I’ve seen a lot of instances of people on Lemmy saying you can get banned from Blahaj for forgetting someone’s pronouns. And then Ada has to come in and explain why they’re wrong in their interpretation of the rules. These people were banned for good reasons, they’re transphobes. But I think they misunderstand the rules of Blahaj for a legitimate reason.
It’s because Blahaj doesn’t have rules. It has two guidelines. Very subjective ones. People want to know what will get them banned, so they try to understand the rules of that subjectivity. The rules for what Ada considers to be empathy and inclusion. The rules of Ada’s psychology. Because like it or not, with highly subjective guidelines, Ada’s interpretation and understanding of that subjectivity is the rules.
And Ada didn’t write the rules of her psychology in the sidebar. So people have to speculate. And people are speculating wrong, and starting arguments about it.
I think a ruleset should be a transparent explanation of how a mod team thinks about acceptable behaviour. By not having rules, Blahaj is being opaque about how the mod team thinks. And the only way for people to deal with that is to practice amateur psychoanalysis. Which is unpleasant and creates division.
If people understood how trans people think about acceptable behaviour, they wouldn’t be transphobes. So the result of this system is that everyone who is banned for transphobia doesn’t understand why and needs it personally explained to them. If the sidebar explained acceptable behaviour in a way everyone can understand, they wouldn’t misunderstand it so often.
I think the current system is creating pointless drama.
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I disagree completely
Principles are always better than rules.
Rules are inflexible, and lead people into thinking that there’s ways around them, that you can game the system because the rules aren’t written that way. It also leads to thinking that if it isn’t a rule, you can do it.
Guiding principles are flexible, more enduring. But they take more work on the part of the people handling situations as they arise.
A set of principles, with examples, tends to work much better long term.
Otherwise, you just keep stacking rules. You stack rules high enough, nobody can remember them all, and they topple.
Besides, ain’t nothing about lemmy fully democratic. At some point, someone is handling the hardware and keeping the connection alive. Whoever that happens to be is the one that has to carry the weight of decisions, even if there’s an illusion of collaboration. Maybe if society as a whole gets rebuilt, it could be fully community run, but I tend to believe humans suck at that once the group gets over about a dozen people, so I’m dubious something as big as an instance is ever gong to actually function without an organizer (be that a smaller group or an individual).
But, here, now, on this instance, it’s working very well. It weeded out folks that didn’t agree with the principles as explained. It made a clear line to anyone not on the instance, and it is definitely known that those principles are not to be fucked with
That seems like a highly successful forum to me.
Who cares about external criticism at all? Even internal criticism is of dubious value when the goal is a protected community. Hell internal and external validation is of dubious value. What matters is that things work. And they do. Very, very well.
The whole idea that someone banned for transphobic activity needs a personal explanation is, frankly, malarkey. Blahaj ain’t about the folks that aren’t on board with the goals. That’s the only explanation needed: you done fucked up, bye.
You know the idea of “It isn’t my job to educate you”? It’s part of every marginalized group’s evolution. At some point, it isn’t the black person’s job to educate white people about their lived experience. It isn’t the gay man’s job to explain to the straights what gay culture is, and why they have a right to exist.
It isn’t the admins’ job to educate any of us. Their job is keeping things running, and keeping the space one that folks can just be in.
Rules. Rules. They’re fine for some things. I don’t think they’re useful here.
Which, please note that my statement of external validation being of dubious value applies to this entire comment.
But, for me, I see what they’re doing here, and it’s beautiful.
I think the mods are doing just fine, and keeping it free and loose instead of bogged down with concrete legalese-esque rules makes for a good vibe. It seems like “don’t be a dick” is pretty much the stance and I’m all for it.
I’ve seen lots of people be dicks on Blahaj. Because my understanding of being a dick is different to Ada’s. Everyone’s is. We all have different life experiences, values, triggers.
Transphobes are going to keep on criticising Blahaj as long as they think transphobia isn’t dickish. Which is as long as they’re transphobes. The rules complaints are going to just keep on happening forever unless Blahaj gets rules.
The only other communities where I’ve seen as much drama over the rules are Beehaw, which is designed the same way, and .world, which wouldn’t state an admin position on advocating violence for a long time. Ambiguity creates conflict.
Where are these frequent rules complaints you mention?
Their head. They still think they can teach bigotry away. They haven’t learned fixing strangers isn’t their job yet
Why are we minding transphobes exactly? They are inconsiderate and disrespectful most of the time, and they don’t really want to listen to any arguments that dont confirm their bias.
100% agree. The mods here are some of the best I’ve seen in my roughly 23 years online and it’s going fine.
The loose rules are part of it. They have the right vibes. I simply don’t see a large amount of drama.
Tbh, I wish I was half as capable at being a mod as most of the ones here, and I couldn’t hope to admin even half that well
I can never stress in strong enough terms how far outside of “Blahajism” my entire life has been… but even I can grasp that Ada’s house has Ada’s rules. (Whether they be opaque or not). If I don’t agree I have two options: shut the fuck up or leave.
If you struggle / have issues with recent pronouns then, I don’t know, perhaps just refer to people by name? It’s not rocket surgery.
I strongly believe that drama only exists where people want drama to exist. I’m gonna go out on a limb here and speculate that the majority of Blahajists have more than enough (unwanted and unwarranted) drama in their day to day lives just trying to exist. I think these folk deserve a bit of peace and quiet - especially in their own backyard.
Should I ever get banned for bumping my gums too loudly then I’ll just move on (sadly) and file it under “life lessons”.
“It’s not rocket surgery” gave me a chuckle. Tossing that one in my pocket for future use.
There’s even a Wiktionary entry for it.
Don’t forget to occasionally drop in “it’s not brain science” to keep things fresh.
ilu
Thank you. The world needs more love.
Other users have already opined my thoughts on the subject, so Ill just simply say Ada is doing a great job and should not change it.
However, this post and the comments by OP are weird. I spend WAY too much time on lemmy, and Ive seen every single post on blahaj in the past 6months (excluding ones i probably missed because they got deleted) and read a good amount of the comments, along with reading a lot of posts from federated instances. And yet I dont see the problem that OP is describing. And it makes me wonder what OP would gain from this, why would they so vehemently go out of their way for this, create a potentially (or at least, in a different community I have blocked) false narrative for this?
The things that jump out to me first are they either want rules so they can skirt them and say “but i didnt technically break any rules!” Or it is because theyve been banned and salty about why. If either case is the true motive, maybe just dont interact with blahaj? I dont speak for everyone, but I dont care about someone who can technically not break any rules but still be a purposeful nuisance, or some transphobe who pretends to be nice. I used to tell people online I was a cis woman, but I found that to be a mistake. It had people treat me properly, but I ended up being around people who were treating me fine, but were transphobes I only found out later. I do not want to be around these people.
Blahaj cops a lot of whingeing on other subs (powertrippingbastards is a biggun) from people who don’t like not having their casual bigotry enabled. The ol’ “when you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression”. Fuck’em
It’s always hilarious when ptb tells them to shut it as well
They’re likely referencing posts on ye power tripping bastards where phobes would frequently complain about being banned for transphobia or some other kind of bigotry (unfairly according to them). I also once in a blue moon see comments on other instances where people claim we are rather ban happy. Not something you’ll see on blåhaj much.
They have a three week old account. I think one of those banned people has not let it go, so I am willing to bet OP is an alt of someone who really wants blahaj to make some clearly defined rules.
You know. Gates for them to keep.
Hmm I think that if this is happening the “drama” is likely purposeful. But I don’t understand what they’d get out of it.
That being said I don’t think we need a psychological write up, nor do I believe it would stop transphobic behavior disguised as “I didn’t know better!”. If more exact phrasing is needed on rules so be it but I think things are pretty straightforward here already.
I do feel sorry for instance administrators that get roped into the moderation decisions of communities. Instances should provide very broad and strict rules meant to keep the system running and out of legal liability. It doesn’t need to be so specific about content.
It is communities and their mod teams (who not bound by the instance) to operate within that framework to set and enforce rules for content moderation.
But FWIW at least one of those prominent bans a bit ago were WELL aware of why they were banned. They intentionally went to get banned to spark a debate on the rules and specifically to draw the instance admin into it.
The problem with defining the rules rigidly, is that it ties the mods hands when a bad actor starts doing stuff that while technically is within the rules, is still bad faith.
Its not that hard to fit within the guidelines.
How about a compromise: keep the principles, then nobexhaustively list common examples of how those apply.
That’s already how it works :)
Ada you’re simply the best. Thanks again
Albatrosses are the best! I saw a few of them recently in New Zealand. Beautiful birds!
Is the list called the modlog? Or is there something else? Just for my own curiosity.
It’s all in the sidebar of the instance!
Yeah, that makes complete sense, dunno why I didn’t think to look there. Sorry for wasting your time.
No, that’s ridiculous. The admins can just change the rules to close the loophole.
That’s how the government does laws. They don’t just wave their hands and say “don’t misbehave”. Problems like police brutality are more likely to happen when enforcers don’t clearly understand the rules, and aren’t held to them.
But the government still makes an effort to control corruption by having clearly defined rules, and that’s good. That leads to less abuse of power.
Blahaj is supposed to be a safer space for trans people than the streets of most countries. It should be more careful about the rules, not less.
Laws need to be stringent because governments involve lots of people, and people’s livelihoods and well-being are on the line.
No one’s livelihood is on the line here, worst case scenario they get banned and then they find a new server.
There’s only two (really one) admins, and they enforce the safe space according to their own judgement. This isn’t a government, it’s a Lemmy server. Fleshing out rules would only invite rules lawyering which bigots love and is a headache for little practical gain.
There’s no need to “control corruption” or prevent “enforcers not understanding the rules” when the person making the rules is also the person enforcing them.
There’s only two (really one) admins
Ooof, that’s a bit unfair don’t you think?
While it is true that I do the majority of the work keeping our servers running behind the scenes for you all, it’s still a bit rough to say Ada doesn’t pull her own weight! 😊
Yeahhh I didn’t really think through how I worded that one, sorry. I was trying to say that Ada is essentially the face of enforcement and I haven’t seen you going out and banning people, but that hardly means there’s only one admin.
I really appreciate you keeping this place running for us!
Ada, by far, has the most moderation experience and level head of the both of us.
If I was moderating this place it’d be a barren wasteland with salted and scorched earth as far as the eyes can see and a list of rules as long as your arm which keeps getting longer every time you look as I try to keep up with the rules lawyers.
When we first setup Blåhaj Zone with Ada, we discussed exactly this scenario and Ada said that you’ll never create a set of rules that are comprehensive enough to defeat those that are intent on being horrible human beings and trying to make a safe space for queer and gender diverse people unsafe. And instead of keeping the space safe you’ll spend all your time and effort refining and defending the intricacies of the rules.
Instead of doing that, we want a safe space, so the guiding principle is don’t make it unsafe.
Obviously some people need more clarification on what safety means to us, but really if you need more than what we have provided to “get it”, then you are the kind of person who would make it unsafe just by being present.
Most decent human beings can grok “be kind and respect each other” as a set square.
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There’s no need to “control corruption” or prevent “enforcers not understanding the rules” when the person making the rules is also the person enforcing them.
That’s exactly when you most need to control corruption. You’re talking about the legislative and executive branches of governance. Most states separate those TO control corruption. I don’t think it’s practical to control corruption that way on an internet forum, but that’s why the other controls need to be stronger to pick up the slack.
People like PugJesus think they’re controlling corruption. PugJesus is a transphobe, the specific decisions he thinks are abuse aren’t. But people like him don’t have the ability to read Ada’s mind, so she’s got to explain it to every single one of them or they’ll all start rumours about what the secret rules of Blahaj are. And Blahaj certainly does have secret rules. They’re the rules of how Ada thinks. And everyone is interested in knowing them, since she won’t explain them.
How states are run with rampant corruption, subjugation, and bigotry in spite of meticulously crafted systems and rules seems to me an argument against, not for, attempting to replicate such systems on an instance that is intended to be a space for trans people and allies.
People like PugJesus think they’re controlling corruption. PugJesus is a transphobe, the specific decisions he thinks are abuse aren’t. But people like him don’t have the ability to read Ada’s mind, so she’s got to explain it to every single one of them or they’ll all start rumours about what the secret rules of Blahaj are. And Blahaj certainly does have secret rules. They’re the rules of how Ada thinks. And everyone is interested in knowing them, since she won’t explain them.
There it is. I’m pretty convinced this is either someone from one of his discord channels or actually him under another alt.
The DGGers have been flailing recently.
You shouldn’t doxx people, it’s not nice.
This isn’t a state. There is no corruption. There is no need to prevent corruption on a private forum. If it happens, we leave and tell Ada she’s an asshole on the way out.
Shame and shunning are the only actual tools for social change. You can’t “teach” this PugJesus out of his bigotry. Shun him and move on with your life. Either he takes the hint or he dies alone. Either way, you did your part. The rest is up to everyone else to follow you. Lying to yourself that you or anyone can do more is just self harm
My point is that rules do nothing to “control corruption” as you put it.
In an instance like this where there’s only one active admin, the rules are fundamentally just a courtesy to the users. The owner can just do whatever they want.
It doesn’t ultimately matter what their rules are. Anti corruption laws exist IRL so they can be enforced by the government on its own members, but when the “government” is one person what are they gonna do, say “welp I made a rule against corruption, guess I gotta stop being corrupt.” The very concept of controls is silly.
Ada owns this space, so she decides how to run it. I like that because it means there’s no room for arguments over what’s technically within the rules or not. Are you transphobic/potentially harmful to the safe space? You’re out.
Writing down a million rules to explain Ada’s internal logic for banning people would be ridiculously infeasible because it’s such a personal thing. But for people who like the way that Ada runs things, it’s a nice space. Anyways, I don’t particularly want “polite transphobes” here who are capable of following the rules if written out but would be horribly transphobic otherwise.
EDIT: what even is “corruption” in this context? I feel like your government analogy doesn’t apply very well to this situation
Uh dude you’re supposed to code your speech for diatribes like this
Tbh I think the social pressure to talk in a cutesy voice in queer spaces comes from societal misogyny. Places like Blahaj are dominated by transfemmes, who are traumatized by masculinity and fearful of being misgendered. While all my cool trans friends are accepting of gender nonconformity, I think a lot of people don’t manage to get fully to that place even if they’re trans, because it’s a fucking lot of work. So certain trans spaces, and I don’t know if this is the majority of people on Blahaj or just you, they pressure people to act in line with traditional femininity due to their trauma and fear, reproducing the conditions of the patriarchy like a child who was beaten becoming a violent parent.
I’m butch and I’m not going to stop being butch just because I’m in thigh highs and plushies land.
You rather missed my point i fear.
I was intimating this was a bad faith post
Yeah, I got that, but the only coding I’m aware of on Blahaj is the cutesy voice thing. Which I didn’t think was enforced until right now. I figured you thought I must be a cis man because I don’t talk cute, and you were pointing out I didn’t sound trans which makes me sound like the outsider you think I am. Did I misunderstand your reading?
I admin the place. Femininity and I have a strained relationship. It’s not something I’m drawn to, and when I perform it, it feels like a performance, rather than an expression of an internal need or desire. I don’t wear earrings, I don’t wear makeup, I don’t do my nails, and my legs go months without seeing a razor
Which is to say, the pressure you’re describing, the relationship with femininity that you see? For most trans fem folk, unlike me (and perhaps you), it genuinely is an expression of something an internal, a way of expressing something that they haven’t been able for most of their lives. Every culture, even subcultures, have their own norms, and their own ways of connecting and sharing. For the trans fem community, that often looks like joyous embracing of femininity. And finally, most trans spaces are biased towards people who are more recently out, for whom everything is new and exciting, and for whom, joyous embracing of femininity is new, and a chance to explore something that hasn’t been available to them until recently.
And for those of us that don’t really “get” femininity like that, navigating spaces that celebrate it can be challenging, but that’s just how it is. I’m no more going to stop people celebrating femininity than I am going to tell folks they can’t be butch. What we can do is create spaces and niches within the bigger spaces that make room for other needs too. If need to connect with other butch trans fems, make a community, and advertise it, and you will find us :)
I’m not sure I get your logic for how transphobes wouldn’t be transphobic if they understood the rules. Anti-lgbt behavior is very clearly listed as an example of not okay behavior within the guidelines. This is a safe space and anyone who needs to read some comprehensive incredibly detailed ruleset to act cordial won’t read that ruleset in the first place. The guidelines as is seems to work just fine with only transphobes complaining as far as I can tell.
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I mean, i’m friggin’ asd with terminal foot in mouth disease and haven’t even run into a potential warning. The “rules” are basically don’t be a dickhole.
Transphobes getting mad and sealioning about “rules” is not pointless drama because it accomplishes the goal of keeping those people out.
Literal rules can be designed or twisted to undermine the fundamental goals of those rules. It creates lawyers focused on rhetoric over morals; lawyers trying to find a way to get away with the very things the rules were supposed to prevent. Words have no meaning so long as they can be abused to accomplish what they want. This is how fascism is so easily able to overtake liberal democratic systems and how powerful interests rig the state in their favor.
Anyhow, most of the drama comes from people like you who care more about semantics than having queer people feel safe and secure. If you want to help banned transphobes overcome their bigotry, find a way where you can do that off blahaj. That’s how you can actually achieve your goals without relying on Ada to do it. When many of them inevitably refuse to change, then you can feel secure in knowing that most of this “drama” is bad faith bigotry. Complaining here is a waste of effort for accomplishing what you supposedly want.
Complaining here is a waste of effort for accomplishing what you supposedly want.
Making Blahaj a safer place for trans people with less drama? I can’t do that on Blahaj?
I read most of the other comments and didn’t reply because I don’t want to start a ton of arguments, but your comment stood out to me as making a lot of assumptions about what I want that I don’t understand.
This is actually a great example of why I’m not a huge fan of Blahaj’s guidelines. You’re trying to use your sense of cognitive empathy to figure out how I think. And the guidelines say empathy is good. But I don’t like it. You’re making mistakes, and I’d rather you didn’t try to psychoanalyse me. I want you to empathize with me less, please. You haven’t read enough of what I have to say to make accurate guesses at the level you’re trying to. It’s too early for the amount of empathy you’re pointing at me.
One of the reasons I created this post is because I assume Ada doesn’t like being psychoanalysed by internet people either. This post is a warning that the current system leads to lots of amateur psychoanalysis. It’s unpleasant for me, I’d assume it would be unpleasant for her too.
“Psychoanalyze” you with “cognitive empathy”? Those mighty fancy words make me suspect that you’re either grasping for straws, or just trying to waste my time.
Other people having a special interest in science doesn’t make you dumb. Science is actually very cool, fun to learn about, and important for understanding the world and other people. You don’t have to treat it like a scary thing.
Your psychology “education” clearly comes from someone like Jordan Peterson or Sam Harris, so I’m not too worried
To be honest this sounds similar to a critique that general laws are weak because they rely on the subjective evaluation of judges.
For example, the famous quote “I know it when I see it” by a U.S. Supreme Court Justice on the threshold of what is obscenity.
Just as we rely on judges to interpret laws and apply them fairly and reasonably, we rely on moderators to be reasonable in how they enforce the rules.
Like obscenity, it is hard to capture a set of necessary and sufficient conditions that can define transphobia or homophobia.
Even if we tried to come up with a long list of rules to create more transparency, there is a principle of good legislation that “hard cases make bad law,” meaning laws should intentionally be written in a general way aimed at the average case, and not written based on exceptional cases.
While it might feel more transparent to engage in making many explicit rules to cover every case of what is transphobic and bannable, it might also just make a mess and add no clarity.
In our case we would not want to write rules that cover every exceptional way that transphobes might behave that might get them banned, especially if doing so makes it harder for moderators to ban transphobes.
Instead it is better to have a single, simple rule that bans transphobia and let the moderators make judgements about what counts.
That said, I understand the desire for transparency - I wouldn’t mind if there were something separate from the rules that illustrate some examples of behavior that would be considered rule violations, much like how famous cases help set precedent and create a kind of record of how judgements have happened in the past and so you can get a sense of how the rules will be applied to future behavior.
But I believe the moderator logs are already open, and it sounds like you already knew the people who were banned and were complaining were transphobes - which I assume you know by looking at the modlogs or by their behavior.
So, is the issue that the transphobes were not obviously transphobes to others (so they pulled the wool over the eyes of others)? Is the idea that making more salient what they were banned for would help with this situation?
I wouldn’t mind if there were something separate from the rules that illustrate some examples of behavior that would be considered rule violations
Examples are listed in sidebar too!
Ah, good point - I don’t really feel your rules are too ambiguous. I can somewhat understand a rigid mindset for rule-following (which is maybe unrelated to OP’s concerns, and is more about how I am relating to their request), so admittedly what I had in mind was more like a list of very specific examples of violations, maybe links to modlogs where users were banned for what they said, that act as examples for each category of violation.
It’s overkill and probably not that helpful, but it is one way I could imagine a way of creating the kind of transparency OP wants without creating a bunch of very specific and rigid rules. That said, it sounds like OP could come up with their own list of those things themselves - AFAIK modlogs are public, so anyone could comb through them and build a kind of taxonomy of rule violations that way.
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trolls aren’t going to not troll just because there are well defined rules, in fact in can have the opposite effect, trolls using the rules as a weapon in their trolling.
in some of your comments you talk about checks and balances in terms of governance. well lemmy is not a democracy plain and simple, server owners have full control, and this is a feature not a bug. having full control means that you can abuse your power sure, but echo chambers aren’t fun without people to troll, and the open nature of the fediverse means people will go wherever they like best. and for what it’s worth the vibe here is better than anywhere else on lemmy in my experience.
and as for your last point, this space is not intended for transphobes to better themselves, it is meant as a place for trans people to feel safe. if a troll comes here and betters themselves somehow, great, but that’s not the goal of this place. we’re here because we’re sick of having cis het normative being the standard, and we wanna be ourselves, not conform to the straights and what they want us to be.
[it] can have the opposite effect, trolls using the rules as a weapon in their trolling.
I agree, I think the most likely outcome would be that the rules would be weaponized, used to try to argue that their particular kind of transphobia wasn’t covered and it’s unfair to ban them because it wasn’t specifically cited, etc.
EDIT:
this space is not intended for transphobes to better themselves, it is meant as a place for trans people to feel safe
I keep wondering if it’s worth having a separate instance for an /r/AskTransgender kind of community for people with questions and to help cis people engage in dialogue and learn more about trans folks.
While it’s an unmitigated good to have safe spaces (esp. since there are so few for trans folks), I personally love to torture myself by talking to trans-naive or even transphobic folks, and would love to help well-intended people learn and grow if they are interested (even if realistically, that’s not how most of those interactions go, lol). Obviously this isn’t the place for that, I just wish there were a sort of border zone where those kinds of interactions could happen.
