The plain and simple of it is that I’m not a good moderator. I have no idea what I’m doing. I wanted a community where people could post conservative stuff without it getting overwhelmed by lefty stuff, and then you could have discussions/arguments in the comment section. Bring to light stories that wouldn’t normally be seen on lemmy. Since that didn’t exist on lemmy, I had to do it myself.
Right now, there’s a lot of toxicity, some straight up telling people to kill themselves. My whole moderation policy was basically “So long as it isn’t a straight up slur, you could comment it”.
You’d think it’d be simple, just ban those who do that. Well, what about those who defend baby murder? I know lefties genuinely believe it isn’t, but I do. How do you tell what is horrible shit, when lefties act like horror movie monsters?
What about those who I’m like 90% sure are arguing in bad faith? I want to encourage discussions and arguments, and if I’m wrong, what then?
Me doing keyword-based moderating was a bad idea, but I am at a loss of how to do better, without breaking what this sub was supposed to be about.
I need ideas.
How should I moderate this community?
The others have already said most of what needs to be said. But one thing to note is that some bans need to be stronger. TJD got banned, what, 3 times at this point for using slurs? The people who do that sort of thing clearly don’t learn, nor care.
They’ll always just see it as hurting the people who deserve to get hurt, and continue to do so.
Short, temp bans just don’t cut it.
And the other thing is that at a fundamental level, conservatism is neck deep in individualism. As a result, the conservatives around here are quick to jump to “kys” type stuff. An ideology that has lack of empathy as one of its core foundations is going to contain people with no empathy. Progressives aren’t immune to this, but just look at the count of who’s been saying “kys” more.
A conservative community will always, innately, be like this.
I disagree with the whole “A conservative community will always, innately, be like this.”
I was on /r/conservative for a long time, and they didn’t have these problems. Or maybe they did, and the mods were just removing them before most saw them.
But maybe going forward, Ill be less lenient about it.
That’s because /r/conservative effectively bans all political dissent. So there is no real friction, and therefore the ugliness of conservatism stays relatively hidden.
It’s incredibly easy to keep things the way you want when it is an echo chamber. But it is at the cost of ‘free speech’ so to speak. It’s either freedom or tyranny.
Dude what? You’ve got your semantics mapped completely wrong if you think individualism and empathy are mutually exclusive.
It is individualism that values people for who they are. Collectivism views a population as a body, and the removal of individuals as akin to the amputation of a few malfunctioning cells.
They’re not mutually exclusive, but they are strongly linked.
No it doesn’t. Individualists are happy to leave families starving, on the streets, without medical treatment, and in poverty because they allegedly didn’t pull their bootstraps hard enough.
Yeah, somebody has deeply mislead you on that.
deleted by creator
Which doesn’t mean shit when conservatives vote to leave families starving, on the streets, without medical treatment, and in poverty. Charity is not a solution to fundamental problems with society. Charity is not a solution, because it never addresses anything other than the symptoms. At it’s best, charity is a bandaid solution. At it’s worst, it is scummy as fuck (blood donations).
Progressives vote to use their tax dollars, their own money, for social services. You’re comparing personal donations to personal donations when you instead need to be comparing personal donations and taxes to personal donations and taxes.
It’s no coincidence that red states are the most poverty stricken.
https://appliedsentience.com/2020/07/30/economics-are-red-or-blue-states-better/
Socialized services are ultimately cheaper than privatized ones. We don’t need to be shelling out never ending money to the rich middlemen of private buisness to have basic social services.
deleted by creator
This is basically just a copy-paste of what I’ve already addressed. So I won’t bother addressing this again.
Though I will add, it seems that the real reason for this is religious community, not political affiliation:
https://www.democraticaudit.com/2017/11/17/republicans-give-more-to-charity-but-not-because-they-oppose-income-redistribution/
When I say “cheaper” I don’t just mean the literal cost. Servicing a mail address in the middle of nowhere is often not profitable enough. There are diseases that are not profitable to treat/cure. There are students that private institutions would treat as a lost cause.
But the cost of not having these services is huge. We need a functioning mail system, a healthcare system that heals people, and an education system that educates everyone.
But even ignoring the external, nebulous costs, the literal cost is most always cheaper.
The school one is an example that doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Those private institutions have to compete with the public ones, which means they can’t really fuck people over on the price too much. The other thing is that private schools don’t have enough of a market share to reach their end stage capitalism levels of price gouging. You’re comparing apples to oranges.
Habitat for humanity is financially supported by the government, somewhere to the tune of $21,000,000,000 according to their website.
https://www.habitat.org/costofhome/impact?keyword=promo1--home
They also extensively work with local governments to bring costs down. Again you’re comparing apples to oranges.
Believe it or not, I am here to speak honestly. My above response here was not a quick one to make. Trolls don’t put effort into responses.
deleted by creator
I literally gave you a response on why your examples do not support your conclusion.
That’s how a discussion works.
Then fucking leave and make it better for everyone else
I’m not the one telling people to kill themselves, making it worse.