What’s Going On With 196, Or, Why We Did What We Did
What’s Going On With 196, Or, Why We Did What We Did
TL;DR: We tried to move the community because of moderatorial concerns, but fumbled how we went about doing so.
First and Foremost:
We'd like to formally apologize for springing this on you all out of nowhere, and for taking so long to respond to the backlash. With retrospect, we understand that we should have notified you all beforehand to create an opportunity to give us feedback. We understand that a lot of respect and trust was lost, and we expect it'll take a lot of work and a lot of time before we can earn it back, but we would be grateful if y’all gave us that chance.
What happened, and why?
The primary issue that incited this was because we don't fully agree with the admin's moderation policies. By and large they do a great job and align with us on mod actions, but there have been several cases where we strongly disagreed, and our choices were overruled.
For example, 2 months ago, Kolanaki reached out to us via email and said they were banned from 196 for “playing the victim” and asked us why we banned him, but we didn’t. Moss talked to them and realized that the ban was unjust after reviewing the comment he was banned for. If he had never contacted us, we wouldn't have known about the ban, and they would have still thought we banned them.
There were a few similar events in a short time frame, leading to a few posts/comments in the community about the heavier modding policies. It's possible some posts/comments were misunderstood by Ada, or she interpreted things differently than we would have, but it led to some bans that we felt were indeed heavy-handed, and would not violate our rules in even the most uncharitable of interpretations. We have found that this is an ongoing trend when it comes to moderation of our community from the Admins. We oppose this because it leads to many users who otherwise mean well ending up alienated and removed for reasons that are frankly completely unfair. This is, in our opinion, counter to what we set out to build in our community.
It was made clear to us that it was their instance, and that we didn’t have a say in who would be banned and what would be removed. This is, of course, perfectly valid. It’s their instance, therefore it's up to them to decide what goes, but we no longer wanted to be the ones seen as accountable for moderation actions we have no control over. For this reason, we wanted to transfer out of lemmy.blahaj.zone. As much as we wanted to stay in the LGBTQ instance, we couldn't come to an agreement with Ada, so we talked to her about transferring out and got her blessing.
How we messed up
The most major failing on our part is, of course, that we didn’t announce the migration beforehand. Besides that, we also didn’t explain why we made the choices we made and only gave very vague answers. We avoided sharing the justification for our actions because we didn’t want to cause drama and/or exacerbate the situation, but this lack of substantiating our actions only caused the situation to worsen.
Going forward (if we may), we won't make the same mistakes again. From now on, we will attempt to be as transparent as possible.
FAQ
Why we chose lemmy.world
Many people have been asking about why we moved to lemmy.world. It already hosts the majority of large communities and besides this uncomfortable level of centralization, it has also been somewhat controversial as of late. Despite that, we still chose lemmy.world due to the following reasons:
- Moss's communication with the admins, and their agreement to let us moderate the community as we see fit. Ruud, after looking over our rules, agreed to abstain from taking admin action to curate or otherwise moderate our community, unless absolutely necessary.
- The instance is large enough to support traffic without performance issues (other instances like lemm.ee, sh.itjust.works, and lemmy.dbzer0.com would have been fine too), and the instance has a certain degree of guaranteed longevity.
- Moss was given a list that was kindly made by the lemmy.world people as a part of our transfer detailing those who are banned on Blahaj.zone, but not on Lemmy.world, making moderation discrepancies much easier to clean up post-transfer.
- Our agreement with Ruud predated the now-rescinded policy changes
- It was, to the best of our knowledge, the most federated-with instance. We have come to understand that this is not necessarily the case.
Why not have another team take over the original 196?
This is a similar situation with what happened over on Reddit. 196 mods didn't agree with admins and were eventually replaced (difference here is that we were not forced out, but chose to leave). As Lemmy was a large gathering spot for people fleeing Reddit, we felt it was better to try to keep the community together and move together. Having another team take over splits the community. The more fragmentation there is, the less longevity and volume of community each skew will have.
What about the possibility of more trolls, neoliberals, bad actors, sealions, and transphobes on Lemmy.world?
Another huge issue was that the mods and the community were not on the same page regarding lemmy.world, their admins, and their policies. We understand the concern about trolls/bad-actors/transphobes, but we feel well-equipped to handle these issues. In addition, we've been in contact with the lemmy.world admins for a while now, and they've assured us that they'd allow us to moderate our community however we saw fit. All this being said, we still failed to communicate that to the community before taking action, which has undermined any assurances that we have given after the fact. We cannot apologize enough for that.
What about the people who are using instances that are defederated from lemmy.world (e.g. Beehaw)
This is an unfortunate issue that we were not aware of at the time of transfer. We're not sure what the solution is, but want to make our community as accessible as possible. Community solutions are welcome.
Did you migrate because of X? (addressing speculation)
- We didn’t migrate due to anything related to neopronouns
- We didn’t migrate due to us supposedly not wanting to use blahaj.zone lemmy accounts
- We didn’t migrate due to us having friends who were banned from lemmy.blahaj.zone
- We didn’t migrate due to us wanting to make the space less queer/leftist/etc
- We didn’t migrate due to us getting secretly ousted by the Blahaj admin team
What now?
Well, we're not sure. We could go back on our decision and stay on blahaj.zone, continue on lemmy.world, do both, or try something else. Truth be told, we don't know what to do. For now, we will leave the comments open to civil community discourse, and choose our course of action from there.
Sincerely, Qaz, Rmbp, Greembow, A_Very_big_Fan, Peachy, and Moss.
I think what brother's me most here is the entitlement and contempt displayed for your own community. You were told repeatedly that nobody wanted this, and yet you doubled down saying "We know what's best". You acted like the community belongs to the moderation team, and they can do with it as they please.
It took a mass exodus for you to finally seriously consider other viewpoints. I don't think that's an acceptable way for any moderation team to treat their own community.
That's not something that can simply be fixed by an apology. It's something that would require some significant introspection.
That’s not something that can simply be fixed by an apology. It’s something that would require some significant introspection.
The whole team should resign
Tbh I’m happy with the new onehundredninetysix com, I’d prefer if these mods and anyone that supports their decisions move to .world
Really? All of them? Personally, I'd be happy enough taking no more than two heads for this. Whatever the case, I think the main priority should be adding new mods whose attitudes are more in line with the comm.
Anyway, I'm sure there's stuff that's happened in private that I'm unaware of, but it seems like qaz has been pretty level-headed about the whole thing, Rmbp, despite approving of the move and thus being generally out of touch with the community claims (believably, IMO) to have had no knowledge of, let alone input over the process prior to the call being made, greembow hasn't posted anything in a year, and Peachy has wisely kept pretty quiet about it, with a grand total of two (one if we're not counting duplicates) pretty neutral comments in threads about the mod team's decision.
Yes, all this and the fact that the move was months in the making but had almost zero* communication with the broader community really just paints a picture of a thoroughly dysfunctional mod team acting in a bubble, but from what little I understand I'd argue this particular fiasco was done mostly on the initiative of the "head honcho of 196" and A_Very_Big_Fan, who made the announcements and were the ones to double down on it in the face of community pushback.
* a month or so ago when PJ really got his knickers in a twist about not being allowed to misgender neopronoun users by LBZ's site rules one of the mods mentioned they were considering a move to dotworld and got pushback then too
I'm not sure if they deleted it or I just can't find it, but there was a post on the LW destination that said the mods talked about the near-universal, overwhelmingly negative response, and were split 2-2 on what to do: either cancel the plans, or keep going anyway. They only made this post after considering the aforementioned near-universal, overwhelmingly response a tiebreaker.
I think that really encapsulates the problem.
The primary issue that incited this was because we don't fully agree with the admin's moderation policies.
Clearly the community does though.
Which means the community is perfectly happy to continue on blahaj, its you, as the mod team, that aren't aligning with the community.
As someone who enjoys 196 (but only really participates by voting), I would just say that since you aren't aligning with the community, this isn't a community you should be moderating.
Make the [email protected] mods the mods of [email protected] and move on.
But the community at large doesn't know what the moderators knew, so simply stating that the community agreed with the moderation of the admin team, when the community was largely to completely unaware of the differences between the admin- and the mod-team seems unjustified. Or did you know that the admins banned certain users for content that the mod team was fine with?
The issue, to me, seems to be that the community thought the admin- and mod-teams were on the same page, so the mod-team claiming that there have been differences with the admin-team, which prompted this move seemed extremely sussy. I'm not saying that the mod-team handled the situation great, or to be more precise, their move seems to be absolutely terrible, but the community doesn't know all the facts that lead to that decision.
Irrelevant.
Also...
but the community doesn't know all the facts that lead to that decision.
And the decision was to go to .world, where recently the admin team decided trolls are to be engaged with, where misogyny, transphobia, etc happens pretty regularly and doesnt "cross the line", with their reasoning being that the admin team was too heavy handed.
If that doesnt scream "Completely out of sync with the community" to you, I don't know what would.
No matter how you look at it - the mod team is far, far removed from being on the same page as the community. That makes them the wrong mods for the community.
The community isn't something that fucking belongs to you.
How we messed up
The most major failing on our part is, of course, that we didn’t announce the migration beforehand.
No, your major failing isn't that you didn't "announce" it, it's that you didn't consult your community first. Your actions have demonstrated that you think you own the community, but communities don't belong to mods.
Moreover you have clearly spelled out that your ideological differences are because you don't want to "entertain trolls" which i can only assume means you want to ban people whose identities you deem invalid.
Frankly, get off your high horse. 196 isn't some serfdom. It was a community. You seem to have forgotten that.
I cannot stress enough how untrustworthy any of you moderators are now, because how do any of us know that in a few days or weeks or months you won't just randomly close the community and decide you're moving elsewhere. In short, I really don't care if you continue to move over, or stay on .world, or do anything else, I don't want any part of your community anymore. And I don't see how anyone else would either, but that's entirely their business
to be honest, I never trusted the mod team much for many minor things and now I dont trust u at all for this huge thing that u've been hiding for months apparently, if this community is coming back Id personally still prefer a different mod team
We could go back on our decision and stay on blahaj.zone, continue on lemmy.world, do both, or try something else.
I guess u could moderate the .world comm for the people that prefer that instance since there seems to be people that do including u, and the people that were going to mod the onehundredninetysix comm would mod this one
dbzer0 or shitjustworks would have been way better than world. There's just way too many assholes on world, and even if you ban everyone who is overtly malicious there's still going to be a ton of normal users who are bringing a completely different vibe/political direction than the blahaj users (I say, as a feddit.org user).
I understand two of you were mostly behind the move. Perhaps those two should step down and new mods be brought in. Kind of hard to trust you after all this.
Trust? For an internet forum? About shitposting? Where everyone's anonymous?
WTF is wrong with people
I still don't understand how you thought this unilateral decision, including squatting on the 196@LBZ name, would be received well in the community. I question the soundness of your judgment.
Hold a vote of no confidence. Let the community you tried to screw over decide if the moderators should stay or resign.
i don't really accept the apology. 196 is not the mod team and you clearly do not have the capacity to maintain a community. please leave and do not come back to LBZ. i enjoying having my funny little people on my phone here and you have not been very funny so kindly stop the car because you are an underage driver. let someone who does not hit curbs or go up a one way street take the wheel thanks also please let the door hit you on the way out
You goofed up and lost the community's trust, own to it and step down.
Maybe touch some grass too.
If you don’t want to mod under Ada that’s fine. Nothing is stopping you from making a spinoff community. But this is me calling for your team to step down. Hand over moderatorship. You don’t own 196 and you never did.
YEAH I THINK MAKING A SEPERATE INSTANCE FOR YOU GUYS AND KEEPING 196 UNTOUCHED WOULD BE NICE CAN WE DO THAT PLEASE
AAAA LOUD WORDS!!
WHAT?
My vote is for what I put in the original thread that was ignored multiple times.
Unlock the community, leave it as is, the problems you are mentioning as major factors in the decision simply do not matter that much to the community.
If the mod team chooses to leave and moderate somewhere else because they are sick of people assuming moderation actions done by instance admins are because of them, then they can step aside and mod a 196 community wherever they wish.
However it will be hard or impossible to undo the damage that has been done, with this comment from moss in particular being especially awful. A sentiment like that can’t just be walked back, it speaks to a moderator having little or no respect for the community and not understanding their place in it. The mods contributions are respected & appreciated, but the community is not being respected in turn.
No :)
I'm already at [email protected] and it's fun there. Not gonna go to .world
All do respect(which is none) this is the second time you have tried to forceably move this community to .world. We are collectively done with this bullshit and just leaving for [email protected] . Thank you for the good year of 2024 with some amazing memes long live onehundredninetysix
This is a similar situation with what happened over on Reddit. 196 mods didn't agree with admins and were eventually replaced (difference here is that we were not forced out, but chose to leave). As Lemmy was a large gathering spot for people fleeing Reddit, we felt it was better to try to keep the community together and move together. Having another team take over splits the community. The more fragmentation there is, the less longevity and volume of community each skew will have.
Translation: "We were scared the majority wouldn't follow us to Lemmy world unless we pseudo forced them to, and we can't imagine life without our fiefdom."
Especially considering the community already fractured with onehindrednintysix being formed
I only saw one other person mention the post that's supposedly a good example of your disagreements with adas moderation but that makes it even more clear you need to resign and leave ada was right for removing that comment it's the typical "oh woe is me I just asked innocent questions and the angry trans people try to paint me as the bad guy" trans people don't get annoyed if you ask them a genuinely innocent question about their experience but they will get annoyed if you ask them "just innocent questions" where it's very clear what your real views are and what you're really doing adas just reading between the lines and that's a good thing that's how you avoid the sealioning that .world would've brought along and you say oh they reversed that decision and you would be allowed to ban sealions and you can mod how you like and .world won't interfere but it makes it very clear you wouldn't ban them anyway you agree with the .world admins anyway just leave you clearly don't represent the community in the slightest and have completely different views of how this community should be run hand over the moderation to the onehundredninetysix mod team and go do whatever you want on .world
I was thinking the same. If this is their best example of Ada going over the mod team's heads, how could this possibly justify an instance move?
Yeah they didn't show previous comments (the actually relevant context), just the one where the user bargains.
Yeah, the lack of context on that is rather telling, I think, and a sign that the mods don't understand what it's like to be persistently deligitimised or why that could be the final straw. Go Ada, you're a great and caring admin.
Agreed especially on the comment as a showcase of „mod differences“.
I think this just rather corroborates Ada‘s statement of how there were multiple reports the mods did not follow up on and how Ada had to eventually always do it.
So even with a good faith reading I do not see how this is a problematic ban and not just a common recurring topic which this instance has always protected us from, which is the whole reason I am on this instance.
While I understand that the „modding differences“ were the reason you aimed to migrate, I as a user do not remotely see the benefits of a move when it was Ada that stepped up to do moderation. Especially if as Ada mentioned our community had reported these instances, a move would just signify a deterioration of our experience.
I have to reiterate that I have always appreciated Ada‘s decisions. The stepping up and sheltering many of us on the Reddit exodus and providing me with one of the few places nowadays I can go to and expect a civil, homely and communal experience.
why not open the original blahaj zone 196, and let ada appoint new mods? if yall want to move and have your heart set on that, thats fine, but its clear that there are many people who would lose access to their favorite community if the original 196 remains locked. having multiple instances of the same community is by no means a bad thing, it simply gives more reach for our communities, and more options for every user.
the whole point of the fediverse is that us users can make experiences we like for eachother. its very clear that many people like the way things are, yall dont have to, but we do. its a community because of everybody who participates, lets try and build communities where our queer and trans friends can feel safe and at home. nothing is lost if we have two communities, only gained. let the nature of the fediverse and federation decide how things play out, not a small group of moderators making unilateral decisions for everybody.
having multiple instances of the same community is by no means a bad thing
also theres already different 196s through the internet like on reddit, tumblr, here, etc all with their own differences and I think thats pretty cool :3
There are considering unlocking it: https://lemmy.world/comment/14570102
Thanks for the info. When I got online today, I was very confused at what had gone down; I appreciate people such as yourself who have made it easier to follow current events in this tiny corner of the internet
Re: let Ada appoint new mods
Because the problem was the admins, not the mods. Ada was banning users without telling the mods. Read the post linked that got a ban.
this is a quote from ada
"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."
the issue is not ada banning users without telling mods, it was mods not doing their job and ada stepping in to take action when no one else would.
i read the post that was used as an example of adas supposed overreach, but that commenter was basically saying that cis people cant be allys because trans people arent nice enough to them, reeks of transphobia to me.
But the community doesn't have a problem with the admin, the mods have a problem.
And instead of leaving, they thought they could take the whole community with them without asking
Lemmy.world is a rancid instance, and I won't be joining you. I trust and respect Ada far more than the mod team here. Historically, you've allowed so many bad-faith actors here. I just returned, but I know in the past I saw at least one regular here whose alt was banned for queerphobia. He'd constantly stir the pot, and you did nothing. RIP 196, I guess. You'll learn why this was a bad decision, mark my words.
There are reasons beehaw defederates from lemmy.world
RIP 196, I guess
Nah the community's still going: [email protected].
Thank you very much! I feel joy!
nice. I'm outta here
Why do we have to have to move to one with a shitty name, if there's enough support why couldn't @[email protected] give us control of this one. That is where all the people and action are already. Why should we have to further fragment.
Yeah lemmy.world is a horrible instance, they protect and unban trolls, transphobes, and even in one case, a person advocating for CSAM legalization WTF? This is a horrible decision and I'll never stand by them or support them. This destroys any amount of good faith I once had in the team here. I say they should be replaced and we continue here like nothing happened. blahaj.zone is an amazing instance and I for one appreciate them being as harsh on bigots and their apologists as humanly possible.
I intend to migrate to [email protected]
However, in my opinion it's a shame it had to come to this.
Quite a big point missing here
Apparently none of the 196 moderators were actively checking the modlog?
Meaning instance moderator could just see a modlog appearing, and no-one dealing with it.
Moss, I know you can do better than painting the picture one-sided. It's probably pretty stressful now, and I very much understand it.
We all check the modlog regularly. I do it ~5 days a week, on top of reading literally every post and the majority of the comments while I'm at it. The problem is federation, because it prevents us from seeing a complete log of the reports from any given instance.
And you know what? Fun fact!! LBZ was one of the first instances I ever signed up for. So perhaps if LBZ was the right instance to check reports from, it would have been super helpful for both parties if they accepted my application. I'm still waiting two years later.
I'm sorry if I sound frustrated. It's because I am. Not at you, I just don't know where else to say my peace. Thanks for listening.
The problem is federation, because it prevents us from seeing a complete log of the reports from any given instance.
You don't see any reports from a non-local account.
So perhaps if LBZ was the right instance to check reports from, it would have been super helpful for both parties if they accepted my application. I’m still waiting two years later.
You never bothered to ask for support on [email protected] ? Admins could have solved that in a few hours.
So you are telling us that even now you don't have a functional Blahaj account?
Apparently none of the 196 moderators were actively checking the modlog
I actively checked for reports, but despite that, there have been 4 times since joining where Ada has sent a message in the 196 matrix chat because of outstanding reports. A large part of this was because resolving reports doesn't federate. You can see a report, resolve it, send someone a DM for followup questions, and it will still show up as unresolved on blahaj.zone in the meantime. I log in with my blahaj account to ensure it's marked as resolved there too, but not always immediately.
I refuse to believe that six individuals can be so enormously out of touch with the community they (used to) mod… what’s the real story?
The actions and attitude presented by the mod team are inexcusable. We have already taken our toys and left. It's time to step down.
I think you should leave this community to a new team and leave for lw ✌️
my honest opinion on the whole matter, and this is as someone who really doesn't care either way. You should give up on the community here. I don't mean that in a mean way, I mean you chose to do a decision that was drastically unfavorable to the majority of the current community on this instance it seems.
Regardless of intentions, your long past the turning point of being able to backtrack on your choice and re-enter the community just reading the comments here tells you that honestly your best bet is probably to just continue with your plan at this point, even if you did decide to unlock the community here it's clear that you've lost all trust in the majority of the users that are still participating on this post, so they'll just stay in the new community instead of returning.
In the words of Kenny Rogers, You have to know when to hold them, know when to fold them, know when to walk away and know when to run.
This is a clear "know when to run" instance. There is no favorable outcome for you on this community you won't gain that trust back and there are far too many people still pissed about this issue, you are better off continuing the plan on LW and just let the people who didn't agree with it stay on the new community they made (or unlock the old community but you have already been pretty solid on that one)
Thats just my input as a lurking third party.
edit: looks like my feed was outdated, I just got the unlocked post, I still stand firm on my opinion on it though.
edit 2: shouldn't have second guessed myself, guess I had the name right the first time lmao
That's not a Johnny Cash song. "The gambler" by Kenny Rogers
I had Kenny Rogers originally, but when i second guessed myself and google searched it both names came up, they both sang it it seems. I used Johnny Cash cause figured the name might be easier to recognize XD I went ahead and changed it back again.
I'm not very involved in the community either, but I would say though that community trust isn't a binary thing, and all people, even leaders, are allowed to make mistakes. From a pure political perspective, I don't think there will be enough of a hostile response form the users to start any significant fragmentation of the community, which is the main concern when leaders lose trust from the community.
Rmbp
Is this supposed to be me? Sorry, but I don't write a single word of this.__.
Not that I disagree, but I have not written or read anything before posting this. But nevertheless I thank you for the Update :D
The Feddit.de Instance and therefore my feddit.de Account is broken beyond repair. If anyone can just kick him out, this would be really nice since I can't even log in anymore.
What happend to feddit.de?
The whole Feddit.de instance died under mysterious circumstances.
The owner of the instance left for a work trip to Southeast Asia and never came back—at least, he never came back online. Then the instance started having technical troubles, which we couldn’t fix without the owner. After continued degeneration, we moved all communities to feddit.org. I can’t even log into my Feddit.de account anymore because it’s so broken.
Even the domain Feddit.de is broken.
Remember the current Lemmy community was made and populated by people who jumped ship from one site to another due to site drama so we uh, might be really easy to get going.
Still No
Reposting this since you said you were going to answer questions in the [email protected] post but this one is still unanswered:
If the move had nothing to do with pronouns and you’ll continue to enforce rules about neopronouns, how do you feel about one of the LW community team mods making statements like this about them? Do you feel confident that they will always let you enforce neopronoun rules if they decide that it’s hurting LW?
They're not a LW admin, so they have no influence or control over us there. On top of that, we addressed this in the first question, reasons #1 and #4.
I guess I’m not sure what a “Community Team” member does, then, if they have no control or input on how LW policies are carried out in communities. I can’t find an explanation anywhere here so maybe someone can point me in the right direction.
Well spotted
so this only gets undone once there is another community created on .LBZ that starts getting traction and your new community on .world risks becoming irrelevant, along with your relative power in the situation..
lol 🍿 honestly hope the instance just goes back to being a trans instance, hurry up and leave
In an unrelated note, I still don't know what 196 means and at this point I'm afraid to ask.
From what I understand, back on Reddit it was a subreddit that had only 1 rule: If you found your way to that subreddit somehow, you had to post something before you left. A lot of people titled their post "rule" or included the word "rule" for that reason.
As for why 196, i believe that was the dorm room number of the founder of that subreddit. I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong.
This is correct, but the original was 195. They closed it I think either because it got bigger than they intended or because they were graduating or something, so the successor community 196 was made.
First, I want to thank you for this post and taking accountability for the mistakes made with this.
I'll also acknowledge that not being able to see who performed moderator actions can create misunderstandings like you describe.
My own suggestion would be along the following lines:
-
Reopen this instance's community on an interim basis. I'll acknowledge I don't know what implications this has for the .world community, and how that would need to be managed.
-
Put a user poll up about whether users want this community to be migrated to .world. Keep it up for a reasonable amount of time (say a week).
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Honour the results. If the vote says keep this community here, commit to moderating it here. If there are members of the team who feel they cannot do this, allow them to step down without any flack. You're all volunteers - if it's too much for someone, it's too much. That's fair and doesn't take away from their prior efforts and support.
-
If the community votes to stay here, work with the blahaj admins again on how to balance the needs of the community v. the fact that the community wants you to use their resources. Yes, I know you have done this already. But two things jump to mind first:
a) there seems to be a resource problem re: addressing some kinds of complaints/reports in this community in a timely manner. This might be offset by more mods to help out - I know in the wake of this, many have expressed interest in volunteering.
b) perhaps a compromise can be met re: a very basic identification of where a moderation action came from - a simple tag [A] for admin, [CM] for Community Moderator. This would reduce any confusion as to where the ban came from, and with it the rationale. I'm not suggesting this would resolve all tensions, but may help manage their worst impacts.
This seems reasonable to me, but I will acknowledge I am not in your position when offering these.
Edit to acknowledge that while the above was well intended, it looks laughably slow/too little too late now. But I think these might be useful for someone's reference down the road if they consider migration of other particularly large communities down the road, so leaving it here.
Put a user poll up about whether users want this community to be migrated to .world. Keep it up for a reasonable amount of time (say a week).
I don't even get why locking the Blahaj version down should be an option. Mods can discuss opening another version of 196 elsewhere, but locking the current one down? Why?
My only thought about locking it down if there's overwhelming support for migrating to .world (which I think is very unlikely) is to give time for people who still wouldn't want to follow the mods to sort out what they want to do, while stemming the flow of stuff while BLZ 196 is unmoderated to reduce load on the admins (which seems to have been one key part of the problems).
It's a big community, and I could see a jump in malicious activity while a) a new mod team is being sorted out, and b) importantly, people work with the admins to say "K, the old mod team's approach caused some problems for you. As manager of the resource we want to use, how can we manage that better to reopen 196". That and maybe at that point, people staying might prefer a clean break to onehundredninetysix.
The intent would not to keep 196 locked permanently the way I'm thinking about it unless folks want to change to onehundredninetysix - probably would be like a day or less. I could 100% be making much out of nothing re: transfer to a new mod team, though, particularly given how this went down and the pool of potential moderators that announced interest already.
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What is a sealion in this context?
What about the possibility of more trolls, neoliberals, bad actors, sealions, and transphobes on Lemmy.world?
A sealion is a type of troll who will try to "debate" you simply to derail a conversation and/or wind you up. https://wondermark.com/c/1062 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
It is closely related to JAQing off. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_Asking_Questions
To me, it sound like the best option for the mod team would be a it's own, dedicated instance just for 196.
That would be nice, and we did want to but it's expensive and none of us can afford it.
lmfao at the people going
the community doesn't belong to you!!
then step the fuck up and be a moderator or open your own /c/. stop whining to the people doing free labor for you. on a meme board. "lost the community's trust" lmaooo
Sorry, I think there's a bit of miscommunication here. I'm one of the people who made that comment and I meant community in the people sense, and not in the subreddit sense. They can take their subreddit and move it, shred it, burn it, paint it blue, whatever. The point is, they seem to think of the people using the space as something that belongs to them, and that they can just take those people wherever they please. In reality, they have to rely on people following them, they can't just pack them up and move them, and it's very apparent that it's a very unpopular decision and clear that no one is going to follow them to world.
I'm just upset at the arrogance of them pretending they're doing this for the good of the users when they asked no one. What makes a community great is the people in it, not the people "running" it (using the term loosely, as them actually having to do things is the reason they wanted to move). If they didn't like it, they could've just passed it off to other people, but instead decided to try to pack us into a suitcase and leave.
wasn't vagueposting about you, saw the same comment coming from a few accounts
also mods can pretend they "own" or control a community all they want, but at the end of the day all they control is a board. people will just move wherever they please, as demonstrated by /c/onehundredninetysix and [gestures] everyone in this thread.
They just did [email protected]
ik i already subscribed
