This is inspired by this advice from a few months ago:

Stop giving shitty mods a free pass. Honest mistakes happen; but if the mod in question is assumptive, disingenuous, trigger-happy, or eager to enable certain shitty types of user, spread the word about their comm being poorly moderated. And don’t interact directly with the comm. I think that at least here in the Fediverse we should demand higher standards from our mods.

(Emphasis mine.)

In the past I have used places like !lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world or !196@lemmy.blahaj.zone to call out mods on other subs, with mid-to-almost-high degrees of success, but I wonder if it would be better to have a dedicated sublemmy?

Here are my thoughts on what would make this effective:

  • probably shouldn’t be hosted on .world due to the breadth of possible conflicts of interest with admins
  • probably shouldn’t be hosted on .ml due to federation hurdles
  • mods of the community shouldn’t moderate any other communities of any significant size, in order to make the whole “accountability” thing work
  • mods should be willing and able to deal with substantial quantities of garbage posts because there would be a lot of “why won’t c/xyz let me be transphobic/say slurs 😡😡” type submissions which, left unaddressed, would outflood genuine criticism

This is still in conceptual form so I am interested what others think :)

  • AliceAEnglish
    1·
    6 months ago

    Fair enough.

    I know you’re not directly asking me for advice, but I guess one thing to keep in mind (Regarding why moderators are shitty sometimes)

    Is that literally anyone, ANYONE, can make a community. It’s also not a paid like job or anything, (Which I know you are aware of that fact also)

    So they aren’t beholden to anyone or anything regarding their ‘practices’ no accountability. So they literally don’t give a shit really. There’s no pre-screening required or emotional equity test performed in order to be an admin or a mod.

    So you’re gunna come across a lot of uptight, mentally unhinged people who more then likely lack, or have zero control of their own personal lives. except for their community or instance on lemmy.

    That ends up turning out with the issues you’re dealing with. They end up taking content or comments they don’t like personally. And lash out with the removing and banning with zero follow up.

    They don’t even hold themselves accountable for their own actions. So of course, unfortunately, you won’t get an explanation.

    If you ask me, people seriously need to chill the fuck out. Lemmy doesn’t pay your bills ok. It’s a hobby. It’s supposed to be fun

    I mean my God. It’s just taken to a limit sometimes that it doesn’t even need to go in.

    Anyway, take care man. Wish I could be of more help.