Edit 2025-01-13: LW has indicated they will be clarifying these rules soon. In the mean time, the community will remain locked until those are updated and deemed acceptable.

So the LW Team put out an announcement on new, site-wide moderation policy (see post link). I've defended, to many a downvote, pretty much every major decision they've made, but I absolutely cannot defend this one. In short, mods are expected to counter pretty much every batshit claim rather than mod it as misinformation, trolling, attack on groups, etc.

My rebuttal (using my main account) to the announcement: https://dubvee.org/comment/3541322

We're going to allow some "flat earth" comments. We're going to force some moderators to accept some "flat earth" comments. The point of this is that you should be able to counter those comments with words, and not need moderation/admin tools to do so.

(emphases mine)

Me: What if, to use the recent example from Meta, someone comes into a LGBT+ community and says they think being gay is a mental illness and /or link some quack study? Is that an attack on a group or is it "respectful dissent"?

LW: A lot of attacks like that are common and worth refuting once in awhile anyway. It can be valuable to show the response on occasion

I understand what they're trying to address here (highly encourage you to read the linked post), but the way they're going about it is heavy handed and reeks of "both sides"-ing every community, removing agency from the community moderators who work like hell to keep these spaces safe and civil, and opening the floodgates for misinformation and "civil" hate speech. How this new policy fits with their Terms of Service is completely lost to me.

I'll leave the speculation as to whether Musk dropped LW a big check as an exercise to the reader.

For now, this community is going dark in protest and I encourage other communities who may disagree with this new policy to join. Again, I understand the problem that is trying to be addressed, but this new policy, as-written, is not the way to do it.

Voting has concluded on whether the community wants to remove the "Vote the opposite of the norm" voting guidelines.

As you can see in the screenshot below (or in the post), the results are a tie (only upvotes are counted, not the score). I abstained from the vote, leaving it entirely to the community, and I do not wish to cast the tie-breaking vote.

Since it is a tie, I'll treat that as a non-majority vote and, as such, we will keep the voting guidelines as they are.

Since the world is so depressing right now, the mod team has agreed to rebrand this community as "Popular Opinions" to try to lighten the mood.

Instead of than sharing opinions that highlight our differences, share the ones that everyone can agree on.

The voting guidelines remain the same: Upvote if you agree it's a popular opinion, downvote if you think it's an unpopular opinion.

So, let's hear some things we can all get on board with!

In conclusion, happy April Fool's Day!

Note: This is a real rule change and will be enforced, but only for today as a fun change of pace. Normal rules return tomorrow.

Since we're all on differen timezones, we'll be running these rules midnight to 23:59 UTC.