We’re looking to put together some more detailed rules on what should and should not be submitted to the instance. Things such as, but not exclusively:
- What types of message you would always like to see removed on sight
- Whether there are any types of message which should be left up (borderline, with strong corrections from the community)
- Where the line is drawn on political views (and how gray areas should be treated)
I’ll make no bones: Moderating uk/ukpol has been a learning experience for me.
I’ve learned that there often isn’t much difference between “leaving a comment up because the community has done an excellent job highlighting flaws” and “I should have removed this hours ago, the community shouldn’t have to do this”.
As there isn’t a way to mod-tag a post, inaction on negative posts can reflect badly on the instance as a whole.
Having some clear guidelines/rules will hopefully simplify things.
And more admins should mean that if a report isn’t looked at, someone can review it as an escalation.
I’ve also enabled the slur filters. And we’ll be listening to see if anything needs adding/removing (the template had swearing blocked :| )
So…Answers on a postcard, I guess!
Personally hate speech should not be allowed. By hate speech I mean anything that promotes discrimination, hostility, or violence towards individuals or groups. I’m sure someone can word it better.
Also we should naturally not allow breaking of the law. No, i don’t mean Piracy which is debatable, but clear cut things like discussions related to say cases that are currently in court.
Everything else is fair game. even though i may disagree with it. The community through vote based regulation will need to manage the rest.
Discussion of current court cases is not illegal - unless that discussion would be prejudicial to the outcome as I understand it, and if we are going to prohibit any discussion of them, I think that is a fairly crucial distinction. I really don’t think that we should be imposing blanket bans on any discussion.
It’s often a fine line between discussing the case, and people making statements like “X was bothering underage people off-stage at Z”
Yes, but then do we really want to ban comments along the line of 'did you hear what the judge said today in that case where climate protesters are taking the government to court?".
Surely we can be nuanced enough to avoid the one without banning the other?
Things like this are why I was keen to make this post. I’d like to have lots of community opinions before drafting up guidelines.
And hopefully those guidelines (maybe with a few examples) would be enough to keep people on the right side of things.
That’s getting into libel territory and it is tricky as we may be expected to keep the evidence for prosecution.
There’s also injunctions and super-injunctions, which are difficult to police as, by their nature, we don’t know what they are about.
In all such cases, probably be guided by what the papers report as they’ll have run it past their lawyers. You’d hope.
Your comment on papers is a good one. I’ve always liked rules like “would you say it to your grandma” or “would you publish this with your full name on the article”. (Not exactly like that, but you get my drift)
what about drugs? what about drugs that are only illegal in some places like marijuana and alcohol?
I think we need to dissect that legal line a little more.
Or speeding… Would you be banished for discussing driving at 21 mph in the new Welsh 20 mph zones?
Promotes discrimination where? Just say if someone was participating in a religion-based discussion about certain gender roles in religious institutions, wouldn’t that be much different than someone saying “women should be banned from driving”?