I'm kinda regretting not naming it oneninesix, but here we are. I guess I love letters.
To anyone wondering what's up, I did this on my phone while out in the "big city", so I'm still waiting to get home to do anything serious. I have a few ~~suckers~~ really nice people who volunteered for modding along with me. Anyone else who is interested, drop me a line. I'll be picking mods when I get home in a few hours. Sorry for the wait and I'll do my best to put out any fires in the meantime. I didn't think this would take off!
For those wondering, here's my take on moderating the place.
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Moderation is to facilitate an experience for its users in line with the goals of the community and the instance. It's not to push a personal agenda, give you a bigger hammer in debates, set up a digital fiefdom, etc. You certainly can and should include your mod experience on your dating profile, though. Unilateral decisions are not cool except in a few situations, like if 100% of your userbase is usurped by literal Nazis.
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196 exists to be a place where you post something (often but not always something goofy) when you visit. I know not everyone does and that's fine - I still love you. These things can't be offensive or hurtful, though, especially not intentionally so. Unintentional vs intentional I believe is a HUGE distinction and needs to be considered when moderating.
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~~LBJ~~ LBZ exists as an inclusive, (relatively) judgment-free zone for gender-diverse folks. I intend for us to uphold that here. I say relatively judgment free because there will be people looking to start shit and mods and admins are going to have to judge their actions, but only their actions.
If you wanna be my modder, you gotta get with my bullet points...or argue persuasively why I should amend them (but that part doesn't fit the tune).The three big things I'm looking for otherwise are diverse viewpoints, if you can remain reasonably impartial, and if you can say you're sorry. The last is huge for me. As a mod, you're going to mess up. I used to mod on Reddit and I certainly did! I find it's important for maintaining the community's respect to be able to admit when you made a bad call and what you'll do to avoid it in the future.
@[email protected], pointers would be welcome as I think you do a great job.
Community feedback is encouraged and welcome, just be aware I'll be a little slow to respond for a bit.
PS: wow, I really DO love letters!
Edit: Corrected point three, damn autocorrect! Believe it or not, we're not an inclusive community in LBJ's corpse.
You could always just copy the old 196 rules. They work pretty well.
I wrote these rules for a venting room on the blåhaj matrix, perhaps they could be of some inspiration here. A venting room on a different medium will have very different needs of course from a community like this.
Rules
User rules
Issues you probably should spoiler: Slurs, racism, ableism, bigotry, suicide, self harm, abuse, drug/alcohol abuse, blood and gore.
Moderator rules
Proper guidelines for moderators is probably key, and then for users a quick summary of the purpose of the community is important, followed by any additions to the instance rules.
Ahem. Can I propose a dumb rule in the spirit of the community's name?
One hundred and ninety six.
Two thousand twenty five.
The Kessel Run can be run in less than twelve parsecs.
The universe was made thirteen point six billion years ago and was widely considered a bad move.
Solid approach! Not naming names, but let's just say some people and groups assume everyone is out to get them and moderate accordingly.
That one is especially important in a venting room, perhaps not as necessary in lemmy communities.
It's true that mods should be careful and assume good intent when reasonable, however care should also be taken to not allow concern trolling and sealioning. I think a good approach there is a warning (preferably in the form of a gentle reminder that their comment can be misinterpreted) for suspected cases of concern trolling and sealioning and removing the offending comment if necessary, followed by a temp ban if the user continues.
Rarely, people sealion or parrot bigoted points without knowing better. Giving room for people to learn is important, but so is not getting run over by actual trolls