I’m kinda regretting not naming it oneninesix, but here we are. I guess I love letters.

To anyone wondering what’s up, I did this on my phone while out in the “big city”, so I’m still waiting to get home to do anything serious. I have a few suckers really nice people who volunteered for modding along with me. Anyone else who is interested, drop me a line. I’ll be picking mods when I get home in a few hours. Sorry for the wait and I’ll do my best to put out any fires in the meantime. I didn’t think this would take off!

For those wondering, here’s my take on moderating the place.

  1. Moderation is to facilitate an experience for its users in line with the goals of the community and the instance. It’s not to push a personal agenda, give you a bigger hammer in debates, set up a digital fiefdom, etc. You certainly can and should include your mod experience on your dating profile, though. Unilateral decisions are not cool except in a few situations, like if 100% of your userbase is usurped by literal Nazis.

  2. 196 exists to be a place where you post something (often but not always something goofy) when you visit. I know not everyone does and that’s fine - I still love you. These things can’t be offensive or hurtful, though, especially not intentionally so. Unintentional vs intentional I believe is a HUGE distinction and needs to be considered when moderating.

  3. LBJ LBZ exists as an inclusive, (relatively) judgment-free zone for gender-diverse folks. I intend for us to uphold that here. I say relatively judgment free because there will be people looking to start shit and mods and admins are going to have to judge their actions, but only their actions.

If you wanna be my modder, you gotta get with my bullet points…or argue persuasively why I should amend them (but that part doesn’t fit the tune).The three big things I’m looking for otherwise are diverse viewpoints, if you can remain reasonably impartial, and if you can say you’re sorry. The last is huge for me. As a mod, you’re going to mess up. I used to mod on Reddit and I certainly did! I find it’s important for maintaining the community’s respect to be able to admit when you made a bad call and what you’ll do to avoid it in the future.

@ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone, pointers would be welcome as I think you do a great job.

Community feedback is encouraged and welcome, just be aware I’ll be a little slow to respond for a bit.

PS: wow, I really DO love letters!

Edit: Corrected point three, damn autocorrect! Believe it or not, we’re not an inclusive community in LBJ’s corpse.

  • WillStealYourUsername@lemmy.blahaj.zoneMEnglish
    20·
    20 hours ago

    You could always just copy the old 196 rules. They work pretty well.

    I wrote these rules for a venting room on the blåhaj matrix, perhaps they could be of some inspiration here. A venting room on a different medium will have very different needs of course from a community like this.

    Rules

    User rules

    • Assume others have good intentions. Strive to keep this a safe space to vent.
    • Tangents are allowed, but the primary purpose of the room is venting.
    • Don’t respond to vents if the venter does not wish to be interacted with. You can mark a vent with /dni to signify this.
    • Keep mature vents in 18+ rooms if possible. Use https://trggr.link/ if such rooms are unavailable.
    • Censor/spoiler sensitive issues and provide content warnings as appropriate. https://trggr.link/ is an excellent way to censor something. Some clients support surrounding text in || on either side of it to censor it like this: ||spoilered text||. Some clients may have a spoiler command: /spoiler spoilered text.

    Issues you probably should spoiler: Slurs, racism, ableism, bigotry, suicide, self harm, abuse, drug/alcohol abuse, blood and gore.

    Moderator rules

    • Use a gentle hand, don’t reprimand!
    • Assume good intentions.
    • When moderating, use DMs or moderator rooms for anything beyond single-comment moderation and for anything serious.
    • Don’t leave moderated users in the dark regarding issues they are directly involved in.
    • Warn, then kick, then temp-ban, then perma-ban (avoid), in that order, when dealing with non-compliant users and serious infractions. Skip steps if necessary for larger infractions.
    • Users may appeal your decisions and some arguing should be tolerated. Attempt to deescalate when this happens. Harassing you however is never okay.
    • If you feel yourself become angry at or get a bad relationship with a user you are moderating then pass on the issue to another mod if they are available.
    • Take care of yourself. You are moderating voluntarily after all.

    Proper guidelines for moderators is probably key, and then for users a quick summary of the purpose of the community is important, followed by any additions to the instance rules.

    • Gork@lemm.ee
      81·
      12 hours ago

      Ahem. Can I propose a dumb rule in the spirit of the community’s name?

      • All numbers shall be written out in full here.

      One hundred and ninety six.

      Two thousand twenty five.

      The Kessel Run can be run in less than twelve parsecs.

      The universe was made thirteen point six billion years ago and was widely considered a bad move.