Modlog: https://feddit.org/modlog/242334
Tl,dr: got a 3 day banned for pointing new joiners to !buyeuropean@feddit.uk , a more active version of !buyfromeu@feddit.org
Context
!buyeuropean@feddit.uk was established to promote European products and services. It got popular recently due to the US decision of potentially dropping support to Ukraine. It had a diverse team of moderators, and was getting some activity.
A feddit.org user (potentially unaware of the existence of the first community) decided to create !buyfromeu@feddit.org
They deleted their Lemmy account after, but promoted a new moderator before leaving.
This moderator created a post to vote about keeping the feddit.org community, or consolidating with the feddit.uk one: https://feddit.org/post/8679890
That vote itself is kind of debatable, as the only option to vote for the consolidation was to downvote, which is not enabled on instances like Blahaj or Reddthat. Also people tend to upvote more than downvote, so the votes expressed may not reflect the actual opinion of the community, but anyway.
Usually, I don’t really care that much about consolidation, there has been a lot of parallel communities for a while, like
- !android@lemmy.world and !android@lemdro.id
- !movies@lemm.ee and !movies@lemmy.world
- !privacy@lemmy.ml, !privacyguides@lemmy.one, !privacy@lemmy.world, !privacy@programming.dev, !privacy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
It’s not that big of a deal usually, but this case is a big different due to the BuyFromEU movement.
BuyfromEU movement and Lemmy new joiners
https://old.reddit.com/r/BuyFromEU/ is getting quite large recently, even getting some press coverage. There are a few posts promoting Lemmy over there, with more or less success.
What happens then is that people join Lemmy, just look for “buyfromeu” and find the feddit.org community, while the feddit.uk is actually much more active. Some stats:
- 1.04K users / day
- 2.34K users / week
- 3.02K users / month
- 3.02K users / 6 months
- 1.9K subscribers
- 125 Posts
- 1.34K Comments
- 3.79K users / day
- 8.11K users / week
- 8.86K users / month
- 8.92K users / 6 months
- 2.7K subscribers
- 354 Posts
- 5.58K Comments
The main issue with this is that as the usually is kind of active, they think that the feddit.org community is the main community on the topic, while the feddit.uk is much more active. So I started to check for new joiners account, and if they hadn’t posted or commented on the feddit.uk community, I would point them to it, with comments like
Welcome here!
A few pointers for you:
The sidebar also lists a few complementary communities to this one, such as !buyeuropean@feddit.uk or !europe@feddit.org
Apparently this seems enough to give a temporary ban. The mod team is also quite expressive about the “consolidation cannot be discussed stance” https://feddit.org/post/8905532
Just to add some more context, those are the type of comments I give to every new joiners. Some recent examples
- https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/17196236
- https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/17196078
- https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/17196020
Now, a last section about why I’m personally in favor of consolidating.
Federation and decentralization is about spreading power and responsibilities, not splitting a small user base between different places
Some people argue that consolidating communities goes against the spirit of federation and decentralization. However, for people posting content, there is a consensus that our small user base can only sustain so many communities. Splintering the discussion between places is detrimental to the whole platform. Example of recent consolidations:
In the buyfromEU / buyEuropean case, we see people asking recommendations on the same topics on the two communities, while they might have seen a post from the other one is there was only one: https://feddit.org/post/8925080/5204057
Note that there are cases when new communities need to emerge due to power tripping mods. But here, the feddit.uk mods and admins have been good, no such issue to be reported.
Also, quite a few communities are “the main ones”, without any parallel community
Choice overload and decision fatigue are a thing
Too many options hurts users’ decision-making ability. How they feel about the experience as a whole can be significantly impacted as a result.
https://lawsofux.com/choice-overload/
Isn’t one for European Union and the other for the whole Europe?
The text what to expect says, that we are focusing on the EU, but if other befriended countries slip through we are not enforcing rules. We called it a soft limit, so pepole tend to limit themselves, rather than mods jumping each post.
https://feddit.org/comment/5211878
Due to the inherited name, buyFromEU we would like to soft limit the discussion to the European Union countries. We are tempted to read this as EU + friendly countries as long as this is within reason.
https://feddit.org/post/8545702
Wouldn’t consolidating lose people?
An example of successful consolidation/migration: https://lemmy.world/c/football
Shouldn’t people see the other community from the sidebar?
Sidebars aren’t usually visible on a lot of apps, on Voyager for instance people have to actively look for it:
https://vger.app/search/lemm.ee/c/buyfromeu@feddit.org
Why is this case different from other parallel communities?
Due to the growth of the /r/BuyFromEU sub (now at 148000 subscribers), some posts promoting Lemmy are appearing every few days: https://old.reddit.com/r/BuyFromEU/comments/1j7vkrg/the_european_hosted_reddit_alternative_lemmee_is/
As you can see, the main comment is about community split across instances. The commenter was incorrect about the working of federation, but us being unable to provide one community for the discussions to happen isn’t putting Lemmy in a good light as a viable Reddit alternative.
Hi, the critizied, accused and power-tripping mod here.
Not adding something to the debatable merging discussion, which sure can be a talked about and is even talked bout at other places, and now here again.
The perspective missing is, that a team of mods, even of other communities talked about the course of action. Reason is, that I’m quite new to moderation, and I did not want to overreact. People native to the instance decided to stick with the community, and the debatable vote added weight to that sentiment. One guy brought the topic up over and over again and tried to position an alternative community instead of adding content to both communities.
Other mods recommended to ban him for a week or for good. I decided to engage in communication and asked to postpone discussing that issue in that particular community. Also I asked to stop gurilla advertising another commiunithy while that community was in a built up phase.
After futile mitigation attempts a 3 days ban, coordinated with about 3+2, mods was applied.
This is my whole power trip, and I’m so addicted to it, that I onboarded more mods and employed a voting system, so that banning only happens, when no other way of settling an issue can be achieve.
Edit: The full ban reason was. “Recurring egress linking without providing content for siphoning users. Promotion of community dissolvement.” The textfield was a little small.
I mentioned “the mod team” in the post, I never assumed it was only your personal decision.
Power tripping can happen with a group of mods, it’s actually quite often the case.
See. What I don’t get. If you’re against a community, just don’t participate. You wouldn’t walk in somebodies living room and start a conversation on how much you like the other dudes place.
Just go to that other dudes place and enjoy the better company.
That way all people can do things they enjoy.
If you read the other comments here you could get other people’s perspectives.
Using your analogy, we should never talk about Lemmy on Reddit, just wait for people to magically hear about us.
If your logic applies, we should never have left reddit .
Dumb ass interpretation
No. My stance is not “we should all go to the bigger place all over the Internet”, it is that “we only have so many Lemmy users, let’s avoid discussion fragmentation for the same topic unless necessary (e.g. power tripping admins)”
On top of that, I’m generally supportive of more specific communities: https://lemmy.world/post/26609608
But this one has a different focus, so that makes sense.
!buyeuropean@feddit.uk and !buyfromeu@feddit.org are identical
You keep on mixing up two things. One the reason you got banned and calling me/us power tripping.
Second point the discussion about a merger. I take it that merging is so dear to your heart, that you fight for it. That is fine, and well. What you don’t get is, that other perspectives have validy, too. You keep on ignoring that and bringin the discussion to each and every community. Sometimes even in an hostile and toxic manner (lemme.ee) .
In other words: you seem to be quite fixated an numbers and have a rough, even hostile commnication style, even victimizing yourself, without telling the whole story and inflaming drama. Why would I want to merge in such a community?
Also: how come, you can not accept the deciscion of others? Isn’t that trippy itself?
Well, yeah. You banned them for the crime of helping new users find alternatives in case they were unaware they existed. Being unaware of alternatives is one of the key UX problems with the fediverse, so informing people about them is critical. Banning people for doing that, especially in the incredibly respectful and apparently targeted way OP was doing it, is pretty awful. The team agreeing on it doesn’t change this, it just means the whole mod team is PTB.
No, you victimised them. You banned them for a shitty reason. That makes them the victim. You, ironically, are trying to play victim in this very thread, because they’re calling you out on your poor behaviour. You’ve barely even tried to justify yourself, except by saying that the whole mod team agreed to it…which isn’t a justification.
Hey,
Thank you for chiming in, I hope you are doing well!
I’m just writing down all the reason I had, and obviously there are different opinions on how to moderate on how not to moderate, and what content to allow. This community particular was young and in the making, I asked politely to tone it down, so I can find mods, setup rules and think about what content should be expected. Jumping all users and each post in a that manner was not helping that community and did nothing to connect communities at that point. We openly communicate other places to subscribe, too and where to look.
See, you cannot create content in a community, if every second post is about another community, instead of the topic that should be discussed. This is no shitty reason at all.
I was clarifying my stance, which you brought up.
Not sure what you mean, this link doesn’t point to anywhere.
Feel free to point to such examples for everyone to judge.
You were offered a mod position to !buyeuropean@feddit.uk . Your whole current team could probably join, the current mods wouldn’t probably mind. I’m just a user.
That argument can be used for any power tripping decision. “The user should accept the power tripping mod decision, or they are themselves power tripping”
https://lemm.ee/post/57526943 good communications style. Almost not condescending.,
I told you from the beginning: It is not about me being a mod. It is about honoring the decision of the people who think differently than you. It is okay if you deem them not worthy of having a community, but please 🙏 just let them be.
You can simply foster other communities by good quality content, and people will join. They got links to find you. They got posts to find you.
Please, let it rest and focus on constructive community building.
Yes and, is it bad if there are two communities with the same content?
You remind me of my grandchild when it was three years old and wanted to have its way with lots of screaming and shouting. I’s now six and you can already have sensible discussions with the child.
How old do you have to be to accept that other people see things differently to you?
By the way: Somehow there’s a rumor going around on Lemmy that you’re also trying this with other instances and other communities.
Reasoning is detailed in the post.
It’s not a rumor, it’s a fact. There’s even a dedicated community to it, !fedigrow@lemm.ee
I pointed to a few examples in the OP, nothing secret here:
So much wasted energy that could have been put to good use.