Honestly I find moderation is often too prescriptive and thus leaves openings for bad actors to be disruptive while going “I didn’t explicitly break any named-rule” as they find ways to constantly skirt them deliberately. I am all for moderators going “you’re just disruptive or otherwise bad for this community so I don’t want you around.”
In my experience, moderation rules for unpaid volunteer mods are worthless except as a guideline to users as to what to do or not to do.
The purpose of rule of law in real life is to ensure adherence to it by overlapping systems and oversight. As most moderation groups don’t have overlapping systems or oversight, and sometimes don’t even communicate with each other when taking action, strict ‘rules-based’ moderation pretty invariably turns into “moderator roulette” as each mod interprets the rules differently and prejudicially without any mechanism for being called out on it or corrected. So, you know, no different than ‘rule by leader’ other than the potential of abuse of the proclaimed rules-based system by bad faith actors.
Especially since many moderation teams ‘close ranks’ or blow it off if any of their’s is accused of wrongdoing.
Had a mostly good experience with mods on Lemmy so far, though. I’ve stayed far away from .ml, so that might have something to do with it.
Honestly I find moderation is often too prescriptive and thus leaves openings for bad actors to be disruptive while going “I didn’t explicitly break any named-rule” as they find ways to constantly skirt them deliberately. I am all for moderators going “you’re just disruptive or otherwise bad for this community so I don’t want you around.”
In my experience, moderation rules for unpaid volunteer mods are worthless except as a guideline to users as to what to do or not to do.
The purpose of rule of law in real life is to ensure adherence to it by overlapping systems and oversight. As most moderation groups don’t have overlapping systems or oversight, and sometimes don’t even communicate with each other when taking action, strict ‘rules-based’ moderation pretty invariably turns into “moderator roulette” as each mod interprets the rules differently and prejudicially without any mechanism for being called out on it or corrected. So, you know, no different than ‘rule by leader’ other than the potential of abuse of the proclaimed rules-based system by bad faith actors.
Especially since many moderation teams ‘close ranks’ or blow it off if any of their’s is accused of wrongdoing.
Had a mostly good experience with mods on Lemmy so far, though. I’ve stayed far away from .ml, so that might have something to do with it.