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?
IMO.
Remove and warn people who promote things that are clearly anti-conservative. Eg. Defending abortion, socialism, communism, plotting to overthrow the government or election system, etc.
If they continue after warning, ban them.
There’s certainly a wide range of what is considered “conservative” - and plenty to discuss and debate. But that discussion and debate can’t really happen if all we’re doing is debating against clearly anti-conservative viewpoints
That’d just turn this place into a boring ass echo chamber.
Lately that has been a conservative thing, what with Jan 6 and all.
I find rehashing the same arguments over and over to be boring, especially when they come from very different worldviews.
I’d rather discuss finer points of conservativism without people yelling about us not caring about the poor or women or other such nonsense. Because we all know that it’s nonsense.
This I agree with, even though the policies conservatives support invariably harm the people they purport to support.
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And your problem is not asking “what is the basis of your argument?”
I mean, everybody seems to think that discussions are just a series of unsubstantiated assertions, but, imho, most discussions, especially with those with which you disagree, should mostly be clarifying questions and answers.
In other words, baseless attacks are only baseless because you don’t know the base. That is a ripe circumstance for a discussion.
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My first comment explicitly said to provide incentives for the kind of participation Throwaway wants. If that’s not relevant or related, then idk what is.
I also defending “bad faith” arguments as at least contributing to the argument half of discussion/argument that Throwaway said he wanted.
My response to you suggested that users of the community should be able to identify when they don’t understand something and simply ask about what they don’t understand. That also facilitates the discussion/arguments about conservative content that Throwaway wants.
I feel like you didn’t even read my comments, or you’re just blinded by your perception that I argue in bad faith to bother understanding anything I say at all.
Prove me wrong.
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There is a problem there. The “finer points of conservatism” includes things like defunding social programs. There is no way to destroy the social safety net and not get called out for hating the poor.
You can’t have your cake and eat it too, not without an echo chamber.
This is what I’m talking about.
As if our current government programs are the only way to care for the poor.
Charity is not enough.
Agreed.
Government assistance is also not enough.
Then maybe we make rules based on the structure of arguments.
I think we need to get further into what is meant by a political community.
Are we really intending to set out to create an echo chamber?
Maybe the people who are anti-conservative should be allowed, so long as they are discussing conservative ideas.
Right now, the entire fediverse is a leftist echo chamber. The only way to not have this community also be a leftist echo chamber would be to not allow anti-conservative rhetoric
You’re describing the creation of an echo chamber.
If you hate echo chambers so much, don’t go making a new one.
The only way to not have this community also be a leftist echo chamber is to add our own voices to it so it doesn’t only have one view.
Perhaps this community should be called “conservatives allowed” and the way we keep it from being an echo chamber is we don’t ban people for expressing certain political beliefs.
The difference between this place and places that become a leftist echo chamber would then be: you can say conservative things and not get banned. This prevents the set of voices from becoming skewed, as it does in places where conservatives get banned for being conservative.
Another guy did that on lemmy.world a few months ago. That sub didn’t last more than a few weeks because he kept breaking instances rules over bigotry.
Thats actually a common misconception. Aside from subs like c/leftism and such, nobody gets banned from the generic c/politics type ones for being conservative. Instead they get banned for breaking rules and bigotry/hate/aggressiveness.
The users TJD, MonoTimeToDie and Jimbolauski are good examples of this. TJD in particular has been calling users slurs left and right. One conservative user by a name I don’t remember had a bit of a breakdown telling literally everyone to kill themselves in a thread they made to complain about liberals. It isn’t a coincidence.
Edit; See bellow, MonoTimeToDie proving my exact point by calling me a rat.
Again this same fallacy. I see this everywhere: people making assertions of the form “X does not occur”.
You’re wrong. I have been banned for being conservative from many communities not labeled as leftist.
Generally speaking if you’re about to make a statement of the form “X does not occur” just stop. There’s no way to know a thing like that, without having been everywhere and seen everything. Have some mental discipline. Recognize the limits of your own knowledge.
I’m using the colloquial sense of the word “nobody”, therefore I was not stating it was an absolute. Have some mental discipline and ask for clarification before assuming something about what somebody is stating.
Lmao cry harder, rat
Thank you for proving my point.
I’ve floated an idea before, having “conservative only” posts. Not all of them, but allowing posters to tag their posts and I’d moderate accordingly. But that goes against what I’m trying to do here.
Maybe in the future I’ll revisit it, but for now, I’m going to leave it.
It’s also what makes Reddit’s r/conservative effectively an echo chamber.
Honestly a big part of why this community/set of communities is interesting is because I’ve never seen the start of a conservative internet community before. I know the end result (r/conservative echo chamber), and I have no doubt that if this place becomes more poplar it will end up becoming a proper echo chamber as well.
But how yall get to that point is interesting.