One of the most important things to get right is how we want to moderate this space to encourage the maximum amount of user engagement, and minimise the amount of threatening, hounding, insults and ad-hom attacks that became so much a part of the previous boards.
Basic thoughts:
No insulting posts
No ad-hom attacks
No hounding other posters
If you don’t feel like a topic is important then don’t engage with it
Don’t impugn motives or call other posters trolls. There is a flagging system here that can bring posts to the attention of the moderators.
I think that there should be a small team of moderators that can grow over time as the need arises.
I also think that all moderator decisions should be made publically - no Pinochet (or should I now say Portland style) disappearing people without explanation, warning or justification.
Moderator decisions should be able to point back directly to a broken rule
Rules should be prominently displayed or pinned and easily referable.
There is an in-built “trust-system” on this platform, where users who are active and have been around for a while get more power and capability in the system to flag or possibly even moderate posts. They don’t trump the moderators though, and a person can lose “trust” if they have been themselves been warned or silenced by the moderators for bad behaviour. This feels a little weird to start with, but apparently has been working well in other forums (fora?). You can read about it at this link.
Any other thoughts about moderating? Please post thoughts to this thread - looking forward to any and all responses!
A good start! While we need to set rules for behaviour and moderation, we first need stuff to moderate - so we’ll see how it goes, and who we can encourage to join.
By way of comment on what I see as the desirable direction of this life-raft, Caitlin Johnstone put it very nicely talking about the Belarus “colour revolution”. (though that is a relevant topic for discussion later)
If a government which exited the imperial blob didn’t have any particularly damning humanitarian abuses on its record, Western intelligence agencies would make something up, and Western media would uncritically report it as an absolute fact.
Mainstream pundits and reporters would make these shifts without skipping a beat. They’d pretend it had been their position the entire time. And when they went to bed at night, they’d sleep like babies.
I imagine Caitlin - under Stage 4 lockdown and nightime curfew in Melbourne, was also thinking of the behaviour of both reporters and public in just falling over and accepting the most monstrous restrictions and changes to their lives. They could no more get out in protests waving flowers and kissing soldiers than fly to the moon at the moment, unlike the repressed citizens of Belarus!
Just catching up on the same material, David. Indeed it’s difficult to see Brits getting out on the streets the way the Belarussians have - with Western regime changers’ help. Maybe we need them to help is wake up in Britain too.
thanks for having me here. I will need a bit of time to have a feel about and get used to the board and its functions. I am looking forward to seeing how this place develops and hopefully being inspired to post more regularly than I did elsewhere.
