I've seen a lot of instances of people on Lemmy saying you can get banned from Blahaj for forgetting someone's pronouns. And then Ada has to come in and explain why they're wrong in their interpretation of the rules. These people were banned for good reasons, they're transphobes. But I think they misunderstand the rules of Blahaj for a legitimate reason.
It's because Blahaj doesn't have rules. It has two guidelines. Very subjective ones. People want to know what will get them banned, so they try to understand the rules of that subjectivity. The rules for what Ada considers to be empathy and inclusion. The rules of Ada's psychology. Because like it or not, with highly subjective guidelines, Ada's interpretation and understanding of that subjectivity is the rules.
And Ada didn't write the rules of her psychology in the sidebar. So people have to speculate. And people are speculating wrong, and starting arguments about it.
I think a ruleset should be a transparent explanation of how a mod team thinks about acceptable behaviour. By not having rules, Blahaj is being opaque about how the mod team thinks. And the only way for people to deal with that is to practice amateur psychoanalysis. Which is unpleasant and creates division.
If people understood how trans people think about acceptable behaviour, they wouldn't be transphobes. So the result of this system is that everyone who is banned for transphobia doesn't understand why and needs it personally explained to them. If the sidebar explained acceptable behaviour in a way everyone can understand, they wouldn't misunderstand it so often.
I think the current system is creating pointless drama.
That's exactly when you most need to control corruption. You're talking about the legislative and executive branches of governance. Most states separate those TO control corruption. I don't think it's practical to control corruption that way on an internet forum, but that's why the other controls need to be stronger to pick up the slack.
People like PugJesus think they're controlling corruption. PugJesus is a transphobe, the specific decisions he thinks are abuse aren't. But people like him don't have the ability to read Ada's mind, so she's got to explain it to every single one of them or they'll all start rumours about what the secret rules of Blahaj are. And Blahaj certainly does have secret rules. They're the rules of how Ada thinks. And everyone is interested in knowing them, since she won't explain them.
This isn't a state. There is no corruption. There is no need to prevent corruption on a private forum. If it happens, we leave and tell Ada she's an asshole on the way out.
Shame and shunning are the only actual tools for social change. You can't "teach" this PugJesus out of his bigotry. Shun him and move on with your life. Either he takes the hint or he dies alone. Either way, you did your part. The rest is up to everyone else to follow you. Lying to yourself that you or anyone can do more is just self harm
There it is. I'm pretty convinced this is either someone from one of his discord channels or actually him under another alt.
The DGGers have been flailing recently.
You shouldn't doxx people, it's not nice.
How states are run with rampant corruption, subjugation, and bigotry in spite of meticulously crafted systems and rules seems to me an argument against, not for, attempting to replicate such systems on an instance that is intended to be a space for trans people and allies.
My point is that rules do nothing to "control corruption" as you put it.
In an instance like this where there's only one active admin, the rules are fundamentally just a courtesy to the users. The owner can just do whatever they want.
It doesn't ultimately matter what their rules are. Anti corruption laws exist IRL so they can be enforced by the government on its own members, but when the "government" is one person what are they gonna do, say "welp I made a rule against corruption, guess I gotta stop being corrupt." The very concept of controls is silly.
Ada owns this space, so she decides how to run it. I like that because it means there's no room for arguments over what's technically within the rules or not. Are you transphobic/potentially harmful to the safe space? You're out.
Writing down a million rules to explain Ada's internal logic for banning people would be ridiculously infeasible because it's such a personal thing. But for people who like the way that Ada runs things, it's a nice space. Anyways, I don't particularly want "polite transphobes" here who are capable of following the rules if written out but would be horribly transphobic otherwise.
EDIT: what even is "corruption" in this context? I feel like your government analogy doesn't apply very well to this situation