Hey all,
Moderation philosophy posts started out as an exercise by myself to put down some of my thoughts on running communities that I’d learned over the years. As they continued I started to more heavily involve the other admins in the writing and brainstorming. This most recent post involved a lot of moderator voices as well, which is super exciting! This is a community, and we want the voices at all levels to represent the community and how it’s run.
This is probably the first of several posts on moderation philosophy, how we make decisions, and an exercise to bring additional transparency to how we operate.
Question:
What’s the stand on discussing points of view on charged subjects?
For example, I got banned from Reddit for discussing the possible thought process of someone who might be attracted to minors. Reason for the ban: “sexualization of minors”… even though the content policy refers to the act itself, not to its discussion.
Is it allowed in here to discuss negative or controversial points of view expressed, or actions taken, by third parties? Or does it taint the whole discussion? Are there some particular “taboo” themes that would do that, while others might not? Would such discussions be allowed with a disclaimer of non-support, or get banned anyway?
I sometimes like to reflect on, and discuss, some themes that I understand some might find uncomfortable or even revolting. I also understand that there might be themes not allowed in the server’s jurisdiction.
If this was the case, then I think a clear list of “taboo themes” could be useful to everyone, even if most of the moderation was focused on applying a more flexible set of rules.
Any discussion topic which involves potentially dehumanizing others is not a topic that should be ‘debated’. So talking about whether phrenology has any merits is off the table, because it dehumanizes anyone who isn’t white. Discussing what constitutes rape can often lead to dehumanizing women.
Subjects like this are often rife with bad actors, who weaponize language with techniques like just asking questions (JAQ), concern trolling, appealing to nature or other methods. Perhaps more importantly, they’re often discussions on topics for which no one present is an expert, and for which an expert opinion is necessary to have any kind of fruitful discussion.
In general you should ask yourself - is there someone who exists who could be seriously uncomfortable or harmed by this discussion happening in the first place? If you’re discussing any topic about which people have been seriously harmed or killed by (and not simply reporting the news), the answer to this is pretty much unequivocally do not have that conversation here. As a general rule of thumb, any topic which you have self described as the following:
is probably not a good candidate for this website. Minority individuals are subject to this kind of behavior practically everywhere else in the world and we’re not interested in having those discussions here, either.
As an aside, the very fact that you are self aware enough to see this is something others find problematic but have not questioned yourself as to why these discussions need to happen is something you should be questioning yourself about. Do you feel this way about every subject for which you have no education? Do you have these kinds of discussions about complicated medical issues or do you listen to your doctor? Do you hypothesize about the necessary conditions for deep sea life to thrive, or do you leave those questions to marine biologists? I mean this in as non-confrontational a way as possible, but rather as a question to someone who seems to value the process of thinking and arriving at a well-reasoned conclusion, why do you think that you have the tools to discuss these topics without having acquired the necessary education to weigh in with any kind of credence? I don’t discuss the theoretical limitations of spacecraft because I’m not a physicist and I realize that I need a physicist in order to come to any kind of reasonable conclusion.
OK, I understand the general rule of not making people uncomfortable, and agree that some subjects tend to attract bad actors more than others.
My reason for discussing —not “debating” as in a confrontation— some subjects that I know little about, is that I find it a good opportunity to learn more. Both through own research, self-reflection, and… you never know who might chime in with more knowledge from a different point of view. More importantly, there are actual experts on the Internet, some do offer their point of view, but even experts don’t have the full picture, may have outdated knowledge, and a respectful “non-expert” can sometimes add a bit that might help both learn something.
Education is not an all or nothing, thanks to the Internet (which has sources ranging from the Wikipedia to preprint papers), it’s relatively easy to acquire an education in a very narrow field, that is better than that of someone who has more education in a much wider field. Having expertise in one field, while acquiring narrow education in another, can lead to synergies and knowledge transfer that wouldn’t happen otherwise… which requires the parties to talk, or discuss the matter in the first place.
But going back to not making people uncomfortable… there is another issue: I’m not an expert in all the things that might make others uncomfortable.
For example, I only learned about the issues surrounding phrenology, by looking into it after seeing it mentioned in this instance’s rules. Previously, I just considered it debunked science and nothing more. I’m sure there are many other subjects like that which I don’t know the full implications of.
Wouldn’t it make sense to have at least a non-exhaustive list of some of the subjects to avoid, for those who might learn something from it? Or should people acquire that education on their own, before participating?
PS: In the particular case of listening to your doctor, I have actually learned more about a few particular issues, than some of the doctors I’ve met. Some have been grateful for the extra knowledge, some have been dismissive, some have switched to “patient talk” mode when they realized I actually understood them “talking shop”, which I find demeaning.
You’re not wrong, but we don’t have the tools to screen out bad actors and to moderate appropriate, professional discussions on complicated, nuanced topics with experts to help address what’s signal and what’s noise. This is simply not the venue for that.
I want to point out two things here:
I don’t think you need experts in a given field to recognize whether a discussion is being conducted in a respectful and constructive way or not. The participants themselves are likely to tell you that through the report function.
Suggestion: For tools, would it be possible to set a discussion to be collapsed/hidden/flagged when in doubt? (like what Reddit does through downvotes, but via mod action) Then just let the participants continue if they wish, without disturbing the rest of the community.
That requires identifying that I lack some education in it, and while I’m all for it, after so many years there are likely many subjects that I think I have enough education to present a point of view about, even if I might be wrong. Googling each and every possible subject “just in case” before commenting, isn’t practical.
Heated discussions get used politically all the time, and in this age of AI chatbots, professional troll farms, mis- and counter-informative spam, and such, they can even be faked precisely to get them out of rational discussions.
I don’t think “heat” is a good indicator of whether a subject should be avoided or not; pretty much all the subjects for every community in here, are used in heated discussions somewhere else.
Wouldn’t that leave only the most mundane, bland and minimum common consensus subjects? But if everyone knows everything already, with the same point of view, what’s there left to talk about?
Suggestion: I think stating that it’s a “non-exhaustive list of examples” would take care of that. Right now there is one example (phrenology), all I suggest is adding more examples.
(and anyway, Reddit’s explicit list didn’t stop them from banning me for talking about something only tangentially related to one of the points… ultimately, instance admins have all the power, even to edit user comments, Reddit did it)
That’s okay that you don’t think so, but we as a team absolutely do. It’s part of the reason we’ve not created communities such as “mental health”, “legal”, and other places which are at risk of uninformed opinions causing serious and actual harm.
This functionality does not exist. Even if it did exist, I would not want it used for this purpose.
It sure does! There’s an educational burden for you if you want to speak about subjects which have real world effects on others but not on you. If you don’t do that research before asking questions, that’s your fault and not ours - it’s not difficult to ask yourself the question of whether something might negatively effect others or to at least do a cursory search on google, go to the library and find some reading, or otherwise receive some base level of education before discussion a charged question on the platform. You have a responsibility to your fellow humans to be educated in this manner before broaching a topic in a public space.
In the scope of the document linked, we’re going to take into consideration the viewpoints of others. People who are sufferers of sexual abuse won’t particularly like you going on amateurishly about whether you think there are real risks, however, so if you try to start a conversation about this you might find your content removed and if this becomes a repeat problem you may end up temporarily and eventually permanently banned.
I don’t agree with this statement at all. If a discussion ultimately questions someone else’s humanity, it’s not a great subject to discuss when those people are present. Or if you do, and do so without considering the opinions and thoughts of this group or at the very least become educated on this issue, you should expect consequences to your speech - such as being insulted, having your comment removed, or being removed from your platform entirely.
I don’t have the time or energy to build a list of all content in the world aimed at dehumanizing others. If you do, more power to you, I’d encourage you to make and maintain said list with my blessing.
You may not have created specific communities, but both mental health advice and legal commentary are being offered in the communities already created. Does this mean those contents should be avoided and/or reported? I hope not… they’re actually interesting.
That gets us back to my initial question: if I speak about a subject that has direct effects on me, but only tangentially references effects on others but not on me… what’s the stance on that?
Fun fact: my “sexualization of minors” ban on Reddit came from citing a book… so this doesn’t seem like a safe recommendation… 😐
I got that, don’t make people uncomfortable. I’m even fine with backing off when made aware of it, even if I actually have more than amateurish knowledge about a subject. Heck, I’m even fine with my expert knowledge getting removed (did that on Reddit myself already).
What I wouldn’t like, is to get banned because someone felt uncomfortable and I wasn’t made aware, or someone thought that someone might have felt uncomfortable by proxy, without a chance to fix it.
I agree with that.
My objection was that there are people “out there” who will use any subject to dehumanize others, even when the subjects themselves are not inherently dehumanizing and can otherwise be discussed with respect. Should we let third parties guide which subjects should be banned, just because someone might have seen them use it in a dehumanizing way?
There is also the matter of which people “are present”, since the contents here are public and even federated, so technically “everyone is present”.
Yeah… it’s not an attractive task. I was thinking that since mods are going to see the content anyway, you could run it as a kind of FAQ, just add items to a list when you see them appear on the instance. Kind of “I’ll know it when I see it, and now everyone else will too”.
I wonder if a list could be extracted from the modlog… I’ll look into that.
The best I can say to you at this point is that if you’ve received pushback in the past it’s probably not meant for this site. I can’t itemize everything for you. I understand you’re neurodivergent and need a bit more clarity on what’s acceptable and what’s not but I don’t have the time to build that list for you. Maybe just avoid any subject you have questions about or haven’t seen others discussing to be safe
Make that neurodivergent, disabled, and abused for enough time to have received pushback on all subjects. At this point I feel like the only safe course of action is to shut up and disappear, since I’m definitely not going to go to “free speech” places to get more of the same. Anyway, sorry for dragging this out, and guess we’ll just see how it goes.