Blahaj Lemmy Meta

I've been building and nurturing communities online and offline for decades now. So when Kaity and I were creating the guidelines for this instance, I knew upfront that there would be guidelines, not rules. And that reason for that is because the rules aren't the source of truth on what's acceptable and what isn't. Rules are attempt to codify and communicate what is acceptable, but they get treated as if they are what is acceptable.

If I had a situation where someone needed to be removed from the community, but they technically weren't breaking the rules, then the rules are the problem. They don't get to stay just because the rules didn't capture that specific scenario. But changing rules brings about confusion and contention, because people think it means what is acceptable has changed, when in reality, they just had a mistaken understanding of what is acceptable, because the rules were centered as the source of truth.

It also creates a lot more work on moderators and volunteers, because they have to turn in to mini lawyers, and their actions become shaped by the rules, again, giving the rules first place in what is ok and what isn't, when they should never be that, because they never can be that. Rules are always imperfect.

And so, guidelines. Guidelines get to the heart of it, because they don't attempt to define every scenario that is and isn't acceptable. Instead, what they do is let people know the lens through which decisions about moderation are made. I acknowledge that that means some level of ambiguity. However, there is ambiguity with rules too, we just pretend/forget that there isn't. But with guidelines, it's easy to address the ambiguous scenarios and uncommon cases, because the guidelines for dealing with them are simple.

I think the mods are doing just fine, and keeping it free and loose instead of bogged down with concrete legalese-esque rules makes for a good vibe. It seems like "don't be a dick" is pretty much the stance and I'm all for it.

Late reply, these people are just complaining they were banned for being assholes and that this space doesn't let thinly veiled bigotry and gatekeeping slide like many places do. I don't think we need clearly defined rules for people to try and look for loopholes, there aren't any loopholes to not being an asshole and not being a bigot, you can either be a bigot or not be one. Introducing a list of rules just makes it easier for people to look for loopholes and claim that they were banned unfairly. Better to not give them any benefit.

Transphobes getting mad and sealioning about "rules" is not pointless drama because it accomplishes the goal of keeping those people out.

Literal rules can be designed or twisted to undermine the fundamental goals of those rules. It creates lawyers focused on rhetoric over morals; lawyers trying to find a way to get away with the very things the rules were supposed to prevent. Words have no meaning so long as they can be abused to accomplish what they want. This is how fascism is so easily able to overtake liberal democratic systems and how powerful interests rig the state in their favor.

Anyhow, most of the drama comes from people like you who care more about semantics than having queer people feel safe and secure. If you want to help banned transphobes overcome their bigotry, find a way where you can do that off blahaj. That's how you can actually achieve your goals without relying on Ada to do it. When many of them inevitably refuse to change, then you can feel secure in knowing that most of this "drama" is bad faith bigotry. Complaining here is a waste of effort for accomplishing what you supposedly want.

I disagree completely

Principles are always better than rules.

Rules are inflexible, and lead people into thinking that there's ways around them, that you can game the system because the rules aren't written that way. It also leads to thinking that if it isn't a rule, you can do it.

Guiding principles are flexible, more enduring. But they take more work on the part of the people handling situations as they arise.

A set of principles, with examples, tends to work much better long term.

Otherwise, you just keep stacking rules. You stack rules high enough, nobody can remember them all, and they topple.

Besides, ain't nothing about lemmy fully democratic. At some point, someone is handling the hardware and keeping the connection alive. Whoever that happens to be is the one that has to carry the weight of decisions, even if there's an illusion of collaboration. Maybe if society as a whole gets rebuilt, it could be fully community run, but I tend to believe humans suck at that once the group gets over about a dozen people, so I'm dubious something as big as an instance is ever gong to actually function without an organizer (be that a smaller group or an individual).

But, here, now, on this instance, it's working very well. It weeded out folks that didn't agree with the principles as explained. It made a clear line to anyone not on the instance, and it is definitely known that those principles are not to be fucked with

That seems like a highly successful forum to me.

Who cares about external criticism at all? Even internal criticism is of dubious value when the goal is a protected community. Hell internal and external validation is of dubious value. What matters is that things work. And they do. Very, very well.

The whole idea that someone banned for transphobic activity needs a personal explanation is, frankly, malarkey. Blahaj ain't about the folks that aren't on board with the goals. That's the only explanation needed: you done fucked up, bye.

You know the idea of "It isn't my job to educate you"? It's part of every marginalized group's evolution. At some point, it isn't the black person's job to educate white people about their lived experience. It isn't the gay man's job to explain to the straights what gay culture is, and why they have a right to exist.

It isn't the admins' job to educate any of us. Their job is keeping things running, and keeping the space one that folks can just be in.

Rules. Rules. They're fine for some things. I don't think they're useful here.

Which, please note that my statement of external validation being of dubious value applies to this entire comment.

But, for me, I see what they're doing here, and it's beautiful.

The problem with defining the rules rigidly, is that it ties the mods hands when a bad actor starts doing stuff that while technically is within the rules, is still bad faith.

Its not that hard to fit within the guidelines.

Uh dude you're supposed to code your speech for diatribes like this

Other users have already opined my thoughts on the subject, so Ill just simply say Ada is doing a great job and should not change it.

However, this post and the comments by OP are weird. I spend WAY too much time on lemmy, and Ive seen every single post on blahaj in the past 6months (excluding ones i probably missed because they got deleted) and read a good amount of the comments, along with reading a lot of posts from federated instances. And yet I dont see the problem that OP is describing. And it makes me wonder what OP would gain from this, why would they so vehemently go out of their way for this, create a potentially (or at least, in a different community I have blocked) false narrative for this?

The things that jump out to me first are they either want rules so they can skirt them and say "but i didnt technically break any rules!" Or it is because theyve been banned and salty about why. If either case is the true motive, maybe just dont interact with blahaj? I dont speak for everyone, but I dont care about someone who can technically not break any rules but still be a purposeful nuisance, or some transphobe who pretends to be nice. I used to tell people online I was a cis woman, but I found that to be a mistake. It had people treat me properly, but I ended up being around people who were treating me fine, but were transphobes I only found out later. I do not want to be around these people.