Moderation philosophy posts started out as an exercise by myself to put down some of my thoughts on running communities that I'd learned over the years. As they continued I started to more heavily involve the other admins in the writing and brainstorming. This most recent post involved a lot of moderator voices as well, which is super exciting! This is a community, and we want the voices at all levels to represent the community and how it's run.

This is probably the first of several posts on moderation philosophy, how we make decisions, and an exercise to bring additional transparency to how we operate.

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[–] Gaywallet 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (17 children)

You're more than welcome to share your opinion. The issue I've found is that what's considered harmful by different people varies quite a bit. Safe spaces online seem to run into a frequent problem of brooding persecution complexes which leads to having to self censor around specific individuals. This can lead to a very specific kind of bullying and in rare cases a hijacking of these spaces. More importantly for our purposes, it's the assumption of bad faith that's not compatible with what we're trying to accomplish here- these spaces often become echo chambers for the most marginalized identities because no one is perfectly educated and omnipotent and any discomfort is viewed as problematic discussion and removed even in cases when it is tolerant (simply due to the perceived discomfort from having ones views challenged). They're also fundamentally incompatible with intersectionality in a variety of ways, but perhaps most notably a person of privilege may be chastised for not recognizing their privilege or being educated and the person of privilege can use the idea of a safe space to censor a more marginalized individual on the grounds that it made them upset.

[+] LinkOpensChest_wav 8 points 1 year ago (12 children)

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[–] VoxAdActa 23 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

I disagree. I've seen the exact pattern of behavior Gaywallet is talking about, over and over again, in communities that vary from from YA writing advice to antique appraisal. Too often, we start subjecting each other and our allies to ideological purity tests that only get more stringent every time the current crop of "bad actors" or "disruptive influences" has been eliminated. And in a really disturbing number of the cases I've personally seen, the community member responsible (either officially or de facto) for creating these purity tests (and judging the results) isn't a member of any of the marginalized groups they're policing. In the rest of the cases when they were a member of a marginalized group, these folks have had a bad habit of seeing oppression as a ranked competitive event in which whatever group they belong to is the "most" oppressed, and therefore more important than the others.

For a real example, they might excuse themselves for referring handicapped people with a slur, but are very strict about moderating other peoples' uses of everyday words/phrases that track back to a Native American concepts, even unintentionally. In (another, real) example of this, someone in a gardening forum I used to frequent got suspended for talking about wanting to set up a circular divided plot and calling it a "wheel garden", because it's shaped like a wheel, without knowing that the concept of a "medicine wheel" exists. For another real example in a different forum, and I swear to fucking God that I'm not making this up, a non-indiginous moderator who constantly talked about her "spirit guides" ended up removing/muting the posts from someone in a theater subforum who asked "What do you see as the spine of this play?" because the question was allegedly ableist against paralyzed people.

The practical result of all of this is everyone either walks on eggshells around that person and their direct reports, or gets run out. We'd constantly have to be trying to anticipate what new, unwritten rule of communication was coming next, because the warnings for violating it would only come in a very narrow window before the ban hammer started being applied. We end up with a place where we can't even criticize the worst bits of our own marginalized communities (like, in my case, complaining about bi and ace erasure in the wider LGBTQ+ space, or the dubiously minimal gains we've made in intersectionality) without being censured, muted, suspended, or banned for being bigoted. That's the definition of an echo chamber, and the constant sniffing around for more and more granularly defined "bad actors" generally meets the layperson's definition of a persecution complex (note: I am not licensed to practice psychiatry or make medical diagnoses in your state/territory).

Just talking about the fact that this problem exists, and how it begins, is not bigotry. It's a problem. And it needs to be addressed, preferably before people start talking about (real examples) how much a POS a white musical artist is for culturally appropriating dreadlocks or how racist it is for anyone other than Romani to read tarot cards. The kinds of spaces Gaywallet is talking about don't just pop up fully formed overnight, they start out where Beehaw is now and slowly evolve that way over time. Talking frankly about how that's not what we want to be and about how we plan to prevent that is not problematic, it's necessary.

"There is no cause so right that you cannot find a fool who follows it." --Larry Niven.

[–] agoramachina 5 points 1 year ago

Unfortunately, I've experienced such things as well. As someone who places high value on acceptance and accountability, and is a member of several marginalized communities myself, there have been instances where "safe spaces", unfortunately, aren't.

It took me a while to realize what exactly was so upsetting about those spaces. Sure, toxic individuals could be identified, but the practice itself? It wasn't until a particular instance where I was censured for describing my own experiences and identities in my own terms that it really hit me: the harsh language policing was a part of the trauma I experienced in the fundamentalist church (an experience I have diagnosed PTSD from, btw. You ever get an authority to rally an entire group into screaming at you because the word "lucky" implies that things could happen outside of god's divine will? Yeah.)

Don't get me wrong, language can absolutely be used as a weapon, and such things ought not be allowed. And even if one is speaking from a place of acceptance, it is still important to consider one's words and the effect they may have on others.

I think others have brought up a very good point: the importance of acting in good faith. I've certainly shifted my language over the years when it has been brought to my attention that certain words and phrases cause harm (the term "wheelchair-bound", for insurance). But at every point I was acting in good faith and open to dialogue and correction.