/m/politics has no moderators other than ernest

I would join you

Don't want it to metastatize though. The culture on kbin seems pretty good right now, but that'll change for the worse if significant troll targets are left unmoderated.

r/politics was for US politics, so I suppose that's what they're emulating.

I figured the usual /r/politics types were gonna flock to it. so yeah usa-specific, liberal/establishment democrat political bias.

I think the mags were created as placeholders so people coming from Reddit will at least see some mags that look farmilar.

The feeling I get is that as mags get busy and as people start stepping on each other's toes, mods will be in high demand.

That bring said, @ernest has asked for mods and has mentioned building a moderation team.

Shout out for all the work you done so far @ernest!

Lemmy communities show in kbin with ernest as the moderator, presumably because although kbin supports lemmy groups, kbin moderation and lemmy moderation aren't compatible

I'm in the same boat, but I wonder if you can mod on a casual basis, because I'm just not spend 3 hours a day modding material, maybe a half hour here or there tops 😋

Oh gods, are you sure you want to do this then? It's going to be one of the most intense mod roles you'll ever do. It'll really be a trial by fire, sink or swim thing.

Yeah, I only saw two threads that got mucked up, and even those could have been a lot worse. It'll deteriorate if given time though.

For /m/politics, I don't have candidates in mind yet. If I'm assigned this task, my plan is roughly:

• Create a basic set of rules. Should establish the obvious things (civil behavior, no bigotry, etc), as well as what the Overton window of the magazine should be. I'm thinking from non-tankie leftists to non-MAGA conservatives, so tankies and fascists would be excluded. Should also exclude miscellaneous conspiracy theorists and the like, regardless of where they fall on the political spectrum. In practice that window might be too wide to keep civil, so the future mod team may want to narrow it, but I think it'd be good to at least start out that way.

• Pin a post asking for moderator applications. Applicants should state what their political position is, and point to any relevant post/comment history on political topics, so that I can get a feel for them. The goal is to have a diverse range of moderators within the Overton window that I mentioned above. Previous experience as a moderator is also relevant, of course.

• Write some initial (suggested) moderation policies to outline how moderation should happen. These are likely to be changed by the moderation team once it's in place, but will serve as a sort of social contract between the mods, including a process for how changes should be made. I think this is important, given the ideological diversity I want to aim for.

Once those are done and the team is recruited, I would step down. It might be preferable to have someone that intends to stay on the mod team and has experience moderating political forums take on this task, but I also didn't want to be just pointing out a problem without offering to help fix it. Whoever does end up doing it can feel free to take whatever they like from these ideas and run with them, of course.

There's a part of me that wishes I could help. I like the idea of helping the sub and site succeed. But I know all to well what kinda bullshit the mods deal with.

They'll spend lots of time having to read troll posts, death threats, porn, CSAM, and just general assholes arguing back and forth. When they ban someone righteously, there's a good chance they'll argue back. They'll have to carefully read some comments to try and get a feel of if they're written by an AI. They'll have to look through profiles and other comments to figure out if something is a bot copying comments.

People will constantly be complaining about mods not doing enough. Or maybe doing too much. Some users will get upset if they get acted on for something that wasn't technically against the rules (or unclear if it was), while others will be upset if mods don't respond to obviously awful stuff just because it wasn't technically against the rules.

And they have to do it with barely any tools. Reddit mods complained tons about their lack of tooling, but the very young Lemmy and kbin have even less tooling.

You have to be a very caring and patient person to be a mod, and it'll still probably drive you crazy. Or alternatively you can just be someone who likes a position of power and enjoys the feel of lording over others enough to deal with the downsides (or maybe even enjoy the feeling of people hating you). But that's not in the best interest of the community.

Hmm... I used to be supermoderator on a fairly large forum (originally gaming focused, but had since expanded) back in the day, as well as moderator on an imageboard. That said, the reason I don't moderate things now is because it's incredibly stressful. But I was relatively active in r/politics until this whole debacle, so I guess this could be considered wanting to give back to the community. Definitely don't want to do it long term, though. That said, m/politics seems to be chugging along just fine without mods for now.

The culture of a community matters, and well kept gardens die by pacifism.