
• Do you feel these tests are encountered more as you enter extreme areas of thought?
• Are there alternatives to purity testing that you'd rather see implemented?
• Do you feel this happens more on the left or right wing, or is it roughly equal?
• Here's a goofy quiz about which Canadian Political Party you most agree with. Take it and let us know the results if you feel like it! https://canada.isidewith.com/political-quiz

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

This weekly thread will focus on Helping Us Fix Weekly Topics. This Community seems to have a problem. I generally do my best to create open-ended topics that don't lead the reader to respond in any specific way, all while providing what I think are interesting starters. I've purposely picked other moderators that do not think the same as I do on many topics, but have the skill to explain why they feel the way they do. Results of all of this seem to be extremely limited.

If I try and introduce some opinion in a topic for people to pick at (even if I don't believe it), they tend to get very aggressive and seem to insult moreso than discuss. They focus on moral arguments instead of logical ones and abandon discussions when challenged which sort of defeats the purpose (and goes against the rules) of the entire Community to begin with.

Some Starters (and don’t feel you have to speak on all or any of them if you don’t care to):

• Can we do anything with moderation or rules to help encourage you to respond more?
• Are there any format changes you'd like to see that may help?
• Do you ever feel that Lemmy is a more aggressive form of social media and therefore limit your discussion?
• Does the activist nature of Lemmy help or hurt further adoption?
• What topics would you like to see covered?
• Is Lemmy even a good platform for discussion to begin with?
• Would you like to be a mod and help out?

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

This weekly thread will focus on Climate Change. We're not going to discuss if it exists (it very obviously does), but what we can do. I've seen a lot of blame thrown around, but not much on what can actually be done so I'd like to get some ideas on that front.

Some Starters (and don’t feel you have to speak on all or any of them if you don’t care to):

• Should the focus be on individual actions or holding corporations accountable for their environmental impact?
• Should governments prioritize investment in renewable energy over fossil fuels, even if it means higher short-term costs?
• Is it more effective to implement strict climate change laws or to rely on voluntary measures and market-driven solutions?
• Should countries be obligated to accept climate refugees displaced by environmental changes?
• Is geoengineering a viable solution to combat climate change, or does it pose too many risks?
• Should climate change education be mandatory in schools worldwide?