- cross-posted to:
- 196@lemmy.blahaj.zone
- cross-posted to:
- 196@lemmy.blahaj.zone
edit: As I’m seeing a lot of worry about the impact this will/could have on the community, please be assured we have the same mod team, and will be holding the community to the same standards. the same things that were always allowed will continue to be allowed and the same things that got things removed before will continue to get things removed before. Lemmy.world admins have agreed to allow us to run our community on our terms.
It is my pleasure to announce that effective immediately, we are transferring our community to Lemmy.world! This has been a few months in the making, so my entire mod team is already on board.
FAQ:
Why?
That’s a complicated question with a long answer! The primary difference is moderatorial and ideologial differences between my team and Ada’s excellent team of admins. We are on good terms with Ada and her team, and have gotten her consent to do this. In addition to this, we have had ongoing issues with federation and moderation that has caused a subpar experience for many people on other instances.
How does this work?
Currently, as there is not an easy way to transfer an entire community (trust me, we checked), we are locking the community as mod-only, and moving our focus to the 196 on lemmy.world. For you guys, functionally nothing has changed.
What about the posts?
Well, we tried to transfer them, but there was no real way to do so without absolutely destroying lemmy.world’s federation. For this reason, we are simply archiving this community as mod-only. Everything is staying up, you just won’t be able to post new content. Comments are still enabled, so we will continue to check our modlogs for some time after the transfer has settled.
As for the posts on lemmy.world’s 196, we’re leaving those up too. From this point onwards, all posts made to that community are beholden to the rules you are all used to, but anything pre-existing is getting grandfathered in.
IF YOU GUYS HAVE ANY OTHER QUESTIONS, PLEASE PUT THEM IN THE COMMENTS OF THIS POST, AND I’LL DO MY BEST TO ANSWER THEM.
Once again, here’s the link to our new apartment of awesome. (universal: !196@lemmy.world)
You must log in or register to comment.
I strongly disagree with this decision and the reasoning behind it. Blahaj is, in my opinion, the best place for this community specifically because of the strong moderation and policies of Ada and other admins here.
Lemmy.world is also the worst instance I can think of outside of the big three tankie instances. It contributes further to the centralization of Lemmy as a whole (since 196 has been one of the most active communities on the entire platform). In my opinion, the .world crowd’s liberal and pro-colonialist/capitalist tendencies are a terrible fit for this community.
I’d have rather seen Blahaj defederate from .world than 196 move there, even if it meant less content and engagement. At least the cultural values of the community wouldn’t have been compromised.
Yeah, here come the shitlibs and sealions, I guess.
Genuinely clueless here: what are sealions in this context?
It’s a term in online parlance that makes reference to a comic, and it means someone who intrudes into someone else’s space and derails their conversations under the pretext of civil disagreement.
Thanks!
I never really liked this comic or the concept of sealioning because in this comic the ‘annoying’ entity is someone who is being outcasted based on their identity. In a comparison between bigots and marginalised groups, a marginalised group has more in common with the sea lion than the humans, and the bigots have more in common with the humans.
The comic is more logically read as bigots that are annoyed that the minority they’re discriminating against is defending their rights to exist.
I never really liked this comic or the concept of sealioning because in this comic the ‘annoying’ entity is someone who is being outcasted based on their identity.
While I understand and to some degree even share your feelings towards the original comic, the concept of sealioning that spawned from it is generally quite far divorced from that particular issue IME, which is why I focused my definition on the aspects of the behaviour that make it a PITA to deal with.
People who argue in bad faith while trying to maintain an aura of civility. The whole “I’m just asking questions” bs that tries to win by baiting you into getting angry.
It’s a trolling technique.
Thanks!
Weren’t .world admins also banning references to jury nullification and jokes about Luigi Mangioni killing more CEO’s?
Hard agree, 100%. If they want to jump ship, fine, but scorched earthing the old 196 is bullshit.
So I made !onehundredninetysix@lemmy.blahaj.zone
We’ll see how it goes!
Agreed, this is an awful decision
In my opinion, the .world crowd’s liberal and pro-colonialist/capitalist tendencies are a terrible fit for this community.
I haven’t noticed this, personally. But even if that’s true, the way I see it, having more explicitly left-leaning communities can only help remedy that issue.
At least the cultural values of the community wouldn’t have been compromised.
The only thing that’s changing is our location. Our moderation policies are staying the same and I don’t expect any significant changes in the types of users coming into this community. And if we do get an influx of bad actors or trolls, we’ll do what we’ve always done and remove them.
The only difference for you guys is going to be what’s written after the @ symbol.
The only thing that’s changing is our location. Our moderation policies are staying the same
That’s pretty rich, since the .world admins just very recently made a statement where they proudly wanted to force every mod to change their policies. Including the statement that mods would be forced to follow their new rules.
They rescinded that statement, which I think is a good sign. We gave them feedback and they listened.
The policy was obviously flawed, but I think the spirit of the post was valid. Instances like .ml have major censorship problems, and if they want to be the opposite of them then that’s great.
I haven’t interacted with the LW admins much, but I’m confident that they’ll be more flexible than LBZ if they do end up taking issue with our mod actions. But I don’t think it’ll come to that anyways.
They rescinded that statement, which I think is a good sign. We gave them feedback and they listened.
Good. Your community is giving you feedback now.
In my opinion, the .world crowd’s liberal and pro-colonialist/capitalist tendencies are a terrible fit for this community.
I haven’t noticed this, personally.
This is a pretty alarming sign for where lemmy.world/c/196 is headed tbh and it leads me to believe that what you’re calling “heavy-handed” moderation on Ada’s part is actually just her being able to notice shit that you don’t.
I dislike most big .world communities and the centralization of Lemmy, but I’m glad you guys feel confident in your ability to cultivate the same community in a larger and less curated space.
To be honest, I think a big part of the 196 identity is that it comes from blahaj. Maybe the move will prove me wrong, but I can’t imagine the energy will be the same.
We did want to stay in LBZ, but Ada wasn’t willing to compromise with us. Which is her right, and we respect it.
I don’t think the energy will be any different, though.
Compromise on what? What’s the issue?
The post doesn’t really say anything spesific
Heavy-handed moderation, mostly. Don’t get me wrong, we do love Ada and appreciate her work, but sometimes we’ll see people getting banned or comments getting removed for relatively mild takes. We also often disagreed about the severity of the actions, like ban lengths being way too long considering the reason, or people getting banned over something that really should just be a removal.
To put it bluntly, (and I mean no disrespect, but) her mod actions often felt very vibes-based. Like her feelings heavily influenced her decisions. We want the rules to be enforced in a more objective fashion.
So we asked her to let us handle 196 if the content in question wasn’t explicitly trans/queerphobic or illegal, etc… She disagreed, and we respect her view, so we brought up the idea of moving and she gave us her blessing.
I thought this was meant to be on good terms? What about your post is fostering good will? It’s nothing but trashing on me…
To be clear, every post and user I removed was due to queerphobia, transphobia, trolling or spam, issues that broke the instances rules. Some of that bigotry was was implicit rather than explicit, like dog whistles, tone policing etc. Some of it was the “just asking questions” transphobia that pervades most corporate owned social media spaces.
This is the way I have moderated this instance from before the time I handed this community to moss. When lemmy was just taking off, I asked for people to mod the 196 community after it was abandoned by its original creators, and passed it over to moss when she raised her hand.
So if the goal is for this to be civil, maybe don’t paint me as the bad guy for moderating in a way I have done from before your community was created here. What feels like “moderating by vibes” to you, is lengthy experience with community development, and a decade navigating queer and gender diverse communities, and knowing what I want from them. As moss said, this is ideological differences in how low grade transphobia and queerphobia should be dealt with. moss is ok with community pushback for the low grade stuff rather than moderation, whereas I’ll just remove it.
That’s what I wouldn’t compromise on, and that has been the way the instance has run for years now.
It feels like every time I extend 196 a hand, you bite it. I gave the community to moss and started this whole thing. I told another instance admin no when they asked 196 to remove their banner. moss then went and leaked the DMs from said admin, forcing me to remove the post, and then had a public complaint session about me for removing the post.
I have asked 196 for years now to have an active blahaj.zone mod so that someone can deal with the blahaj.zone reports that constantly come through and build up, but still, the best we got were mods with alt accounts that get checked every couple of days, leaving me to deal with the build up of reports on 196. Sometimes they would hang around there for days while I waited for a 196 mod to log in and look at them. And because you don’t like the way I deal with them, you drag me over the coals for my moderation style, despite no one from 196 stepping up to deal with those reports on a regular basis.
I was told that you were thinking about moving to another instance. I offered my support if you decided to stay or to leave. And that was the last I heard of it, until one of your mods (possibly you if I remember correctly) told the community you were organising something with lemmy.world, and I had to hear that second hand. And then, when things were finalised and the decision to move was locked in, once more, I heard about it second hand, after your team made a public post, because no one from 196 could be bothered to tell me before posting.
So no, you don’t get to paint me as the unreasonable admin who moderates by “vibes”. If you want to point the finger at me, at least own your own mistakes, rather than asking for good will and civility and then dumping on me when the chance presents itself.
I have a local account and (from my POV) anytime we got the “reports are piling up” message it was maybe 3 reports that were less than 12 hours old. We never had reports older than 2 days at least since I started helping August 7th, 2023. I check everyday, if I wanted another mod’s opinion of a report I left it up while I waited for a response but we never just ignored the reports. I’m not sure where “the best we got were mods with alt accounts that get checked every couple of days, leaving me to deal with the build up of reports on 196. Sometimes they would hang around there for days while I waited for a 196 mod to log in and look at them” is coming from. I was one of the first mods brought on Aug 2023, so if this is older than a year and half I’m not sure why it’s being brought up? I’m not trying to argue with you, I appreciate everything you’ve done to help the community; I’m just confused
Wow, I already didn’t agree with this move, but knowing they went behind your back makes this feel especially bad. I’ll certainly not move then. I’m sorry to hear that, and I just want you to know that the community, for the most part, stands behind you <3
I, like many others I imagine, came to blahaj because of c/196, but stayed for the amazing safe space and community you’ve built here!
No no, they didn’t go behind my back. I knew it was in the works. It’s more that there was no clear communication about the plans, so I only found out specifics after they’d been made public.
Okay, that’s good to hear. Still not happy with the situation, but I’m glad to hear you were at least somewhat in the loop
we only finalized pur plans a few days ago. This was essentially announced as soon as it materialized
Just let them “move” the community and have someone else moderate this community. I’m sure there are people standing in line to do it.
I for one repeatedly have enjoyed your community management and moderation style.
I am happy and glad to know that someone as experienced and resourceful has always been committed to create, foster and defend a safe space like blahaj.
The fact that moderation specifically is cited as a reason to switch instances is worrisome to me and feels like it will not be a place for me I want to frequent and I am sad that you are being painted in a bad light here.
I thank you for your continuous good work and hope that this move at least eventually will lead to fewer bad moments for you, because you do not deserve to be treated badly with the care you are giving this community.
I really don’t mean any ill will!
As moss said, this is ideological differences in how low grade transphobia and queerphobia should be dealt with. moss is ok with community pushback for the low grade stuff rather than moderation, whereas I’ll just remove it.
I agree, and that’s all I’m trying to say. I didn’t mean for any of that to be rude, but a lot of people are demanding an explanation and I’m just trying to be honest. We disagree about how to handle moderation and that’s fine, I’m not trying to paint you as a bad mod.
And I’m sorry about not having an LBZ mod, I wasn’t aware that we needed one. Federated communities are a new thing for me and I’m still learning.
I understand it may not seem like it, but we truly don’t mean any ill will. There is none on our part, and I hope the same is true for you.
Then maybe when you are talking to people in the future about this, you can talk about the differences in moderation styles in an objective way, talking about the types of things we disagree on, without loading it with terms like “over moderation” and “moderating by vibes” etc.
My moderation style hasn’t changed, and predates 196. If it doesn’t gel with your team, you can say that without making it my fault.
i agree
Please, you did paint ada in a bad way and if that was truly unintentional then you should edit that comment and remove the unfounded accusations. I very much agree with ada’s moderating actions to make sure blahaj.zone is a safe space for trans people that don’t wish to constantly battle with transphobic or misogynistic dog whistles.
How about you leave to .world, and transfer this community to someone who actually cares about it. It’s not up to the few people on the mod team to make decisions for the entire community.
you should’ve put that in the post, it’s not very clear.
also, while I can understand that, I feel like this should have been polled or something. I like that 196 comes from blahaj as it’s pretty uniqueThis isn’t my post, but I’ll ask Moss to edit in a better explanation into the “why” part of the text.
I’ll hope it still stays a similar space 🤞
I don’t think this is entirely accurate, there were multiple factors at play
We joined this community because its on blahaj.zone.
We’re not moving
Seriously. Anyone who thinks this is a good idea should leave the community, so ultimately this may be a good thing, so long as this community is kept here and passed to other people.
I’m gonna be honest, my first response to reading this headline & image, as well as the small snippet of the body visible from my app’s home page, was “huh, bit early for an April Fool’s Day joke”. It would have been surprising enough if the move has been anywhere, but LW is the last non-tankie instance I would have expected, given the modding/admin drama they’ve been through recently.
I’m guessing LW was chosen because there’s a pre-existing (if inactive) community there already?
I’m not familiar with this drama. Lemmy.world was chosen because they have the resources to support another major community, their rules (as far as I am aware) align with ours, and they agreed to let us moderate our community by our rules with minimal interference.
Instead of making a unilateral decision on behalf of all of the members of this community without any kind of consultation, why don’t you move to L.W and allow people who do want to be here, who do want to be subject to the moderation rules of this instance, to step in and take the reins?
I say unlock the community and appoint a new mod team. Who said you could just close the whole community, just because you’ve volunteered to take out the trash?
yeah i’m tending to agree with this, especially as i’m skeptical that the culture will remain the same on lemmy.world. would be nice to have a fallback plan; and, indeed, this whole plan seems to have been orchestrated without consulting the community much at all
Once they’re gone, perhaps someone will unlock 196@blahaj with new mods? I’d kind of prefer that.
Or maybe increment up to 197 to tell them apart? IDK how this works.
Neutral observation: World’s userbase is incompatible with the attitudes and queer acceptance of nearly any community that originates from a place like Blahaj. Your comment sections will go to directly to shit. You will constantly be embattled by .world bigots. Sea-lioning and whataboutism will be common and things you never imagined would be controversial will be. Given the incoming administration I would stick to spaces carved out for the culture you want to see on a “r/196-like” board.
Yea, the community didnt give consent to be constantly embattled with people from a less queer friendly (let alone queer oriented) instance.
none of you have to be embattled with anyone. a simple report will do.
Unless you have neopronouns, obviously
if you look into my comment history and moderation history you will see that I have never had an issue with neopronouns. The narrative that we are doing this out of any form of queerphobia is false.
Hey, we can both misrepresent why you’re doing this. You’re already doing a great job of it.
??? genuinely confused by what you mean. would you be willing to elaborate?
this is why I have a large team of moderators who are all on board to filter this out. you guys haven’t seen behind the scenes, but there’s been plenty of this on lemmy.blahaj.zone.
Fuck da mods
For the love of god, leave this community here and just create a new mod team instead. This community being on Blåhaj specifically is a big plus for a lot of us
Lame move. The .world instance has been getting worse for a long while. Why not go elsewhere if it’s really that important? 196 is one of the most active communities I’ve seen so the de-federation issue doesn’t sound like one.
care to elaborate on this “worsening” ?
https://lemmy.world/c/lemmyworld
You can just browse through their announcements and see for yourself. I admire their dedication and how they’ve managed to accept us Reddit refugees but they keep making these strange missteps in their administration.
I personally wouldn’t make a community in their instance as I don’t trust the admins. They also don’t mind de-federating other instances; see dbz0 (I can never remember the name right).
The first one looks like they’re dealing with code of inconsistent quality from Lemmy developers, but the second one is weird. Everything is all crossed out.
it was crossed out because it was rescinded. it was rescinded because it was a bad decision.
I thought they’d but put some non crossed out text explaining this, but they crossed everything out.
We won’t be moving to world with you. We like blahaj and we like 196 being on blahaj. If you don’t want to be here, you should instead just hand over your mod positions to people who do.
Absolutely foul decision. From the recent discussions i think it was very clear that the actual regular users and posters of 196 were opposed to moving to .world. What a clown show of a mod team.
Yeah, exactly, what the fuck?
A move that has been months in the making but only now is getting announced? Has it been announced previously and I missed it or something? I get the motivation for the move, but this feels like the kind of decision that the users of the 196 should have gotten more of a chance to at least give feedback on what other instance 196 should be migrating to.
Tbf I did try to bring it up a while ago but it upset Ada for some reason, even though I’m fairly certain I didn’t say anything we weren’t on the same page about… So I removed it.
You’re right, though, we should have said something first. That’s our bad.
while I am still confident this is the right choice of instance to transfer to, i do think you are most likely right. if I had a do over, I would have made a poll before anouncing this. unfortunately at this point, I feel like it’s a little late in the game to do a 360.
Why are you not engaging with the large number of users suggesting simply leaving this community unlocked and allowing new mods to take over? It’s very obvious you are avoiding responding to those comments. As you have acknowledged, this was handled badly with zero community choice or involvement. Few, if any commenters agree with the move or support it.
Nobody is asking for a “360” on whatever the mod team planned, the community can’t hold you hostage and force you to moderate a community when you don’t want to. Locking the community however should not be your choice to make. If you want to leave, leave. If the mod team and new instance are so important as you suggest, you’ll have a flourishing community on lemmy.world in no time.
But locking out the community with no consultation or notice is just cruel.
This seems like prime material for !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com
Seems like it’s better suited for !fediverselore@lemmy.ca and indeed I see db0 mentioned as such on the !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com post that was recently made. This is an interesting case study re the fediverse and communities:
- moving a community to a different instance works differently than it did on r$ddit bc whereas r$ddit only had one set of admins, on the fediverse there are numerous sets of admins – a fact that is crucial here
- moving to a new instance introduces a new set of defederated instances. for example the people on beehaw who could post on blahaj would no longer be able to do so on world.
- what is a community? the mods? the subscribers? the upvoters? the posters?
- what’s the best way to move a community? I think this experience suggests that “by surprise” doesn’t always work.
- I think the current blahaj mods could have made a “request for comment” post floating the idea, and let everyone have their say for a week or so. Perhaps at the end of the comment period the current mods could have said: “ok, but if we stay we’re going to need more mods” and that would have been a win all around. Or maybe we could have decided “there’s enough room for two 196s”. Shutting down a safe space – especially just as life is about to get a lot worse for trans people in the US – was bound to have pushback. But for all that, I think the mods were acting in good faith.
Who could possibly have foreseen that the users of the community wouldn’t like being told that it was closed and they’d have to move? Completely unpredictable behaviour, I’m sure
How about reopening the community, and allow a Blahaj admin to take over, asking for new mods and keep the community open?
Boo
u guys should mod a community on lemmy.world if they share ur values more but don’t steal our community
deleted by creator
we aren’t stealing your community. the people who built and facilitated this community are the people who are migrating this community.
I thought we left that attitude on Reddit, that’s a really disappointing and insulting take. The community is the community, not a handful of moderators. We’re grateful for the work y’all are doing, but, and I really don’t intend this as an insult, moderators are replaceable.
Setting aside what an awful & insulting response this (the community is the community, that’s why the word exists. Moderators are not the community)…
If you really believe this, then why lock the existing one? Obviously your well planned & executed move will be wildly successful, so there should be no need to lock the existing one. Unless of course 8 people who do caretaker duties on the community are in fact NOT the community, the people are and you need them, even if you don’t respect their opinions or contributions.
Yeah im sure 4.47k people subbed to the new community in a matter of 6 hours and its not just a bunch of bots used to validate this decision in the eyes of uninitiated bystanders. I mean the .world community is older than 6 hours, but it was completely dead for the last 3 months until yesterday.
This is the most reddit thing I’ve seen on Lemmy and that’s saying a lot
They’ll fit right in on LW.
Imagine believing that you “build and facilitate” a community by being a mod. What an asshole.
Yeah you are lmao because we can’t post here anymore. Unlocking it would be a step towards “unstealing” it.
The answer in that case would be for some users with a history of good faith interaction who are interested in doing so to reach out to the blahaj admins and ask if they can take over the running of this Community.
We are on good terms with Ada and her team, and have gotten her consent to do this.
Ada being a blahaj admin. If that is true then i wouldnt be too optimistic.
So the community never belonged to the users, it was only the mods’ ?
In that case then why even announce anything? Apparently it’s your community and you can do what you like with it, you take your ball and go home. I assume that means you’ll be making and posting all the content there yourself?
By moving a queer community to an openly hostile network you are stealing a community
I don’t see why if you’re unhappy with moderation decisions why you can’t start your own 196 over on world and leave this one alone
so you own this shit?
if you’re really going through with this, I dare you to call it 197
A community is not something you can “migrate”. You are not migrating a community, you are migrating a community space and in doing so, you are alienating said community. If you are unwilling to provide a safe space for said community, the community will either find new space or take their space back.
I think for people who feel safe on blahaj but aren’t guaranteed that safety on .world, it might feel like locking /c/196 on Blahaj and the moderators telling everyone to move to .world is a bit like stealing the community. Maybe /u/not_IO meant that 196 on Blahaj should remain unlocked so 196 can continue to exist on Blahaj, but obviously the question is who will moderate the community if the moderators all leave for .world?
I agree with most others that this is a huge mistake, if only for moving to .world. Another larger community being on that instance sounds like a bad idea for the lemmy ecosystem, even if you wanted to move from blahaj.zone. I will continue to post and browse on 196, but if I start to feel unwelcome there, I will make it known.
The problem is that you’re creating more work for yourself, even if you’re as on top of moderation as you were here. If you get the additional reach that you’re hoping for, you’ll have to work much quicker at removing shit content than you did here. Now that 196 isn’t on the openly queer instance, more bigots will feel like they can interact. This could lead to the community becoming less accepting in the long run, as queer people feel less safe and welcomed.
I have thick skin and often run towards conflicts other people won’t, but I know that many users here aren’t like me. If I start to feel it weighing on me, be confident that things have gone too far for most people on this instance.
That’s valid! But we are confident that we’ll be able to stay on top of things. If there were any doubts, we wouldn’t have made the switch.
Like I said, the perception of .world from people here is not good. I changed from .world because most conservative and transphobic nonsense came from there. You will lose a number of queer people in this move, whether you like it or not.
You couldn’t even stay on top of it here. You’re leaving over an instance rule.
Can you link me any examples? The report log is empty, and frankly I read every post most days of the week along with most of the comments, and I can’t think of anything we haven’t taken care of or wasn’t taken care of swiftly.
It’s pretty clear what the community consensus here is.
You can leave, and start a new 196 community wherever you like. Leave this one as is, and people can choose to follow one, both or neither.
Locking it here is very hostile to the community and a categorically bad move. I hope the instance admins can step in, remove the mods and unlock the community.
I’ve seen a lot of talk about how this move changes the admins the community will be under, but very little about how this will change the randos that pass through. The mods keep saying this won’t change anything, that the moderation will stay the same, etc, but the reason this community is the way it is is that there are a lot of locals that find it. When the new community shows up on l.w’s local page, it will bring in a far different crowd. Their posts, comments, and up/down votes will change the community, and there’s no amount of moderation that will fix that.
Mods, this is why people are mad you made this change without asking anyone. Many of us do not want an influx of .world users into this space because we know what kind of politics and biases they’ll bring with them and that, even if you moderate the bigots, the normies will still likely overpower the queer voices this community is known for.
Well written.
The situation that you describe reminds me of this this comic:
