I’ve seen a lot of instances of people on Lemmy saying you can get banned from Blahaj for forgetting someone’s pronouns. And then Ada has to come in and explain why they’re wrong in their interpretation of the rules. These people were banned for good reasons, they’re transphobes. But I think they misunderstand the rules of Blahaj for a legitimate reason.
It’s because Blahaj doesn’t have rules. It has two guidelines. Very subjective ones. People want to know what will get them banned, so they try to understand the rules of that subjectivity. The rules for what Ada considers to be empathy and inclusion. The rules of Ada’s psychology. Because like it or not, with highly subjective guidelines, Ada’s interpretation and understanding of that subjectivity is the rules.
And Ada didn’t write the rules of her psychology in the sidebar. So people have to speculate. And people are speculating wrong, and starting arguments about it.
I think a ruleset should be a transparent explanation of how a mod team thinks about acceptable behaviour. By not having rules, Blahaj is being opaque about how the mod team thinks. And the only way for people to deal with that is to practice amateur psychoanalysis. Which is unpleasant and creates division.
If people understood how trans people think about acceptable behaviour, they wouldn’t be transphobes. So the result of this system is that everyone who is banned for transphobia doesn’t understand why and needs it personally explained to them. If the sidebar explained acceptable behaviour in a way everyone can understand, they wouldn’t misunderstand it so often.
I think the current system is creating pointless drama.
I think the mods are doing just fine, and keeping it free and loose instead of bogged down with concrete legalese-esque rules makes for a good vibe. It seems like “don’t be a dick” is pretty much the stance and I’m all for it.
100% agree. The mods here are some of the best I’ve seen in my roughly 23 years online and it’s going fine.
The loose rules are part of it. They have the right vibes. I simply don’t see a large amount of drama.
I’ve been building and nurturing communities online and offline for decades now. So when Kaity and I were creating the guidelines for this instance, I knew upfront that there would be guidelines, not rules. And that reason for that is because the rules aren’t the source of truth on what’s acceptable and what isn’t. Rules are attempt to codify and communicate what is acceptable, but they get treated as if they are what is acceptable.
If I had a situation where someone needed to be removed from the community, but they technically weren’t breaking the rules, then the rules are the problem. They don’t get to stay just because the rules didn’t capture that specific scenario. But changing rules brings about confusion and contention, because people think it means what is acceptable has changed, when in reality, they just had a mistaken understanding of what is acceptable, because the rules were centered as the source of truth.
It also creates a lot more work on moderators and volunteers, because they have to turn in to mini lawyers, and their actions become shaped by the rules, again, giving the rules first place in what is ok and what isn’t, when they should never be that, because they never can be that. Rules are always imperfect.
And so, guidelines. Guidelines get to the heart of it, because they don’t attempt to define every scenario that is and isn’t acceptable. Instead, what they do is let people know the lens through which decisions about moderation are made. I acknowledge that that means some level of ambiguity. However, there is ambiguity with rules too, we just pretend/forget that there isn’t. But with guidelines, it’s easy to address the ambiguous scenarios and uncommon cases, because the guidelines for dealing with them are simple.
I think the idea you’re working off of, that people are capable of accepting ambiguity, is flawed. Some people, sure. But a lot of people will never accept ambiguous guidelines, because the human brain isn’t designed to see things that way. The autistic human brain often especially not. These people will always want certainty, and they’ll psychoanalyse you to get it.
I’ve tried to psychoanalyse you too, because I’m the kind of autistic that craves structure. Haven’t started arguments over it, but I have seen some weird decisions I didn’t understand and struggled to get my head around them. Because if your mind is unpredictable to me, then the way Blahaj is moderated is unpredictable too. And people like me want to feel like we understand the rules, even if it’s an illusion of safety. An illusion of safety can be very important to a person’s wellbeing.
An environment where the rules are unclear and I don’t feel like I understand them, well that reminds me of elementary school, personally. Personally, due to my own trauma, I don’t feel like I’m capable of accepting that kind of environment without falling into despair. When I was a kid who didn’t understand the rules, I acted out. I didn’t see the point in trying to follow rules I didn’t understand, so I didn’t bother trying not to misbehave. I’ve matured quite a bit since then, but to be completely honest, using Blahaj makes me feel like that confused little kid again, on an emotional level.
A lot of people say growing up is hard, but for me, every year I got older made things easier. The rules became clearer. When I entered university and the workplace I got shown codes of conduct and ethics guidelines. Loved it. Way better than the chaos of childhood. It feels safe. You’re saying clear rules aren’t actually safe, and I agree, but I still like being able to lie to myself and say I’m safe. I breathe easier. I relax.
As I said, the ambiguity exists whether its convenient or not. Rules just create a facade that makes people think there isn’t ambiguity. But the ambiguity is still there, because the rules aren’t the final source of truth. The decision about what is and isn’t acceptable will never be determined by what rule was codified, it will be determined by the reason behind codifying that rule. The ambiguity is always there. Rules don’t’ change that.
I have seen some weird decisions I didn’t understand and struggled to get my head around them
There will never be explicit rules here, because they add workload and stress, without addressing the ambiguity that you struggle with
As you can also see from the replies here, a lot of people don’t share your viewpoint, so it’s not a clear cut case of rules being universally better for the community. I have to take the communities needs and my own needs in to account, and there is no clear consensus or support for concrete rules from the community.
What I can do is offer the chance to address that ambiguity through other avenues. If you can tell me the things that you’ve seen that seem ambiguous or unpredictable to you, I can explain my thinking and reasoning, and reduce some of the ambiguity. I can’t promise we’ll see eye to eye, but hopefully you’ll have a bit of a better understanding of how things work going forward.
Well it’s mostly about the empathy guideline.
Another user in this thread was pointing more empathy my way than I was comfortable with. She didn’t know much about me, so she was mistaking my intentions, and that made me feel uncomfortable. I wish she hadn’t tried to use so much cognitive empathy on me, she didn’t have enough context to use it right. The guidelines say you should have a lot of empathy for other people, but I disagree. Sometimes we just shouldn’t guess at other people’s motivations, because we’re going to misunderstand them. We should control our empathy.
Like when you banned Dragon Rider. I read what both of you had to say about the leaked messages, and drag was saying drag’s intention wasn’t what you thought it was and apologizing. It seemed like you jumped to conclusions because you used too much empathy. Yeah, we’re a social species who evolved a limited ability to read minds, but we shouldn’t use it all the time. Especially not for important stuff. Sometimes we should just ask other people what they’re thinking instead.
When I first started using Lemmy, I wouldn’t have thought about empathy that way, but I had to adjust my mental model of empathy to be more like how Blahaj uses it, after seeing that whole situation, so I could understand what happened. And if empathy means guessing at other people’s motivations without asking them, I think empathy should require a bit more caution and consent. Reading minds isn’t always nice.
As for PugJesus, that guy uses far too little empathy. He never bothers to think about why other people are doing what they do. But I think there’s got to be a happy medium in between treating others like black boxes, and assuming you know everything about them. I don’t think more empathy is always good.
Transphobes getting mad and sealioning about “rules” is not pointless drama because it accomplishes the goal of keeping those people out.
Literal rules can be designed or twisted to undermine the fundamental goals of those rules. It creates lawyers focused on rhetoric over morals; lawyers trying to find a way to get away with the very things the rules were supposed to prevent. Words have no meaning so long as they can be abused to accomplish what they want. This is how fascism is so easily able to overtake liberal democratic systems and how powerful interests rig the state in their favor.
Anyhow, most of the drama comes from people like you who care more about semantics than having queer people feel safe and secure. If you want to help banned transphobes overcome their bigotry, find a way where you can do that off blahaj. That’s how you can actually achieve your goals without relying on Ada to do it. When many of them inevitably refuse to change, then you can feel secure in knowing that most of this “drama” is bad faith bigotry. Complaining here is a waste of effort for accomplishing what you supposedly want.
Complaining here is a waste of effort for accomplishing what you supposedly want.
Making Blahaj a safer place for trans people with less drama? I can’t do that on Blahaj?
I read most of the other comments and didn’t reply because I don’t want to start a ton of arguments, but your comment stood out to me as making a lot of assumptions about what I want that I don’t understand.
This is actually a great example of why I’m not a huge fan of Blahaj’s guidelines. You’re trying to use your sense of cognitive empathy to figure out how I think. And the guidelines say empathy is good. But I don’t like it. You’re making mistakes, and I’d rather you didn’t try to psychoanalyse me. I want you to empathize with me less, please. You haven’t read enough of what I have to say to make accurate guesses at the level you’re trying to. It’s too early for the amount of empathy you’re pointing at me.
One of the reasons I created this post is because I assume Ada doesn’t like being psychoanalysed by internet people either. This post is a warning that the current system leads to lots of amateur psychoanalysis. It’s unpleasant for me, I’d assume it would be unpleasant for her too.
“Psychoanalyze” you with “cognitive empathy”? Those mighty fancy words make me suspect that you’re either grasping for straws, or just trying to waste my time.
Other people having a special interest in science doesn’t make you dumb. Science is actually very cool, fun to learn about, and important for understanding the world and other people. You don’t have to treat it like a scary thing.
Your psychology “education” clearly comes from someone like Jordan Peterson or Sam Harris, so I’m not too worried
Late reply, these people are just complaining they were banned for being assholes and that this space doesn’t let thinly veiled bigotry and gatekeeping slide like many places do. I don’t think we need clearly defined rules for people to try and look for loopholes, there aren’t any loopholes to not being an asshole and not being a bigot, you can either be a bigot or not be one. Introducing a list of rules just makes it easier for people to look for loopholes and claim that they were banned unfairly. Better to not give them any benefit.
there aren’t any loopholes to not being an asshole and not being a bigot
I disagree. There are infinity loopholes, because everyone defines them differently. Everyone has their own personal loopholes. Which loopholes exist in practice is basically random, but in theory, it’s all loophole.
Uh dude you’re supposed to code your speech for diatribes like this
Tbh I think the social pressure to talk in a cutesy voice in queer spaces comes from societal misogyny. Places like Blahaj are dominated by transfemmes, who are traumatized by masculinity and fearful of being misgendered. While all my cool trans friends are accepting of gender nonconformity, I think a lot of people don’t manage to get fully to that place even if they’re trans, because it’s a fucking lot of work. So certain trans spaces, and I don’t know if this is the majority of people on Blahaj or just you, they pressure people to act in line with traditional femininity due to their trauma and fear, reproducing the conditions of the patriarchy like a child who was beaten becoming a violent parent.
I’m butch and I’m not going to stop being butch just because I’m in thigh highs and plushies land.
