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.
I think the idea you're working off of, that people are capable of accepting ambiguity, is flawed. Some people, sure. But a lot of people will never accept ambiguous guidelines, because the human brain isn't designed to see things that way. The autistic human brain often especially not. These people will always want certainty, and they'll psychoanalyse you to get it.
I've tried to psychoanalyse you too, because I'm the kind of autistic that craves structure. Haven't started arguments over it, but I have seen some weird decisions I didn't understand and struggled to get my head around them. Because if your mind is unpredictable to me, then the way Blahaj is moderated is unpredictable too. And people like me want to feel like we understand the rules, even if it's an illusion of safety. An illusion of safety can be very important to a person's wellbeing.
An environment where the rules are unclear and I don't feel like I understand them, well that reminds me of elementary school, personally. Personally, due to my own trauma, I don't feel like I'm capable of accepting that kind of environment without falling into despair. When I was a kid who didn't understand the rules, I acted out. I didn't see the point in trying to follow rules I didn't understand, so I didn't bother trying not to misbehave. I've matured quite a bit since then, but to be completely honest, using Blahaj makes me feel like that confused little kid again, on an emotional level.
A lot of people say growing up is hard, but for me, every year I got older made things easier. The rules became clearer. When I entered university and the workplace I got shown codes of conduct and ethics guidelines. Loved it. Way better than the chaos of childhood. It feels safe. You're saying clear rules aren't actually safe, and I agree, but I still like being able to lie to myself and say I'm safe. I breathe easier. I relax.
As I said, the ambiguity exists whether its convenient or not. Rules just create a facade that makes people think there isn't ambiguity. But the ambiguity is still there, because the rules aren't the final source of truth. The decision about what is and isn't acceptable will never be determined by what rule was codified, it will be determined by the reason behind codifying that rule. The ambiguity is always there. Rules don't' change that.
There will never be explicit rules here, because they add workload and stress, without addressing the ambiguity that you struggle with
As you can also see from the replies here, a lot of people don't share your viewpoint, so it's not a clear cut case of rules being universally better for the community. I have to take the communities needs and my own needs in to account, and there is no clear consensus or support for concrete rules from the community.
What I can do is offer the chance to address that ambiguity through other avenues. If you can tell me the things that you've seen that seem ambiguous or unpredictable to you, I can explain my thinking and reasoning, and reduce some of the ambiguity. I can't promise we'll see eye to eye, but hopefully you'll have a bit of a better understanding of how things work going forward.
Well it's mostly about the empathy guideline.
Another user in this thread was pointing more empathy my way than I was comfortable with. She didn't know much about me, so she was mistaking my intentions, and that made me feel uncomfortable. I wish she hadn't tried to use so much cognitive empathy on me, she didn't have enough context to use it right. The guidelines say you should have a lot of empathy for other people, but I disagree. Sometimes we just shouldn't guess at other people's motivations, because we're going to misunderstand them. We should control our empathy.
Like when you banned Dragon Rider. I read what both of you had to say about the leaked messages, and drag was saying drag's intention wasn't what you thought it was and apologizing. It seemed like you jumped to conclusions because you used too much empathy. Yeah, we're a social species who evolved a limited ability to read minds, but we shouldn't use it all the time. Especially not for important stuff. Sometimes we should just ask other people what they're thinking instead.
When I first started using Lemmy, I wouldn't have thought about empathy that way, but I had to adjust my mental model of empathy to be more like how Blahaj uses it, after seeing that whole situation, so I could understand what happened. And if empathy means guessing at other people's motivations without asking them, I think empathy should require a bit more caution and consent. Reading minds isn't always nice.
As for PugJesus, that guy uses far too little empathy. He never bothers to think about why other people are doing what they do. But I think there's got to be a happy medium in between treating others like black boxes, and assuming you know everything about them. I don't think more empathy is always good.
What you're describing here isn't empathy in the context of the community guidelines. Broadly, what the guideline means is "think about the impact your words will have on others, and try to minimise the harm they cause".
And more broadly, it means that if someones words are clearly designed to hurt or upset others, they can be acted on.
Which is to say, it's not so much about trying to guess what other people are thinking or feeling. That is still part of bigger picture of what makes up empathy, and it helps with assessing whether your own actions are hurting folk, but it's not at the core of what the guideline is addressing.
Drag took a message I had sent to drag, and shared it in public, without my permission and without notification that drag was going to do so. Drag was also the target of an almost endless amount of hate and abuse over drags pronouns, and for a long time, drag was not banned because I did not want to empower the bigots who were behind those attacks, despite many of drags actions warranting a ban. The sharing of private messages without permission was a "final strike"
Without empathy, drag would have been banned much much earlier. Empathy for the harassment drag was receiving was the reason it took so long for the ban to arrive.
As long as you are not trying to hurt others with your words you'll be ok
Your motives are clearer now, and have little to do with the clarity of codified rules. Codification of the rules wouldn't have changed the outcome of those events.