There is clearly a problem that most of the politics and news communities on Lemmy are unpleasant places to take part in discussion. People yell at each other. The tone of disagreements is that of saying what your opinion is, and insulting the other person if they don’t agree with your opinion, or a bunch of people giving quick one-off statements like “well I think it’s this way” or “no you’re wrong” which adds nothing. I’ve heard more than one person say that they simply don’t participate in politics or news communities because of it.

Well, behold:

I have made some technology which attempts to take a much heavier handed approach to moderation, by just detecting assholes or people who aren’t really contributing to the conversation, in other communities, and just banning them pre emptively en masse. In its current form, it bans about half of hexbear and lemmygrad, and almost all of the users on lemmy.world who post a nonstop stream of obnoxiously partisan content. You know the ones.

In practice it’s basically a whitelist for posting that’s easy to get on: Just don’t be a dick.

I’d like to try the experiment of having a political community with this software running the banlist, and see how it works in practice, and maybe expand it to a news community that runs the same way. There’s nothing partisan about the filtering. You can have whatever opinion you want. You just can’t be unproductive or an asshole about the way you say your opinion. And the bans aren’t permanent, they are transient based on the user’s recent past behavior.

(Edit: I think making a general news community might fit better with slrpnk than politics. In thinking about it and talking with people, I think electoral politics just doesn’t belong in the slrpnk feed, but maybe general news specifically with the political bickering that comes along with it being muted, would be a positive for the instance at the same time as I get to test out my little software project.)

I don’t want to explain in too much detail how the tech works, because I think some segment of assholes will want to evade the tech to come into the community and be assholes again. But I’d also want to set up a meta community where anyone who did get banned can ask questions or make complaints about it. (As long as that offering doesn’t turn into too much of a shit show that is.)

Is slrpnk a place where a little experiment like this could find a good home? What does everyone think of the idea?

  • auk@slrpnk.netOPEnglish
    3·
    6 months ago

    I like the general thinking of these. I was aiming with this bot to achieve very similar things. Meaning, certain types of discussions are impossible on the internet right now because there’s no penalty for being a jerk or hard to talk to, as long as you’re within the bounds of the community rules. The types of discussions that I want to make possible are very similar to the conversations you’re talking about in these communities.

    • AliceAEnglish
      2·
      6 months ago

      I think you should try it. You can create the community idea I mentioned on our instance if you want, (Extremely Polite Politics. You can call it something else I don’t care) Not to test the bot you made though as I am not the server admin. Creating the above community would be basically a way for you to experiment and get a feel for what you’re ultimately trying to accomplish without the heavy commitment.

      Think of it like it’s a game. Everyone’s allowed to say what they usually would say I guess (No violations of TOS though)

      But they literally HAVE TO keep it Extremely formal and polite otherwise ban from community. It doesn’t have to be a permanent ban from this community, but it needs to be long enough to where when they come back, they’ll know they have to be more careful.

      I think a 5 day to a week ban at most, would be the ideal option. Possibly leave yourself a note to notify you either on the modlog or something else that will give you a notification to unban them and notify them their ban time is up. But that’s a curiosity on your part if you want to do that u don’t have too.

      However that open line of communication builds trust in your moderation and that you’re actually following your own rules. Bans won’t be because they’re leftist or conservative bans will be because their wording is rude, baligerant, angry and so forth.

      So they’re able to speak their minds but just not in the way they want to.

      Also it will be a fun way less stressful to and more entertaining and humorous as a reader or lurker. You’ll get to see throughou and consistent back and forth without the toxicity that just makes you feel nasty and gets your angry.

      I say do it ! But I know and understand if not interested. I’m only meaning to be encouraging that’s all

      • auk@slrpnk.netOPEnglish
        3·
        6 months ago

        I’m fairly committed to this bot as my way of achieving the goal, as opposed to a mod enforced rule of overt politeness. Yours sounds fine as an alternative thing to try but I would rather stick with my idea for now, I appreciate the offer though.

        • AliceAEnglish
          2·
          6 months ago

          Yea that’s cool dude no hard feelings 😎 I understand