/m/politics is basically unmoderated, and the trolls and other ne’er-do-wells are starting to find it. I’m not even particularly interested in following it, but that’s one topic that you don’t want to leave unmoderated. It’s a troll magnet for obvious reasons, and that starts to affect the rest of the instance (and the fediverse) if there isn’t anyone enforcing some sort of decorum.
@ernest I know you’re ridiculously busy right now, but could you find a moment to appoint someone to recruit a mod team for /m/politics? I’d be willing to do the recruiting if you don’t have any better candidates, but I wouldn’t want to remain on as a moderator after that’s done.
Alternatively does anyone here actively want the job?
https://kbin.social/m/kbinMeta/t/35027/Spam-and-porn-are-flooding-kbin-already#entry-comment-148017
Definitely, in the upcoming days, apart from staying in close contact with the maintainers, I would like a;so to build a moderation team. That is a priority. However, I first need to urgently address and take care of a few matters.
Today, I will review the moderation log. Until then, please block content at the profile level. The moderation issue has become very urgent. Unless you have specific candidates for moderators now, I am open to suggestions.
For /m/politics, I don’t have candidates in mind yet. If I’m assigned this task, my plan is roughly:
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Create a basic set of rules. Should establish the obvious things (civil behavior, no bigotry, etc), as well as what the Overton window of the magazine should be. I’m thinking from non-tankie leftists to non-MAGA conservatives, so tankies and fascists would be excluded. Should also exclude miscellaneous conspiracy theorists and the like, regardless of where they fall on the political spectrum. In practice that window might be too wide to keep civil, so the future mod team may want to narrow it, but I think it’d be good to at least start out that way.
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Pin a post asking for moderator applications. Applicants should state what their political position is, and point to any relevant post/comment history on political topics, so that I can get a feel for them. The goal is to have a diverse range of moderators within the Overton window that I mentioned above. Previous experience as a moderator is also relevant, of course.
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Write some initial (suggested) moderation policies to outline how moderation should happen. These are likely to be changed by the moderation team once it’s in place, but will serve as a sort of social contract between the mods, including a process for how changes should be made. I think this is important, given the ideological diversity I want to aim for.
Once those are done and the team is recruited, I would step down. It might be preferable to have someone that intends to stay on the mod team and has experience moderating political forums take on this task, but I also didn’t want to be just pointing out a problem without offering to help fix it. Whoever does end up doing it can feel free to take whatever they like from these ideas and run with them, of course.
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Honestly if I was an admin I’d ban politics from my instance completely lol. Have the magazine already blocked as I knew how it would turn out ¯_(ツ)_/¯
…Annnd they made /m/politics a USA thing only.
It’s fine, leave this bone to the attention seekers and get your news from another magazine.
Wouldn’t mind volunteering for this.
Note: I’m an anarchist, and won’t tolerate most forms of bigotry.
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JFC does anyone have a sense of humor anymore
Honestly taking a glance at it it’s doing shockingly well for being effectively unmoderated (if the number beside moderation log means what I think it does, there have been no moderator actions, though maybe “admin actions” don’t show up there or something).
I doubt that will last though.
I wish I was moderator material. I’d like to help if I believed I could do it while keeping my sanity intact.
I’ll probably immediately throw a fit and fuck things up if I’m ever in that position though. I have absolutely no notion of patience.
There’s a part of me that wishes I could help. I like the idea of helping the sub and site succeed. But I know all to well what kinda bullshit the mods deal with.
They’ll spend lots of time having to read troll posts, death threats, porn, CSAM, and just general assholes arguing back and forth. When they ban someone righteously, there’s a good chance they’ll argue back. They’ll have to carefully read some comments to try and get a feel of if they’re written by an AI. They’ll have to look through profiles and other comments to figure out if something is a bot copying comments.
People will constantly be complaining about mods not doing enough. Or maybe doing too much. Some users will get upset if they get acted on for something that wasn’t technically against the rules (or unclear if it was), while others will be upset if mods don’t respond to obviously awful stuff just because it wasn’t technically against the rules.
And they have to do it with barely any tools. Reddit mods complained tons about their lack of tooling, but the very young Lemmy and kbin have even less tooling.
You have to be a very caring and patient person to be a mod, and it’ll still probably drive you crazy. Or alternatively you can just be someone who likes a position of power and enjoys the feel of lording over others enough to deal with the downsides (or maybe even enjoy the feeling of people hating you). But that’s not in the best interest of the community.
And not to forgot, all that you wrote, is worse for a “hot” community like m/politics. I’ve done modding work before and I’m not touching that one with a 20 foot pole.
I’m curious though, all federated Magazines also say @ernest is the only moderator. I’m not sure, but it might just default to him if there’s no other moderator. (Though I would hope that /m/politics would have more support)
I think the mags were created as placeholders so people coming from Reddit will at least see some mags that look farmilar.
The feeling I get is that as mags get busy and as people start stepping on each other’s toes, mods will be in high demand.
That bring said, @ernest has asked for mods and has mentioned building a moderation team.
Shout out for all the work you done so far @ernest!
The moderation in fediverse operates with remote mags, and these mags belong to their owners - you can verify this in the modlog; It is an error in displaying the information, and it will be fixed soon. As for moderation team - yes, I am working on it, and I think I am on the right track :)
So? The beauty of the fediverse is if you don’t like the content, unsub and sub to more of the ones you do like
The culture of a community matters, and well kept gardens die by pacifism.
@cacheson Haha, quite courageous to link to Yudkowsky and LW without content warning and link here 😄
Is there some background that I should be aware of? I don’t follow the guy, I just think it’s a really solid essay
I’ve never been a mod before but wouldn’t mind giving it a shot on mag. I am positive politics is not the one to start on tho
Oh gods, are you sure you want to do this then? It’s going to be one of the most intense mod roles you’ll ever do. It’ll really be a trial by fire, sink or swim thing.
I’m in the same boat, but I wonder if you can mod on a casual basis, because I’m just not spend 3 hours a day modding material, maybe a half hour here or there tops 😋
That’s my thinking as well. A place with a couple other mods.
