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founded 2 years ago

/m/politics has no moderators other than ernest (kbin.social)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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/m/politics is basically unmoderated, and the trolls and other ne'er-do-wells are starting to find it. I'm not even particularly interested in following it, but that's one topic that you don't want to leave unmoderated. It's a troll magnet for obvious reasons, and that starts to affect the rest of the instance (and the fediverse) if there isn't anyone enforcing some sort of decorum.

@ernest I know you're ridiculously busy right now, but could you find a moment to appoint someone to recruit a mod team for /m/politics? I'd be willing to do the recruiting if you don't have any better candidates, but I wouldn't want to remain on as a moderator after that's done.

Alternatively does anyone here actively want the job?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

For /m/politics, I don't have candidates in mind yet. If I'm assigned this task, my plan is roughly:

Create a basic set of rules. Should establish the obvious things (civil behavior, no bigotry, etc), as well as what the Overton window of the magazine should be. I'm thinking from non-tankie leftists to non-MAGA conservatives, so tankies and fascists would be excluded. Should also exclude miscellaneous conspiracy theorists and the like, regardless of where they fall on the political spectrum. In practice that window might be too wide to keep civil, so the future mod team may want to narrow it, but I think it'd be good to at least start out that way.
Pin a post asking for moderator applications. Applicants should state what their political position is, and point to any relevant post/comment history on political topics, so that I can get a feel for them. The goal is to have a diverse range of moderators within the Overton window that I mentioned above. Previous experience as a moderator is also relevant, of course.
Write some initial (suggested) moderation policies to outline how moderation should happen. These are likely to be changed by the moderation team once it's in place, but will serve as a sort of social contract between the mods, including a process for how changes should be made. I think this is important, given the ideological diversity I want to aim for.

Once those are done and the team is recruited, I would step down. It might be preferable to have someone that intends to stay on the mod team and has experience moderating political forums take on this task, but I also didn't want to be just pointing out a problem without offering to help fix it. Whoever does end up doing it can feel free to take whatever they like from these ideas and run with them, of course.