There is now an Actually Infuriating community on Lemmy! Post things that are beyond just mildly infuriating. It’s only mildly infuriating that someone didn’t make this sooner!
Everyone tries to reinvent the wheel over and over again. They get excited about starting a new community, they have very lax rules such as “be nice” and then are worried about banning and/or changing the rules because they don’t want to be perceived as inconsistent, fickle, or otherwise unfair. Then it crumbles or they burn out.
Prescriptive rules work for communities with narrow missions (askhistorians for example) but then they need to ban and remove content constantly as well (hence their post removal rate and comment graveyards and very large, expert mod team).
No you need broad rule sets and a mentality of “no one gets to hold this community hostage.”
“be nice” is a broad rule set. You need rule sets with clear expectations. If your rules are clear, then you won’t feel guilty for banning someone, and they don’t have a good excuse when they appeal. If you choose vague rules, people will submit perfectly good appeals which you have to turn down, and you’ll waste everyone’s time.
A ruleset is a machine. Video games are machines made out of rules, and so are board games. Board games just run on brains instead of microchips. A legal code is exactly the same, just more important. Make a good machine and moderation won’t even require your conscious mind. You can breeze through it according to the process without expending any mental energy.
Spend mental energy judging every situation individually, and you’ll either burn out or become a tyrant. Break your rules, and you either break your community or break yourself.
“Be nice” is not a broad rule set it’s no rule set unless you plan on truly banning people and removing comments for hostility.
There’s a line between broad and aspirational.
I ran a 2mill person sub with 5 other moderators. We removed probably 30% of what was posted. We used auto moderator, a few specific rules (“no list posts”) and a few broader rules (“no rants”). It ran great because we were ruthless, frankly. We also did not burn out because we did not get bogged down in fights with people or constant discussion with each other about what was or wasn’t rule breaking the rules.
Good. Moderators need limits on their powers. You should need to make the cage bigger in order to deal with the edge cases. And when you make the cage bigger, the community should have an opportunity to question that. That’s anarchy. That’s responsibility.
It’s better to have an unmoderated community full of trolls than a community with tyrant mods. That’s the same philosophy as “it’s better that a hundred guilty go free than one innocent is imprisoned”. Obviously a community with good mods is best, but if mods can’t follow their own rules, they shouldn’t follow no rules.
The entire point of making a community and being a moderator is to establish a rule set and to use the tools available to you to run the community. If you don’t like how they do things, go make your own and run it in your idyllic, naïve way.
Askhistorians works because it’s ruthless. Yet do you see people complaining about “power tripping mods” over there? No, it’s considered one of the best subs if not the best. The quality is virtually unmatched. And that’s because they have a very firm, decisive hand. This whole “power tripping Jannie” caricature is simply propagated by people who get banned from communities for not following basic rules and etiquette. If you don’t like the community, leave Make your own. It’s very easy to do that on Lemmy, Reddit, wherever you go. The best, longest lasting communities are typically heavier with their moderation than the baseline. And the ones that are too lenient barely make it a year.
![[META] Actually Infuriating Community](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/c10a5de4-1d27-4398-ae65-45fb0230926f.webp){kind=link}
This is why so many moderators fail.
Everyone tries to reinvent the wheel over and over again. They get excited about starting a new community, they have very lax rules such as “be nice” and then are worried about banning and/or changing the rules because they don’t want to be perceived as inconsistent, fickle, or otherwise unfair. Then it crumbles or they burn out.
Prescriptive rules work for communities with narrow missions (askhistorians for example) but then they need to ban and remove content constantly as well (hence their post removal rate and comment graveyards and very large, expert mod team).
No you need broad rule sets and a mentality of “no one gets to hold this community hostage.”
“be nice” is a broad rule set. You need rule sets with clear expectations. If your rules are clear, then you won’t feel guilty for banning someone, and they don’t have a good excuse when they appeal. If you choose vague rules, people will submit perfectly good appeals which you have to turn down, and you’ll waste everyone’s time.
A ruleset is a machine. Video games are machines made out of rules, and so are board games. Board games just run on brains instead of microchips. A legal code is exactly the same, just more important. Make a good machine and moderation won’t even require your conscious mind. You can breeze through it according to the process without expending any mental energy.
Spend mental energy judging every situation individually, and you’ll either burn out or become a tyrant. Break your rules, and you either break your community or break yourself.
“Be nice” is not a broad rule set it’s no rule set unless you plan on truly banning people and removing comments for hostility.
There’s a line between broad and aspirational.
I ran a 2mill person sub with 5 other moderators. We removed probably 30% of what was posted. We used auto moderator, a few specific rules (“no list posts”) and a few broader rules (“no rants”). It ran great because we were ruthless, frankly. We also did not burn out because we did not get bogged down in fights with people or constant discussion with each other about what was or wasn’t rule breaking the rules.
And responsible ruthlessness is only possible with robust rules.
Robust =/= prescriptive and you let everything fly that doesn’t meet those criteria. Specificity becomes a cage very quickly.
Good. Moderators need limits on their powers. You should need to make the cage bigger in order to deal with the edge cases. And when you make the cage bigger, the community should have an opportunity to question that. That’s anarchy. That’s responsibility.
It’s better to have an unmoderated community full of trolls than a community with tyrant mods. That’s the same philosophy as “it’s better that a hundred guilty go free than one innocent is imprisoned”. Obviously a community with good mods is best, but if mods can’t follow their own rules, they shouldn’t follow no rules.
The entire point of making a community and being a moderator is to establish a rule set and to use the tools available to you to run the community. If you don’t like how they do things, go make your own and run it in your idyllic, naïve way.
Askhistorians works because it’s ruthless. Yet do you see people complaining about “power tripping mods” over there? No, it’s considered one of the best subs if not the best. The quality is virtually unmatched. And that’s because they have a very firm, decisive hand. This whole “power tripping Jannie” caricature is simply propagated by people who get banned from communities for not following basic rules and etiquette. If you don’t like the community, leave Make your own. It’s very easy to do that on Lemmy, Reddit, wherever you go. The best, longest lasting communities are typically heavier with their moderation than the baseline. And the ones that are too lenient barely make it a year.
Ruthlessness is good, and responsible ruthlessness requires following through on your own intentions and the rules you created for yourself.
It’s like how Batman doesn’t kill. He decided that was the line and he sticks to it, even if it’s hard. Because he knows giving in would be worse.
I agree with this comment. I do not agree with the previous comment.