We've seen an increase in sign-ups on our instance lately, so the admin team felt it might be helpful to know what to expect from StarTrek.website as your home base in the Fediverse.
To give an idea of how we view this instance, the original URL we were considering was "startek.club". Our goal was never to be a "fan site" explicitly, but to feel like a social club for Trekkies and entry point to the "Threadiverse".
⭐What you can expect form us:
Active, aggressive moderation from our administrators and mods.
The admin team has decades of experience moderating on Reddit and we all have very low tolerance for inauthentic or aggressive behavior. If you feel that way too, you'll probably like it here. But if you're seeking raw, unfiltered Fediverse access, this isn't the instance for you.
The admin team actively defederates other instances, removes federated communities, and bans federated users for behavior that does not align with our core principles, even if those users/communities/instances have not interacted with our hosted communities in any way.
Everything you see on startek.website is ultimately hosted by us, even if the content originated on another instance. That means we have to consider what we are willing to host and what kind of experience we want to offer. In addition to the obvious stuff (spam, hate speech) here are some examples of types of non-obvious content/behavior we will moderate:
- Political propaganda
- "Snark"
- Drama/call-out communities
- Sealioning
- Reply guys
Unlike our local communities, we take a more laissez-faire approach when it comes to federated communities/users. This means we are not actively patrolling or holding federated content to the same standard as our own. We heavily rely on user reports and our own experience as users when it comes to taking action.
⭐What we expect from our users:
Our users are expected to be on their best behavior when interacting with federated communities.
Everyone with an account here is expected to respect other instance admin/mods time, effort, and mental health. This means adhering to our instance principles and terms of service in all communities accessed via startrek.website, even if the behavior is within the rules of the other community.
Keep in mind, whatever you say on the fediverse gets said here first, and our rules apply.
Our users are expected to actively participate in maintaining a positive culture.
As a user, you don't need to see someone blatantly spamming or harassing for us to consider taking action. If you see someone simply behaving in a way you don't like, report them and we will consider. We are a community unto ourselves, we are not beholden to advertisers or outside influence. We get to determine what kind of experience we want.
This post has a mirror saved on our wiki. If you are curious about how we might approach something more specific please feel to ask in a comment!
I would like to ask then, why does startrek.website continue to be federated with lemmy.ml when that instance routinely violates the second core principle. Authoritarianism is wholly incompatible with Star Trek ideals
Defederation isn't the only option listed there - the other options can be, and have been, deployed across a number of instances that are still otherwise federated.
May I ask what measures were deployed against .ml? I see your point when an instance in question just has some rouge mods/comms or some bad users. After all, any instance can pickup some of those and isn't representative of the instance as a whole
However, in the case with .ml, it's documented that it is the admins themselves who are direct participants in many cases in regards to the bans/censorship (Disingenuous) or have direct knowledge that their users are spreading propaganda/misinformation and choose to allow or even be in support of it. When the admins are involved in this manner, it can absolutely be seen as representative of the instance as a whole.
I see that startrek.website defederates from both grad and hex, which would I be safe in assuming was done for similar reasons?
I think I speak for the whole admin team that we actually do hold instance owners responsible for the communities they host, the same way we hold Reddit (the company) responsible for the communities they choose to host. That said, we made the decision that (for now) the best practice for handling large general purpose instances like .world or .ml is to take a scalpel approach until such a time comes that the Threadiverse is more resilient.
While ostensibly a "general purpose" instance, users on Hexbear had a tendency to come to our hosted communities and aggressively push propaganda, unfairly burdening our mods, so it was a much easier decision to de-federate. We actually did announce that one because of their size.
(Also FYI in case you're not aware you are posting form lemmy.world so just to be clear none of these policies apply to your current account!)
EDIT: I also think it might be useful to highlight that we never take actions against other instances, we take actions for our users/communities.
Makes sense, when you guys see more of an outcry from your users specifically and/or .ml starts leaking their crap over you'll take more serious action
I have... different.. views, but since I'm not a STW user, I'll leave things here. Thank you for the responses!