Hello from the mod team!
First of all: Thanks to all members on their behaviors. You’ve been great! Please keep that spirit.
At the same time, we’d like to announce that we have updated the rules for this community, based on experience gained, recent events, and your feedback.
What’s new?
The following is a summary, along with some reasoning. The full rules are in the sidebar of the community, as always. :)
- We are clarifying that this is an English-language community. If you create a post linking to a non-English source, please provide a full-text (automated) translation. This rule is a result of existing moderation practice where we already deleted some stray non-English comments and asked for the translation of a foreign-language link. (Nonetheless, we do love all European languages.)
- When posting a link to paywalled articles, we’re now asking you to also link to an archived version of the article.
- Infographics must now include a source and a date (year). This rule is a result of the critical feedback we got on a few infographics that were not exactly wrong, but definitely outdated.
- We are clarifiying the rules regarding acceptable behavior in discussion: be kind & argue in good faith. These rules more or less explicitly lay out existing moderation practice.
Finally: Want to join the mod team? Please apply — we’d be especially happy to have more mods with a feddit.org account, since mod queue federation is a bit lacking currently.
I have seen that idea so many times over the years, yet the simple fact is: it does never ever work.
There will always be one side actually arguing (in good faith) and one side reporting every opinion they don’t like. And wheather it’s mods just becoming tired, subconciously influenced by the fact how often some people got reported already or just a simple matter of statistics with a lot of reporting… in the end the former group will get punished and stop to contribute while the latter doesn’t give a fuck and will just circumvent the rules with a new account should their bullshit backfire for once.
TL;DR: hard rules work, wishy-washy nonsense like “be nice to each other” doesn’t.
EDIT. Sorry, this comment was intended for someone else but whatever. The general point stands.
Disagree somewhat. The gold standard of communities is the techie forum Hacker News. Even even after years of existence, and repeated influxes of the great unwashed from the R-site, the quality of conversation on HN is still astonishingly high.
The magic formula appears to be (1) a simple mandate for participants to show an interest and assume good faith, (2) a forgiving attitude to transgression which involves privately asking miscreants to behave themselves, and (3) an activist moderator who is always there to jump in and push conversations gently back on the rails.
Admittedly, Hacker News has specialist subject matter, which always raises the quality of a forum. But even its politics-focused discussions are generally civil, so something else is clearly going on. Most people agree that the moderator there is unusually effective, but the other elements also seem to be playing a role.
It should not really be surprising. Decent leadership, assuming good intentions, forgiveness, reform rather than retributive punishment - these things tend to result in better communities in the offline world too.
Users will keep being users. Since we are users ourselves, there will always be some we like more, some we like less. And some, are just toxic. This rule is simply saying their behaviours are not welcome.
You’re right. There’s always a rotten apple. I think the rule mostly points toward a level of politeness we strive to keep. It’s like virtual signaling, it works in other ways. Some may take the hint when they read that.
Anyway, you’re just being cynical. And I don’t mean to offend you by giving adjectives. It’s just that I found interesting to see your comment jump on that rule when it could also be said on pretty much any other rule (e.g. spam)
Spam is much easier to evaluate objectively. Feeling insulted isn’t. Especially when some people make it their whole personality to feel insulted by any opposing viewpoint or opinion. Which then leads to constantly getting reported for not sharing their views, which leads to more scrutiny if anything you said could actually be perceived as insulting. Add mods becoming tired or just plain old statistics… you can probably follow my train of thought.
PS: And as any other cynic will tell you… that’s not cynical but just speaking from experience.