politics
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When it comes to moderation, I'm of the opinion that it should never be a "read between the lines" interpretation. If we're going to take action as severe as a ban, it should not be open to interpretation.
For example, I remember a comment that was reported and removed for referencing the whole disingenuous question "when did you stop beating your wife?"
Reported and removed for call to violence, and I had to explain to the other mod that "no, no, they're making a point about asking disingenous questions..."
Post was restored.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_question
That was my comment. I'm both a little embarrassed that got referenced after so long, but was also impressed in the moment that someone took the time to actually understand the context in which it was made.
So, I'm torn on the issue of what the appropriate course of action would be in the instance of UniversalMonk, and when it should have been taken. I see the validity in your argument in regards to not moderating in the gray area due to the abuse & power-brokering that comes along with it.
At the same time, in order to create a healthy community long-term I think there needs to be some way to enforce a more black & white standard that dissuades people from engaging in this kind of behavior because it drives away legitimate users who care about the platform.
I don't necessarily have a good solution for that, and again I do appreciate the complexity of the situation from a moderation standpoint.
The problem with this is that it allows people to ride the line of what is acceptable and get away with things that effectively poison the platform with toxicity.
It's very similar to what Trump did, and now look at the state of the entire US politics system now.
By allowing people to toe the line by not technically breaking the rules, it still adds to the overall toxicity of Lemmy.
Yes, but when there's literally thousands of posts and comments to build the "between the lines" data within a 30-day time frame what excuse is there?
When somebody is trolling so hard that it's causing strife within your community it should be addressed. Identify the behavior that isn't desired and enforce existing rules around it or create a new one and warn the person that they need to operate in good faith within the rules or they will be ousted as an antagonistic troll.
In cases like that the default position is to allow the downvotes and individual user blocks to do the job.
Which makes your community toxic and your job harder.
How many reports did you get and have to filter through and ultimately ignore? If that's not an indicator from your community that something needs to change you're not listening to our needs.
My default is to be more lenient because I saw how badly heavy handed moderation can go from 15 years on reddit. ;)
Too many times what's "toxic" or not was decided by... well...
https://youtu.be/hYTQ7__NNDI#t=12s
The problem with individual user blocks is that if someone submits enough of the links in a community, blocking them means blocking most stories and discussions so you can't really read or participate in the community without leaving them unblocked.