Blahaj Lemmy Meta

I think your post is creating pointless drama.

I can never stress in strong enough terms how far outside of “Blahajism” my entire life has been… but even I can grasp that Ada’s house has Ada’s rules. (Whether they be opaque or not). If I don’t agree I have two options: shut the fuck up or leave.

If you struggle / have issues with recent pronouns then, I don’t know, perhaps just refer to people by name? It’s not rocket surgery.

I strongly believe that drama only exists where people want drama to exist. I’m gonna go out on a limb here and speculate that the majority of Blahajists have more than enough (unwanted and unwarranted) drama in their day to day lives just trying to exist. I think these folk deserve a bit of peace and quiet - especially in their own backyard.

Should I ever get banned for bumping my gums too loudly then I’ll just move on (sadly) and file it under “life lessons”.

trolls aren't going to not troll just because there are well defined rules, in fact in can have the opposite effect, trolls using the rules as a weapon in their trolling.

in some of your comments you talk about checks and balances in terms of governance. well lemmy is not a democracy plain and simple, server owners have full control, and this is a feature not a bug. having full control means that you can abuse your power sure, but echo chambers aren't fun without people to troll, and the open nature of the fediverse means people will go wherever they like best. and for what it's worth the vibe here is better than anywhere else on lemmy in my experience.

and as for your last point, this space is not intended for transphobes to better themselves, it is meant as a place for trans people to feel safe. if a troll comes here and betters themselves somehow, great, but that's not the goal of this place. we're here because we're sick of having cis het normative being the standard, and we wanna be ourselves, not conform to the straights and what they want us to be.

I'm not sure I get your logic for how transphobes wouldn't be transphobic if they understood the rules. Anti-lgbt behavior is very clearly listed as an example of not okay behavior within the guidelines. This is a safe space and anyone who needs to read some comprehensive incredibly detailed ruleset to act cordial won't read that ruleset in the first place. The guidelines as is seems to work just fine with only transphobes complaining as far as I can tell.

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.

I do feel sorry for instance administrators that get roped into the moderation decisions of communities. Instances should provide very broad and strict rules meant to keep the system running and out of legal liability. It doesn't need to be so specific about content.

It is communities and their mod teams (who not bound by the instance) to operate within that framework to set and enforce rules for content moderation.

But FWIW at least one of those prominent bans a bit ago were WELL aware of why they were banned. They intentionally went to get banned to spark a debate on the rules and specifically to draw the instance admin into it.

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.