I saw this discussion brought up on a different thread and I though I’d get some more opinions on the matter.
The Beehaw community guidelines describe a place that’s meant to be safe, friendly and encourages people to discuss their ideas in good faith. For the most part I feel like this community lives up to that; users of this instance are generally thoughtful with their responses. However, I don’t feel like that level of quality extends to the users who post from other instances. Responses from those users are more likely to pendantic, overly argumentative, and unhelpful.
Now I may just be an elitist fuck so I’d like to hear your opinions on this. Does Beehaw benefit from federation? Do the community guidelines even matter if they don’t apply to many of the people who engage with this instance? Am I just looking for a reason to complain?
EDIT: This post isn’t a request for Beehaw to defederate btw. I just wanted to discuss the negatives of federation and what we can do to alleviate them :)
Well the moderating is part of the problem. Moderators that delete or restrict comments that aren’t “nice” drives those people that have been moderated into groups that reaffirm their beliefs, however dangerous they may be.
I take a view that even if something isn’t “nice” it should never be moderated unless it advocates for violence against a group or puts endangers someone’s privacy. In life we may find ourselves in conversations or with people we can’t censor or shout down so why would we do it online?
People may ask why I’m still on beehaw and the fact is that I don’t agree with many of the viewpoints advocated here but I have to practice what I preach. If I run away from beehaw and don’t contribute then the community gets sucked in further to group think on a specific viewpoint.
To be clear, you’re explicitly stating here that you are sticking around, despite not agreeing with the ethos, in order to stick to your own ethos, which is the following:
Is that a correct read of what you are saying? Or am I completely off the mark here?
Yes I do disagree with the moderation policy here. However, just because I disagree with it doesn’t mean that I intend to be disrespectful to any individual on this server.
I stay because at least the mods are active, get involved in discussions, and care to be transparent with how operations are run for the instance (the monthly financial reports are great).
Beehaw is my first experience with Lemmy, have I liked all of it? No but the fact that it is federated (as all Lemmy instances are) and transparent, which doesn’t happen for all instances, is refreshing.
Thank you for responding, I think it’s fine to disagree with how we think we can help to solve the problem of toxicity on the internet, so long as you’re still agreeing to be nice when you’re on here.