A post may receive a hundred replies and host a fat and exciting conversation tree, but if one moderator doesn't like it then it may be locked or deleted. Is that immoral?
A post may receive a hundred replies and host a fat and exciting conversation tree, but if one moderator doesn't like it then it may be locked or deleted. Is that immoral?
Nope. It's a risk you take if you refuse to abide by a communities guidelines as outlined in the sidebar.
Breaking the guidelines of a community you're posting in is the immoral act, not the removal of those comments.
refuse to abide by a communities guidelines
You change the initial situation. The question here wasn't about a post outside of guidelines - just about one mod not liking one post.
The "initial situation" is that OP has had 2 posts removed from here for breaking the rules and is butthurt over it.
https://lemmy.world/modlog?page=1&userId=5761834
One for rule 1:
Removed Post "Exception implies deficiency. Am I the only one who sees this?"
"Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question."
Yeah "am I the only..." is not a legitimate question. I can see why that got removed.
One for rule 5:
Removed Post "Focus your attention, part of the world becomes sharper and brighter, another part fades away and disappears. With habit even the focusing becomes invisible. How much has disappeared?"
"Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda."
I don't even know what's going on with that question. Seems to be borderline trolling/im14andthisisdeep material.
But what if the mod didn't like the post because it's outside of guidelines?
Then yes it is bad. From my time on Reddit, there were a lot of posts where I disagreed with the advice given but approved it because it was relevant to the community and met the guidelines. Doing so was sometimes more productive anyways, since then people got a chance to discuss why it was bad advice and what might be better
Moderators should try and remove based on the guidelines, and then trust their gut when it's a grey area.
Also unless we can see what OP is complaining about, we can't really tell what happened.
Without a process for appeal and review we all know how that goes. We are not infants.
Just to be transparent, I'm the mod who removed your posts.
We get a lot of rule breaking posts between the multiple communities I moderate, some of them get upvoted heavily and still get removed.
For example, someone posted a scientific post that had nothing to do with technology in /c/[email protected], it had a decent amount of upvotes and comments. It was still removed for rule 2 of that community, as it was off topic for that community and there are ones that exists for that content.
Sorry that it upset you, but if I could give you advise: just follow the community rules and you won't have these issues
Usually the appeal is as simple as messaging the mod of a community. If it was an error, they will usually fix it pretty easily. The review is the mod log which is a public record of all moderation activity.
Taken as it is with no context, I would agree with you. However, based on what others have revealed about your removed posts, and your own comments in this thread, I'm concluding that whichever mod removed your post was merely the first one that happened to see it, it was going to happen regardless.
But it isn't just me. It's a couple hundred people. Who have voted YES, enthusiastically, by their participation. They clearly want to continue talking.
But one person's opinion overrides that? That's crazy.
I understand the frustration, and I think we've all seen locked posts we would like to have participated in. But can I check what you're actually arguing, are you saying that if there's ever significant interest in a post (hundreds of comments etc) then it's not appropriate for one person to close it?
If I make a "Trump just did something crazy!" post in a Android community, and I get lots of responses and spirited debate, is it wrong for the mod to close it because it's completely unrelated to the community?
If I post some super hot NSFW "does my ass look good in this thong?" post in NoStupidQuestions community, is it wrong for the mod to remove it for breaking community rules? Even if it's a question and it's getting lots of up votes and comments?
Immoral, no. Undesirable, sometimes. In your case, completely warranted.
But it isn't just me. It's a couple hundred people. Who clearly desire to converse. Some agree, some disagree, some are undecided and some are learning something new.
But one person's opinion trumps all that?
Surely you see how utterly fucked that is.
You ever think that when these things only happen to you, that maybe YOU are the problem?
I've been seeing your posts for weeks, and most of the time it's just nonsense. Like a teenager discovering philosophy for the first time.
And if anyone disagrees with your "mind blowing revelation" you just tell them that they are wrong. That's not conversation, that's competition. You're only here to win a game that nobody else wants to play.
No, moderating forums is not immoral.
By participating in a moderated forum, you have traded your ability to post whatever you want in exchange of everyone else being bound by the same restriction.
If you don't like it, you can go post in some unmoderated forum. If you can't find one without spam or low quality posts, them's the breaks kid if you want the wild west you get the wild west.
But it isn't my individual opinion that the moderator contradicts.
It's the opinion of a couple hundred participants in the conversation tree. Who have expressed their enthusiastic YES through participation.
Surely the moderator's single NO doesn't outweigh that, morally speaking.
No. No one is actually harmed.
Definition of immoral is
Not conforming to accepted standards of morality
Definition of morality
Principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior
My question for you is : what does any of that have to do with someone being harmed?
Because do no harm is a basic tenet of right vs. wrong.
I value my conversations. And when they are taken from me I am robbed. That is a form of harm.
You do not feel similarly?
But they're not taken from you - they still happened.
No actual harm has happened. Nothing changes the fact that you had a conversation. You are no poorer for it being hidden.
I know it's said a lot, but if you don't want to play by someone else's rules, you can set up your own instance. Every single thing on here is the result of someone just setting up their own instance. Honestly, it's never been easier than it is now.
no
But it's one opinion vs hundreds. They have a party and one man cancels it. surely
Ok.
Still no, though.
I've had posts deleted, submissions removed. Nothing to get hurt about. Even if I didn't think it was a big deal, someone did.
It's like someone getting angry at me for yelling,"Fuck!!" I get ready to get all 1A self-righteous on the person, then look around. My wrath of freedom of expression dies before it's heard because I remembered I was at my kid's wedding. Sometimes the asshole is me.
You are like the 10th person to make this weird overlooking of the facts.
It isn't just one person. It's a couple hundred people. With a hundred different points of view. Enthusiastically conversing.
That outweighs a single person's judgment. Yes, even if he is offended by the subject
Judging by previous arguments we had in the general purpose communities when people complained about that exact thing, and I looked up the history, it was more often than not completely warranted and the person wouldn't listen.
I think individuals with behaviour peculiarity and normal communities just don't mix well.
Does reading comprehension just drop off every time there's a solar flare?
We're talking a couple hundred people. Materially expressing a big YES for the conversation.
But the moderator's single opinion morally overrules that because the rules say so.
That's absurd.
Gonna ignore all context for the purposes of answering / contributing to a discussion of a kinda valid underlying question:
There is a disconnect between moderation and membership in an ostensibly democratic social media structure. How could that gap be bridged?
The way I see it, this is basically the representation vs delegation debate, though here it is arguable whether there is even representation. From this perspective, you can draw on a couple of hundred years of theory and practice to arrive at potential structures.
For example, you could have a system where members of a community mark themselves as willing to moderate it, and all members select a willing delegate to essentially give their ‘moderating power’ to. Mods are then selected by number of delegations, which would be a fluid process because users can redistribute their ‘votes’ at any time. This would make mods immediately answerable to the members.
To make the system less vulnerable to hijacking you would probably need some kind of delay in there so that you wouldn’t suddenly get a mass influx of new users delegating to the same mods to take over the community, and there would likely need to be other measures in place as well. But it would certainly be a neat experiment!
(Just to note, I am not saying the current moderation model is necessarily bad, just figured it would be interesting to consider alternative approaches and have a look at what possible problems there might be in both the current model and any such alternatives.)
Depends on the community. There are some SERIOUSLY biased mods here.
Biased is fine. Hell I'm biased. It's the utter obliviousness to decent behavior that bugs me.
A moderator removed the most popular post that I've ever made.
That being said, after my initial reaction I definitely understand why. I have to give credit to them as well, because they actually let it get plenty of discussion before closing it down, and for good reason. They could've been much more strict and disciplinary if they had wanted to. I think their decision was well thought out and appropriately executed. I did want for an explanation, sure, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense that they didn't give one.
The discussion surrounding the subject ended up being mostly negative on both sides and was kind of devolving instead of going the other way in a more positive direction. Being able to mitigate this type of negative interaction is important for fostering a good atmosphere and I'm glad that's important in a place like this.
Sounds like Reddit to me. That's why I left that dumpster fire.
I just had exactly such a thing happen in this sub earlier today.
The kind of person who does that, who justifies it to themself, I can't relate.
I would say yes
Is that immoral?
I'm not sure about immoral, but I'd rather call it unwise. Very unwise.
It is a very bad habit that lemmy has copied from redit (and from some other social media, to be fair). And it's high time to find a better way.
I think that people are, as a rule, small and obedient creatures. They like to be told what to do. Shortsighted and small-minded. And, in packs, vicious yapping beasts.