From what I’ve seen it appears that (at least one of) the mods claim to “own” the community - which is a disturbing way of thinking about moderation, in my opinion.
I mean one of the things that I hated most about Reddit in my final days was that the admins removed and replaced mods that purposefully closed in protest.
If someone starts a sub they should be allowed to close and nuke it at will. If someone wants it back enough then they can make a clone.
It’s like, imagine you’re renting a house with a few people and one of the people none of the housemates really like (they don’t follow the house rules everyone has agreed on) marches in and announces “We all, as a group, are moving to Florida!” And then moves out and takes the refrigerator and expects you to follow. No thanks, good riddance, we’re getting a new fridge and a better housemate.
They can do whatever they want with the space, paint it blue, burn it, close it, whatever. They shouldn’t expect people to follow them.
I think this post and the reply highlight the tricky waters we are trying to navigate here in the Fediverse.
I’ve moderated web forums since there was a Web and usually, the final call is with whoever is paying the bills. Here that is more complicated because, although this instance is fully-funded by the users and I consider myself largely a caretaker in my Admin role (and, by extension, Mods don’t “own” their communities they are looking after them for all of us), my name (and @GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk’) is above the door and we do have legal responsibilities based on the laws in the jurisdictions we operate in.
On the other hand we have the ethos that came over from Reddit, that Mods have some degree if ownership over the communities and some instances tend to operate with that idea, to the point it can be difficult to get new Mode appointed if others have gone AWOL, leading to people starting duplicate communities on the same instance.
Where these two ways of thinking clash you can get some degree of drama, as we are seeing here. Ada and her team take a strong line on certain things, as you’d expect from their instance but the 196 Mods didn’t appreciate what they see as interference in the running if “their” community.
This would be just another day in the Fediverse and an example of why it is wise to have a word with an Admin on an instance before starting what might be a large, potentially controversial, community in order to ensure the Admins and Mods are on the same page.
I don’t disagree with your first paragraph but partly do with the second.
If it’s a unique channel-type community you started, produce most of the content for and actively moderate quickly and consistently then, for sure, you should have almost complete control… but 196 is/was none of those things.
Nah, it’s one of the use cases for sites/services like reddit and lemmy.
A way to have a forum for your specific interest that you can build into the kind of community you want.
The barrier to hosting a standalone forum is very high. Prohibitively so. The time, the money, the level of skill needed.
Reddit, for a long time, treated subs exactly like that. It hosted your forum, and as long as you didn’t do illegal shit, they would leave you alone. You owned it as much as you can own anything on someone else’s hardware.
Lemmy is entirely a clone of reddit based in a reaction to reddit stopping that way of doing things.
The key to lemmy though, is that instances are individual reddits. You host the instance, you decide how “subs” are allowed to function. Some instances have a looser way of doing things, others are more hands on.
But, really, a moderator that creates a community should be as close to the owner of the community as you can get when it’s hosted on someone else’s hardware. You can try a fully democratic community, and they can work. But they don’t work better than what amounts to a dictatorship model. It’s just that it takes a higher number of people being jerks to fuck up a community when it’s democratic. Organization by a panel is slower to adapt, and also more open to disruption because of that.
It’s all about the benefits and drawbacks.
All of that is still trumped by the fact that whoever literally owns the instance can nuke, take over, ban, whatever any community or users. So it isn’t like you can escape ownership without making a formally run instance with a legally binding structure. Without that, you still have to hope that the owner doesn’t go crazy.
As I’ve mentioned somewhere else I’d take all that in to consideration if it was a more niche sub - but it isn’t. It very much seems to be that a already existing community found its way to Blahaj where (almost) all of the contributors were happy. Then some mods arbitrarily decided that they didn’t like the instance and moved to… .world, of all places. Back towards centralisation and the possible looming spectre of interacting with meta users too.
Though, I would call 196 pretty niche, just not small. That’s piddling over word usage though, and not at all relevant to the real point you made.
I definitely agree that the moving was a bad call, btw. Particularly where it moved to, and for the same reasons you gave. I don’t have a stake in it, I’ve always found the 196 thing a bit too silly even for my absurdist tastes. It still seems like a horrible way to handle everything overall.
Yeah, at the end of the day Lemmy is just a colloboration between the users, the mods, and the admins.
The admins do have the final say, but in order for users to use their instance in the first place and communities to grow there, they also have to follow the desires of the users and work with the moderators to a major extent. It’s just teamwork and being able to compromise on some things but stay true to your principles on other things.
This really shouldn’t have been as big a deal as it became, and I would blame that mostly on the mods, somewhat on the users, and maybe just a little bit on the admins for not discouraging the moderators from taking this action in the first place. Everyone could probably have done a little bit better, but it was mostly on the mods for making a bonehead decision without realizing the consequences. That being said, raking them over the coals in the aftermath doesn’t really accomplish anything other than letting people feel self-righteous.
It’s very easy to see from the outside and in retrospect, but when you’re making moderator decisions every single day, you tend to lose a bit of perspective. It can be frustrating especially if admins are interfering with a community that you dedicate so much time and effort to, and I like to think if everyone had walked a mile in those shoes before, they probably wouldn’t be acting so condescending right now.
That being said, raking them over the coals in the aftermath doesn’t really accomplish anything other than letting people feel self-righteous.
The mods are still in place, and trust is definitely eroded, so we’re probably not in the aftermath yet.
I like to think if everyone had walked a mile in those shoes before, they probably wouldn’t be acting so condescending right now.
I have issues taking seriously a mod that still doesn’t have a local account to get the reports after so long, and blame it on the admins
So perhaps if LBZ was the right instance to check reports from, it would have been super helpful for both parties if they accepted my application. I’m still waiting two years later.
Blaze has definitely been the biggest shit-stirrer in the situation. He’s all over every thread about the migration doing what he can to stir up drama.
From what I’ve seen it appears that (at least one of) the mods claim to “own” the community - which is a disturbing way of thinking about moderation, in my opinion.
I mean one of the things that I hated most about Reddit in my final days was that the admins removed and replaced mods that purposefully closed in protest.
If someone starts a sub they should be allowed to close and nuke it at will. If someone wants it back enough then they can make a clone.
It’s like, imagine you’re renting a house with a few people and one of the people none of the housemates really like (they don’t follow the house rules everyone has agreed on) marches in and announces “We all, as a group, are moving to Florida!” And then moves out and takes the refrigerator and expects you to follow. No thanks, good riddance, we’re getting a new fridge and a better housemate.
They can do whatever they want with the space, paint it blue, burn it, close it, whatever. They shouldn’t expect people to follow them.
I think this post and the reply highlight the tricky waters we are trying to navigate here in the Fediverse.
I’ve moderated web forums since there was a Web and usually, the final call is with whoever is paying the bills. Here that is more complicated because, although this instance is fully-funded by the users and I consider myself largely a caretaker in my Admin role (and, by extension, Mods don’t “own” their communities they are looking after them for all of us), my name (and @GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk’) is above the door and we do have legal responsibilities based on the laws in the jurisdictions we operate in.
On the other hand we have the ethos that came over from Reddit, that Mods have some degree if ownership over the communities and some instances tend to operate with that idea, to the point it can be difficult to get new Mode appointed if others have gone AWOL, leading to people starting duplicate communities on the same instance.
Where these two ways of thinking clash you can get some degree of drama, as we are seeing here. Ada and her team take a strong line on certain things, as you’d expect from their instance but the 196 Mods didn’t appreciate what they see as interference in the running if “their” community.
This would be just another day in the Fediverse and an example of why it is wise to have a word with an Admin on an instance before starting what might be a large, potentially controversial, community in order to ensure the Admins and Mods are on the same page.
I don’t disagree with your first paragraph but partly do with the second.
If it’s a unique channel-type community you started, produce most of the content for and actively moderate quickly and consistently then, for sure, you should have almost complete control… but 196 is/was none of those things.
I don’t think requiring a mod team to mod and create all the content is reasonable barrier for control of their sub.
Nah, it’s one of the use cases for sites/services like reddit and lemmy.
A way to have a forum for your specific interest that you can build into the kind of community you want.
The barrier to hosting a standalone forum is very high. Prohibitively so. The time, the money, the level of skill needed.
Reddit, for a long time, treated subs exactly like that. It hosted your forum, and as long as you didn’t do illegal shit, they would leave you alone. You owned it as much as you can own anything on someone else’s hardware.
Lemmy is entirely a clone of reddit based in a reaction to reddit stopping that way of doing things.
The key to lemmy though, is that instances are individual reddits. You host the instance, you decide how “subs” are allowed to function. Some instances have a looser way of doing things, others are more hands on.
But, really, a moderator that creates a community should be as close to the owner of the community as you can get when it’s hosted on someone else’s hardware. You can try a fully democratic community, and they can work. But they don’t work better than what amounts to a dictatorship model. It’s just that it takes a higher number of people being jerks to fuck up a community when it’s democratic. Organization by a panel is slower to adapt, and also more open to disruption because of that.
It’s all about the benefits and drawbacks.
All of that is still trumped by the fact that whoever literally owns the instance can nuke, take over, ban, whatever any community or users. So it isn’t like you can escape ownership without making a formally run instance with a legally binding structure. Without that, you still have to hope that the owner doesn’t go crazy.
As I’ve mentioned somewhere else I’d take all that in to consideration if it was a more niche sub - but it isn’t. It very much seems to be that a already existing community found its way to Blahaj where (almost) all of the contributors were happy. Then some mods arbitrarily decided that they didn’t like the instance and moved to… .world, of all places. Back towards centralisation and the possible looming spectre of interacting with meta users too.
Fair enough.
Though, I would call 196 pretty niche, just not small. That’s piddling over word usage though, and not at all relevant to the real point you made.
I definitely agree that the moving was a bad call, btw. Particularly where it moved to, and for the same reasons you gave. I don’t have a stake in it, I’ve always found the 196 thing a bit too silly even for my absurdist tastes. It still seems like a horrible way to handle everything overall.
Yeah, at the end of the day Lemmy is just a colloboration between the users, the mods, and the admins.
The admins do have the final say, but in order for users to use their instance in the first place and communities to grow there, they also have to follow the desires of the users and work with the moderators to a major extent. It’s just teamwork and being able to compromise on some things but stay true to your principles on other things.
This really shouldn’t have been as big a deal as it became, and I would blame that mostly on the mods, somewhat on the users, and maybe just a little bit on the admins for not discouraging the moderators from taking this action in the first place. Everyone could probably have done a little bit better, but it was mostly on the mods for making a bonehead decision without realizing the consequences. That being said, raking them over the coals in the aftermath doesn’t really accomplish anything other than letting people feel self-righteous.
It’s very easy to see from the outside and in retrospect, but when you’re making moderator decisions every single day, you tend to lose a bit of perspective. It can be frustrating especially if admins are interfering with a community that you dedicate so much time and effort to, and I like to think if everyone had walked a mile in those shoes before, they probably wouldn’t be acting so condescending right now.
The mods are still in place, and trust is definitely eroded, so we’re probably not in the aftermath yet.
I have issues taking seriously a mod that still doesn’t have a local account to get the reports after so long, and blame it on the admins
https://feddit.org/post/7009737/4240862
Removed by mod
Blaze has definitely been the biggest shit-stirrer in the situation. He’s all over every thread about the migration doing what he can to stir up drama.
hey I stirred some shit too :<
You very much did, and gracefully! 😄
TIL all blahaj users are my alts
Maybe let your alts take over for a while then and go touch some grass.
They did. @flamingos@feddit.uk and @sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al made a meme on !fedimemes@feddit.uk
@Anarki_@lemmy.blahaj.zone posted on !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com
@SoleInvictus@lemmy.blahaj.zone @will_steal_your_username@lemmy.blahaj.zone @TheCoolerMia@lemmy.blahaj.zone @kittenzrulz123@lemmy.blahaj.zone are now the mods of !onehundredninetysix@lemmy.blahaj.zone
You seem to fixate on me, but this event involved hundreds of people.