So after a run in with a moderator yesterday I’ve had some thoughts I felt I wanted to share.
I won’t name them here, you are welcome to look at my comment history and make up your own mind.
In this instance a user posted some misinformation. I don’t think they intended to, they merely perpetuated a myth, they clearly simply knew no better.
I tried to respond diplomatically, they doubled down, other users piled on, the downvotes are plenty and then I responded with an article citing evidence supporting my assertions.
I also stated that the burden of proof lies with the claimant and asked for some context on why they seemed dead set on the lie they were aping back, asking if they subscribe to other myth based beliefs, religions, etc. That post was unceremoniously deleted with no notice to me and no reasons given… until the user pointed out in another post that they are the sole mod of the community and warned me that they were “not afraid to ban” me should I “cross the line” in a very *‘I’m the sheriff of this here town’ *tone. Which gave me a chuckle.
That’s my side of the story, it’s all there if you want to draw your own conclusions. It really doesn’t matter who is right or wrong in a ‘someone is wrong on the internet’ spat but I did spot a chink in the fediverse through this incident.
The real point here is that this kind of behaviour is one of things that made Reddit fucking awful and I’d hate to see it flourish here in the fediverse.
I don’t have the solutions just some suggestions that I’d be keen to hear others opinions on:
- No moderation without representation. IOW: mods should be democratically elected.
- Mod elections should be annual and no mod should enjoy that status for life.
- There should be a mechanism for inducing a ‘no confidence’ mode election at any time otherwise the communities are likely to splinter into “real_” communities just as they did on Reddit which no community in the fediverse can currently afford.
What say you my brothers and sisters and everything in between? Is there a way to safeguard against cronyism, corruption and other frailties of the human ego?
Or, you know, kids haven’t got the same grasp of adult life that grown ups do.
I have a 23 year old daughter. She has a job, an education, is currently travelling the world and she’s still really very immature in many ways. I know there be will be people that age right now reading this and hating it and you know you’re really still very far away from really getting this but there is SO much in life that we have to learn to let go. SO many failures of our own and of others that we need to find a way to live with. It took me a long, long time to really get to the point where I was able to forgive the world for being a place where certain bad things had happened. That’s the thing that finally allowed me to keep looking for goodness, to struggle for hope instead of being angry with reality. You look deep into any maladjustment be it drug addiction, eating disorders, rage, pretty much any negative compulsion - deep down in there it’s this. It’s this inability to forgive the world for being a place where bad things can happen. Which is clearly a child-like response to not getting our way. Only now “getting our way”, like it’s not that you were refused a treat but rather you’re waching the bigger part of humanity suffer and realising you’re near powerless to do anything about it. Two things can be true. The world can be a bad place sometimes but it can also be good. If you can’t forgive it for its failings you’ll struggle to see the good side.