edit: As I'm seeing a lot of worry about the impact this will/could have on the community, please be assured we have the same mod team, and will be holding the community to the same standards. the same things that were always allowed will continue to be allowed and the same things that got things removed before will continue to get things removed before. Lemmy.world admins have agreed to allow us to run our community on our terms.
It is my pleasure to announce that effective immediately, we are transferring our community to Lemmy.world! This has been a few months in the making, so my entire mod team is already on board. FAQ: Why?
That's a complicated question with a long answer! The primary difference is moderatorial and ideologial differences between my team and Ada's excellent team of admins. We are on good terms with Ada and her team, and have gotten her consent to do this. In addition to this, we have had ongoing issues with federation and moderation that has caused a subpar experience for many people on other instances. How does this work?
Currently, as there is not an easy way to transfer an entire community (trust me, we checked), we are locking the community as mod-only, and moving our focus to the 196 on lemmy.world. For you guys, functionally nothing has changed. What about the posts?
Well, we tried to transfer them, but there was no real way to do so without absolutely destroying lemmy.world's federation. For this reason, we are simply archiving this community as mod-only. Everything is staying up, you just won't be able to post new content. Comments are still enabled, so we will continue to check our modlogs for some time after the transfer has settled.
As for the posts on lemmy.world's 196, we're leaving those up too. From this point onwards, all posts made to that community are beholden to the rules you are all used to, but anything pre-existing is getting grandfathered in.
IF YOU GUYS HAVE ANY OTHER QUESTIONS, PLEASE PUT THEM IN THE COMMENTS OF THIS POST, AND I'LL DO MY BEST TO ANSWER THEM.
Once again, here's the link to our new apartment of awesome. (universal: [email protected])
I strongly disagree with this decision and the reasoning behind it. Blahaj is, in my opinion, the best place for this community specifically because of the strong moderation and policies of Ada and other admins here.
Lemmy.world is also the worst instance I can think of outside of the big three tankie instances. It contributes further to the centralization of Lemmy as a whole (since 196 has been one of the most active communities on the entire platform). In my opinion, the .world crowd's liberal and pro-colonialist/capitalist tendencies are a terrible fit for this community.
I'd have rather seen Blahaj defederate from .world than 196 move there, even if it meant less content and engagement. At least the cultural values of the community wouldn't have been compromised.
In my opinion, the .world crowd's liberal and pro-colonialist/capitalist tendencies are a terrible fit for this community.
I haven't noticed this, personally. But even if that's true, the way I see it, having more explicitly left-leaning communities can only help remedy that issue.
At least the cultural values of the community wouldn't have been compromised.
The only thing that's changing is our location. Our moderation policies are staying the same and I don't expect any significant changes in the types of users coming into this community. And if we do get an influx of bad actors or trolls, we'll do what we've always done and remove them.
The only difference for you guys is going to be what's written after the @ symbol.
The only thing that's changing is our location. Our moderation policies are staying the same
That's pretty rich, since the .world admins just very recently made a statement where they proudly wanted to force every mod to change their policies. Including the statement that mods would be forced to follow their new rules.
In my opinion, the .world crowd’s liberal and pro-colonialist/capitalist tendencies are a terrible fit for this community.
I haven’t noticed this, personally.
This is a pretty alarming sign for where lemmy.world/c/196 is headed tbh and it leads me to believe that what you're calling "heavy-handed" moderation on Ada's part is actually just her being able to notice shit that you don't.
I dislike most big .world communities and the centralization of Lemmy, but I'm glad you guys feel confident in your ability to cultivate the same community in a larger and less curated space.
To be honest, I think a big part of the 196 identity is that it comes from blahaj. Maybe the move will prove me wrong, but I can't imagine the energy will be the same.
I'm gonna be honest, my first response to reading this headline & image, as well as the small snippet of the body visible from my app's home page, was "huh, bit early for an April Fool's Day joke". It would have been surprising enough if the move has been anywhere, but LW is the last non-tankie instance I would have expected, given the modding/admin drama they've been through recently.
I'm guessing LW was chosen because there's a pre-existing (if inactive) community there already?
I'm not familiar with this drama. Lemmy.world was chosen because they have the resources to support another major community, their rules (as far as I am aware) align with ours, and they agreed to let us moderate our community by our rules with minimal interference.
Instead of making a unilateral decision on behalf of all of the members of this community without any kind of consultation, why don't you move to L.W and allow people who do want to be here, who do want to be subject to the moderation rules of this instance, to step in and take the reins?
I say unlock the community and appoint a new mod team. Who said you could just close the whole community, just because you've volunteered to take out the trash?
Seriously. Anyone who thinks this is a good idea should leave the community, so ultimately this may be a good thing, so long as this community is kept here and passed to other people.
Lame move. The .world instance has been getting worse for a long while. Why not go elsewhere if it's really that important? 196 is one of the most active communities I've seen so the de-federation issue doesn't sound like one.
You can just browse through their announcements and see for yourself. I admire their dedication and how they've managed to accept us Reddit refugees but they keep making these strange missteps in their administration.
I personally wouldn't make a community in their instance as I don't trust the admins. They also don't mind de-federating other instances; see dbz0 (I can never remember the name right).
For the love of god, leave this community here and just create a new mod team instead. This community being on Blåhaj specifically is a big plus for a lot of us
We won't be moving to world with you. We like blahaj and we like 196 being on blahaj. If you don't want to be here, you should instead just hand over your mod positions to people who do.
Absolutely foul decision. From the recent discussions i think it was very clear that the actual regular users and posters of 196 were opposed to moving to .world. What a clown show of a mod team.
A move that has been months in the making but only now is getting announced? Has it been announced previously and I missed it or something? I get the motivation for the move, but this feels like the kind of decision that the users of the 196 should have gotten more of a chance to at least give feedback on what other instance 196 should be migrating to.
Tbf I did try to bring it up a while ago but it upset Ada for some reason, even though I'm fairly certain I didn't say anything we weren't on the same page about... So I removed it.
You're right, though, we should have said something first. That's our bad.
while I am still confident this is the right choice of instance to transfer to, i do think you are most likely right. if I had a do over, I would have made a poll before anouncing this. unfortunately at this point, I feel like it's a little late in the game to do a 360.
Why are you not engaging with the large number of users suggesting simply leaving this community unlocked and allowing new mods to take over? It’s very obvious you are avoiding responding to those comments. As you have acknowledged, this was handled badly with zero community choice or involvement. Few, if any commenters agree with the move or support it.
Nobody is asking for a “360” on whatever the mod team planned, the community can’t hold you hostage and force you to moderate a community when you don’t want to. Locking the community however should not be your choice to make. If you want to leave, leave. If the mod team and new instance are so important as you suggest, you’ll have a flourishing community on lemmy.world in no time.
But locking out the community with no consultation or notice is just cruel.
Who could possibly have foreseen that the users of the community wouldn't like being told that it was closed and they'd have to move? Completely unpredictable behaviour, I'm sure
I thought we left that attitude on Reddit, that's a really disappointing and insulting take. The community is the community, not a handful of moderators. We're grateful for the work y'all are doing, but, and I really don't intend this as an insult, moderators are replaceable.
Setting aside what an awful & insulting response this (the community is the community, that’s why the word exists. Moderators are not the community)…
If you really believe this, then why lock the existing one? Obviously your well planned & executed move will be wildly successful, so there should be no need to lock the existing one. Unless of course 8 people who do caretaker duties on the community are in fact NOT the community, the people are and you need them, even if you don’t respect their opinions or contributions.
In that case then why even announce anything? Apparently it's your community and you can do what you like with it, you take your ball and go home. I assume that means you'll be making and posting all the content there yourself?
A community is not something you can "migrate". You are not migrating a community, you are migrating a community space and in doing so, you are alienating said community. If you are unwilling to provide a safe space for said community, the community will either find new space or take their space back.
I think for people who feel safe on blahaj but aren't guaranteed that safety on .world, it might feel like locking /c/196 on Blahaj and the moderators telling everyone to move to .world is a bit like stealing the community. Maybe /u/not_IO meant that 196 on Blahaj should remain unlocked so 196 can continue to exist on Blahaj, but obviously the question is who will moderate the community if the moderators all leave for .world?
I agree with most others that this is a huge mistake, if only for moving to .world. Another larger community being on that instance sounds like a bad idea for the lemmy ecosystem, even if you wanted to move from blahaj.zone. I will continue to post and browse on 196, but if I start to feel unwelcome there, I will make it known.
The problem is that you're creating more work for yourself, even if you're as on top of moderation as you were here. If you get the additional reach that you're hoping for, you'll have to work much quicker at removing shit content than you did here. Now that 196 isn't on the openly queer instance, more bigots will feel like they can interact. This could lead to the community becoming less accepting in the long run, as queer people feel less safe and welcomed.
I have thick skin and often run towards conflicts other people won't, but I know that many users here aren't like me. If I start to feel it weighing on me, be confident that things have gone too far for most people on this instance.
Like I said, the perception of .world from people here is not good. I changed from .world because most conservative and transphobic nonsense came from there. You will lose a number of queer people in this move, whether you like it or not.
This move is going to make the community a lot less welcoming to queer folk, by virtue of being on .world alone. I don't know what rift between Ada and you let to that decision, but I think it's a big mistake. It feels especially bad for us members of this community not being involved in the decision making process at all, all the more if this has truly been "months in the making".
With that said: I strongly implore you to not lock down the community, and instead let a new mod team take over. Not having centralized decisions and power tripping mods is one of the big hopes I had for the fediverse, and this... feels really bad. It's not a bad thing to have several similar communities on different instances! Please don't destroy this one over personal grievances
It’s pretty clear what the community consensus here is.
You can leave, and start a new 196 community wherever you like. Leave this one as is, and people can choose to follow one, both or neither.
Locking it here is very hostile to the community and a categorically bad move. I hope the instance admins can step in, remove the mods and unlock the community.
I would like to propose a solution that I think can make everyone happy. Transfer ownership of Blahaj 196 to a new mod team and make World 196 the alternate community. If anyone wishes to follow the original mod team into world they would be able to, meanwhile blahaj 196 would follow the values of Blahaj. I personally volunteer to either be the head or a moderator here.
I've seen a lot of talk about how this move changes the admins the community will be under, but very little about how this will change the randos that pass through. The mods keep saying this won't change anything, that the moderation will stay the same, etc, but the reason this community is the way it is is that there are a lot of locals that find it. When the new community shows up on l.w's local page, it will bring in a far different crowd. Their posts, comments, and up/down votes will change the community, and there's no amount of moderation that will fix that.
Mods, this is why people are mad you made this change without asking anyone. Many of us do not want an influx of .world users into this space because we know what kind of politics and biases they'll bring with them and that, even if you moderate the bigots, the normies will still likely overpower the queer voices this community is known for.
The combination of not involving the community in the decision, only providing a vague reason and locking the original community really rubs me the wrong way.
Moving out of LBZ doesn't mean we're not a pro-trans community anymore. As far as moderation goes, nothing is changing. If we see an influx of transphobes or bad actors, we'll do the same thing we've always done and simply ban them.
Dotworld's admins just brought in a policy that specifically requires mods to be permissive of a certain degree of concern trolling and/or sealioning. Can you be sure you'll be able to moderate the community to the satisfaction of its existing userbase?
Absolutely not. Our rules aren't changing and neither is the mod team. Our top priority is, and always will be, cultivating a community where queer people of all flavors feel welcome and safe.
You should know thst somewhat recently .world was in hot water because their admins have told their mods that they (the mods) are going to have to engage trolls in good faith. The statements were about forcing their mods to allow some "flat earth" comments to stay, to be unable to ban things like that.
I want to add my voice to the others asking for tranfering to a new mod team. You don't have to kill the community, let people who want it on blahaj.zone keep using it. The worst that can happen is the quality of posts being lower.
I guess those ideological issues were the acceptance and safe space for queer people, but fuck us I guess. Don't worry, we won't hop on over to the shit show.
Maybe we can start a 197 like how 196 came from 195.
What a shitty fucking take from some power tripped mods.
looks like the main differences are about what counts as violations and how to deal with them:
196 mod said:
sometimes we’ll see people getting banned or comments getting removed for relatively mild takes. We also often disagreed about the severity of the actions, like ban lengths being way too long considering the reason, or people getting banned over something that really should just be a removal.
Ada's response:
every post and user I removed was due to queerphobia, transphobia, trolling or spam, issues that broke the instances rules. Some of that bigotry was was implicit rather than explicit, like dog whistles, tone policing etc. Some of it was the “just asking questions” transphobia that pervades most corporate owned social media spaces.
...
As moss said, this is ideological differences in how low grade transphobia and queerphobia should be dealt with. moss is ok with community pushback for the low grade stuff rather than moderation, whereas I’ll just remove it.
So it's not as simple as queer acceptance vs not, but rather what counts as a violation and how severely those rules are enforced.
Yeah and it looks like the admins of blahaj are with the mod team on this, so i assume there wont be any reopening of 196 here. That means either 197 on blahaj or move to a different instance. I feel like the former would just lead to a repeat of the same story tho, if the instance admins here are ok with this kind of behaviour.
It would be a power move if they just purged all the .world people from this community with this move and then reopened the community without the old mods.
Literally the worst instance for a decentralized platform (cuz they're already too big).
please be assured we have same mod team
No that doesn't assure me. Whichever mods signed off on this should be removed from any 196 community because you took rule too seriously and forgot about your community before posting
It's really obvious what this is about. And it's not a good look for you.
If you don't want to get into it yourself, totally cool, but if anyone else does - what is this about?? Like, I don't understand the moderatorial and ideological differences referenced that justify bringing 196 to .world.
I loved having 196 on blahaj specifically, means more exposure to my trans and gender diverse homies and their memes because they feel safe here.
Basically lemmy.blahaj.zone has gotten some criticism because of the server rules and stickied instance posts where we are to respect everyone's identity/neopronouns. There are a few people who identity as something people consider not real, such as dragons. Neopronouns arent necessarily meant to be literally real, and someone may identify as something they feel resembles them such as a dragon, or "fae". But some people believe that since dragons/fae/etc don't literally exist then they aren't valid identities/neopronouns. These people think that lemmy.blahaj.zone is enabling trolls identifing as non-real things. It also means that people in this 196 community need(ed) to respect people's identities even if they didn't think they were valid. Apparently that was too much to ask for the mods of this community.
Personally i don't know, nor do i care, if the 1-2 people are trolling. If they are, they aren't typical nasty trolls. They are just like any other user to me. Imo If someone wants to identify as a dragon then good for them. If anything it helps identify people who are openly combative with the instance rules.
All that is to say, it was clear to me that the mods want to move to another instance where they don't have to respect identities they don't consider valid. And my suspicion was right because the mod spelled it out down thread
[...] I can guarantee we will not be expected to entertain trolls [...]
I can only guess that this is about this instance's zero-tolerance policy for transphobia. This means there might be higher standards for removing transphobic content than the mods might be capable of meeting / willing to meet. This is just a guess, though - I would like some clarification as well, esp. since in the absence of clarity it just looks like 196 is moving because they don't want to be vigilant about removing transphobic content, which as nimble pointed out is not a good look. 🤷♀️
Heavy-handed moderation, mostly. Don’t get me wrong, we do love Ada and appreciate her work, but sometimes we’ll see people getting banned or comments getting removed for relatively mild takes. We also often disagreed about the severity of the actions, like ban lengths being way too long considering the reason, or people getting banned over something that really should just be a removal.
To put it bluntly, (and I mean no disrespect, but) her mod actions often felt very vibes-based. Like her feelings heavily influenced her decisions. We want the rules to be enforced in a more objective fashion.
So we asked her to let us handle 196 if the content in question wasn’t explicitly trans/queerphobic or illegal, etc… She disagreed, and we respect her view, so we brought up the idea of moving and she gave us her blessing.
so tl;dr disagreements about 1. what counts as violations, and 2. the severity of punishment for those violations (where Blahaj admins are perceived as too strict and 196 mods wish to be more lenient).
OK, I think I see where you're coming from. But lemmy.world already has several meme, shitpost, and microblog repost communities. Why does lemmy.world need c/196? Up til now the fact that it was on blahaj.zone was what made it stand out.
it's less that lemmy.world needs 196, and more that we think it is an instance that is well suited to host 196. this community is not one that is defined by the instance it is located on
Wow this is disappointing. Lemmy world seems so massive already which kinda defeats the purpose of federating a bit I feel. Too centralized. I’m just waiting for the seemingly inevitable implosion of world haha.
I mean ultimately it’s whatever, it is what it is and I’ll follow 196 wherever it goes.
just to make it obvious, these are ANGRY FACES!!! (im saying this cuz maybe 196 mods or whatever cannot understand these kinds of emotions)
">" are the ANGRY EYEBROWS! ":" are the EYES and "(" is the SAD MOUTH!!!
I AM VERY SAD! i will NOT lurk on ur evil .world "replacement".
this is NOT what the FEDIVERSE IS MEANT TO BE!!!!
the fediverse is meant to be DECENTRALIZED!!! across MULTIPLE INSTANCES!
this is NOT a "very fediverse move" you are doing here. This is a "reddit move"!
im gonna say it. this is straight up u/spez stuff happening here.
i HOPE that my comment gets blocked or removed by my instance maintainers, so that it becomes OBVIOUS that such hatespeech, which is allowed on .world is NOT OKAY!
(yes i mean my hatespeech rn, im in evil mode today, this is very evil, i dun like this at all. will not support this evil behavior)
It's weird - you and I have never interacted, and we're usually engaging in totally different discussions in the fediverse, but every time I see a post from you my first thought is "We must protect Smorty at all costs. If Smorty stops posting, the fediverse has lost its way."
But to answer your question, I know Beehaw defederated from Blahaj. I can't remember all the reasons, I think Blahaj was considering defederating from them, and they defederated from Blahaj first, claiming Blahaj users were disrupting them (similar claims were being made about Beehaw users on Blahaj).
I think Blahaj defederates from other instances, usually because those instances don't moderate or remove transphobic and queerphobic content. I don't know of any other cases where an instance defederated from Blahaj other than Beehaw, though.
Adding my voice to the pile. Leave it here. Unlock it and let new mods take over. You can do your thing wherever you want. But let us do our thing where we want.
looks like the main "ideological" differences are about what counts as violations and how to deal with them:
a 196 mod said:
sometimes we’ll see people getting banned or comments getting removed for relatively mild takes. We also often disagreed about the severity of the actions, like ban lengths being way too long considering the reason, or people getting banned over something that really should just be a removal.
part of Ada's response:
every post and user I removed was due to queerphobia, transphobia, trolling or spam, issues that broke the instances rules. Some of that bigotry was was implicit rather than explicit, like dog whistles, tone policing etc. Some of it was the “just asking questions” transphobia that pervades most corporate owned social media spaces.
...
As moss said, this is ideological differences in how low grade transphobia and queerphobia should be dealt with. moss is ok with community pushback for the low grade stuff rather than moderation, whereas I’ll just remove it.
As someone whose home instance is LW, this is not a good idea. Like, at all. I suggest at least hosting some kind of poll, chances are if people disagree they'll just make a second community on this instance or another one regardless.
Every single post on the "new" community is from a .world user. Maybe its time for me to block all of .world, it was pretty clear from the start that .world is predatory but this just makes me even more sure. They can have fun over there with their meta/threads federation lol
the ideology of blahajzone isn't one I 100% agree with but it's honestly imo the best suited for 196, given that on The Other Website 196 is a fork of 195 that grew to be specifically queer/trans focused. People had other choices like 197, but they specifically chose 196, and I think there's a point to make in that.
as for the Lemmy.World choice, I really don't get it and probably will not migrate there, and really don't like that you guys are feeding the centralisation and concentration of power when there are so many wonderful instances out there. I like shitjustworks myself because it feels very non-interfery and open, but there's so many other options too.
this whole thing honestly feels disheartening given how 'default' the choice of lemmy.world feels, like you all put no thought into the decision before making it.
please just remember that we understand that you all are human and will accept apologies if you think they are necessary
Keep this community open for everyone and find a new mod team. With the world admin team "busting echo chambers" (even thoughs that aren't echo chambers) by overarching mod undercutting admin action, I'm extremely worried that this alone will ruin 196 as a whole. The etiquette on world is also different which will result in the altering of the community into some unknown. The quality content may also suffer a degradation as the culture of blajha and world are not the same.
blahaj.zone admins have a tendency to moderate rather heavy-handedly. Mod choices are rarely, if ever, checked by my team, and bans are often given for things that are not in violation of our rules. This is because Ada runs lemmy.blahaj.zone as a very curated community, often removing and banning for matters that are, in my opinion, based on opinion rather than objectivity. I have little against that, and think that, as the owner, she has every right to choose how to run her community. That being said, I don't think its the right community for us.
Mod choices are rarely, if ever, checked by my team
To be clear, the only moderation I do is for content or users that are breaking our instance guidelines, not 196 rules. If it didn't break instance guidelines, I didn't touch it, and if it did, it was bigger than 196. In neither case was running it past 196 mods an appropriate step
That still doesn't really tell me anything. What kinds of differences of opinions? What kinds of things have resulted in admin action that the mods would be more lenient on?
I reached out to multiple different major instance's admin teams, and world's team was most receptive and cooperative. In addition, lemmy.world has a pretty great reputation, being one of the most popular instances.
.world is too big already, also I understand your moderation concerns but this is a large change that I don't think has been thought through. Why not move to a smaller instance to strengthen federation, or make your own if you can afford to host it?
very sad. i can barely use lemmy.world communities as they take weirdly long to federate with my tiny instance. for example, from my instance i can only see the pinned posts on the new 196, and it has been pending subscription since yesterday.
A single drawn out argument over a not even that controversial mod decision. Very sad that the blahaj admins allowed this mod to fuck over this whole community for no good reason and against the will of basically the entirety of this community.
im considering making a wish.com quality clone of 196 atm. though the large amount of moderators would he hard to repleacate as I've been unable to get moderadors on [email protected]
I think it’s good for 196 to leave because at least to me it’s clear that your values don’t fully align with this instance and if you leave then the trans community posts don’t get drowned out anymore by 196 posts. Hopefully 196 leaving will boost the trans meme communities here a bit more (and maybe there’ll be more interest in a new meme/generalposting community).
Pretty much. All we need them to do is remove illegal content and stuff that breaks ToS. We want everything else to be our decision.
We're not going to be more lax on transphobia or anything, though. We're still a heavily left-leaning mod team, and about half of us are trans, so naturally our mod actions reflect that.
I believe they walked back on that plan, the original post received a lot of backlash and it was delisted/struck out. Supposedly there is going to be an update on that at some point but nothing yet.
Remaining hopeful that they just toss that whole idea by the wayside and let mods continue moderating their communities how they see fit, as I don't want to change instances again if I can help it.
Honestly on board with this. 196 took up more of Blahaj than I liked and always had a weirdly dissonant feel to the rest of the instance. I'm not really a fan of 196 personally, though, so my opinion is colored by that.
I did feel like we grew a little bit bigger than made sense on blahaj.zone. the instance feed was 90% our community and I could absolutely see that suffocating smaller ones trying to get started here.