Well hello again everybody! This has been a wonderful past couple of days. I want to give a huge thank you to everybody who participated in my Under New Management post from Thursday. There was a lot of great feedback, and it will go a long way to helping me better understand all of your wants and needs for this community. Yay!
Yes, this will be wordy. Read it anyway. I will try to be concise.
I spent the entirety of Thursday afternoon and evening working through the over 600 reports that existed for the community. There are still a little less than 200 more left to work through. To be fully transparent, I was given the option of simply mass clearing all of the reports so that I could start with a clean slate. Halfway through, it was very tempting to take the powers-that-be (PtB) up on their generous offer. 😅 But, I wanted to see the reports and see what was being reported (and also by whom). Again, this is my way of learning about this community and its members.
The first thing I want to say is this: for the time being, I have decided that @beep@piefed.world is allowed to stay – with conditions. I have reached out privately to them about their past behavior, and they conveyed that they will respect the rules going forward. I have conveyed back to them that their continued use of the community is contingent on their ability to not break the rules going forward (especially with the alteration of comics). With this said, I fully expect this to ruffle quite a few of those proverbial feathers. But, for better or for worse, the decision is made. Please do not report their posts/comments merely because of who they are. If you do report them for anything, do it because it actually breaks the rules (be sure to be specific about what rules).
With this out of the way, I also want to take a moment to welcome the following people to our moderation team:
- @TheTechnician27@lemmy.world
- @Harvey656@lemmy.world
- @slazer2au@lemmy.world
- @Otter@lemmy.ca
- @cannedtuna@lemmy.world
- @18107@aussie.zone
They have each reached out in some capacity to ask for this job, and I see no reason to not bring them aboard to help out. I expect that they will do their very best to ensure that this community, and its visitors, are treated fairly and with the upmost respect they deserve. Let’s be sure that they get the same in return. Everyone made it a strong point that we are all adults here, so let’s be sure to act like it.
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Do what you want with beep, I will continue blocking them. They had more than their fair share of chances to be a part of the community but they chose to be contrarian about it. Somebody with the power to hold them accountable finally reaches out and now they’ll play by the rules? Beep you squandered all my good will, good luck somewhere else. I’m blocking all your alts too.
BAN HATE ARTISTS ALREADY!
While i think Beep is objectively a bad person, i see no reason they can’t post here if they respect the rules. It’s really not that
beepdeep.“I have decided that beep(at)piefed.world is allowed to stay – with conditions. I have reached out privately to them about their past behavior, and they conveyed that they will respect the rules going forward.”
oh cool! i totally trust a poster who posted specifically in bad taste in order to fight with as many people possible to stand by his weird obsessive stance.
i also totally trust the dude that instantly made alt accounts and alt communities just so he could attempt to evade bans and new rules.
I’m so happy to hear he promised this time! that makes such a huge difference!
I don’t trust them either given they explicitly disobeyed rules before (which I’m sure hundreds of people pointed out to them, e.g. about post limits), but I can promise you I’ll be keeping an eye on what they post here. They won’t get the same leeway again, and I think it’s a reasonable olive branch by jerkface given that they are able to post good material here when they stick within the rules – and, in my mind, so that the catalyst of the mod transition doesn’t steal the spotlight as a singular reason for the transition. This isn’t just “/c/comicstrips but beep isn’t here”, and I think that conveys that message while giving beep plenty of rope, so to speak.
We’ll keep them in check, and it won’t be a problem again. Rehabilitation where it’s possible, and I think it’s possible here.
Did you end up removing his posts with the altered comics? Or are they still out there to disseminate his inferior versions across the internet?
And just to be clear, I think not banning beep is an idea with no upside.
The only rule Beep was breaking at the time was the per-day post limit. While cleaning that up would be tedious, it’d still be doable; the main reason we haven’t (that I know of) is that those posts are long-since submitted and have hundreds of existing discussions which other users contributed to. The per-day post limit is mainly relevant for new posts, so enforcing that rule as it should’ve been when they were posted wouldn’t really accomplish anything except make a lot of user comments inaccessible. It’d be functionally random, too – starting at the first posts, leaving post n and post n + 1, then removing everything until the next 24 hours after post n, loop until we get to the last post they made before it was upped to 5 and Beep was forced to stop breaking it. (That wasn’t your question; just addressing it since it has the more complicated answer.)
As for the altered comics, there was no rule in place at the time that comics need to be unaltered and have attribution. We (at least I) don’t do ex post facto rule enforcement. Of the existing reports for posts/comments made before dohpaz42’s rule changes, none (that I saw) were for violations of the rules that existed at the time, so the only reports I ended up acting on were the ones that violated Lemmy.World’s terms of service.
That makes sense for allowing beep to stay. I still don’t think it’s the right move given the extreme level of bad faith in which he operated, but ok, you guys are making a point about objectivity. Rules shouldn’t apply ex post facto to members of the community.
However. Rules should and typically do apply ex post facto to content. If I dig up an old comic with the word “fuck” in it that was never removed, would you remove it now that curse words are allowed? Or would you say there’s no current rule against it, so it stays?
I’m sure it would stay. Common sense wins out in that case, just as it should in the other case.
The point of having rules around content isn’t to punish users who break the rules. It’s to shape this place into the community we want it to be. If we want it to be a community that respects artists, then we need to remove the content that’s so blatantly and aggressively disrespectful to artists.
Posts that broke the per-day rule or the old NSFW rule aren’t harming anyone. But these posts that are an intentional perversion of a creator’s art, removing their name and in some cases surreptitiously modifying the content of the picture, are passively harming those artists every day that they exist in this community. You’re leaving them out there to be found and disseminated, to supercede the artist’s original work.
I seriously doubt the community values artist integrity less than “hundreds of existing discussions” about what an asshole the poster is, so I think this should be a pretty easy stance to take.
I seriously doubt the community values artist integrity less than “hundreds of existing discussions”
No, it does not, which is why I applied it only as justification not to enforce the per-day rule as it should’ve been before; violations of those rules are no longer harming anyone in the way the rule was designed to prevent.
If I dig up an old comic with the word “fuck” in it that was never removed, would you remove it now that curse words are allowed?
As I said, I don’t enforce rules ex post facto. There was no such rule before, but let’s say it existed. I would not, and you have to know that’s meaningfully different. Punishing someone ex post facto is very different from granting leniency ex post facto. “I’ve decided this is bad, so I’m going to actively punish it retroactively” is extremely different from “I’ve decided this is fine, so I’m no longer going to prosecute it.” You definitely understand that “I’m criminalizing weed, so you who smoked it a year ago are off to jail” and “I’m decriminalizing weed, so I’m going to drop existing charges” are completely different regardless of your stance on weed (although I know roughly what both of ours are).
And, of course, that’s not even the case here; no actual rule (unlike the “fuck” one) was broken at the time it was posted, so I’m not setting a precedent that we can change the rules at any time and apply them retroactively.
The point of having rules around content isn’t to punish users who break the rules. It’s to shape this place into the community we want it to be.
Actually, the rules are around to protect the users and what they contribute here – so they can safely post and comment knowing what’s in-bounds and have grounds to object if they think they were unfairly punished. If I wanted to “shape this place into the community we want it to be”, I could just go around removing whatever because I think it beautifies the community. I don’t apply ex post facto punishments, and I’m likely to grant leniency ex post facto; these two are entirely consistent with each other.
I can probably link at least one thread where I went off on Beep if you think any of this is meant to stick up for them specifically. I requested to moderate expressly because Beep was ruining the community, and I was even surprised to see them granted amnesty and tried to see a silver lining.
You’re welcome to think I’m a misguided idealist, but my hobbies are creating copyleft software, copyleft prose, copyleft media, and copyleft data requiring attribution, so if you think any of this is because I’d wish to wipe every one of Beep’s de-attributed posts any less than you, you’re understandably but sorely mistaken. I feel Beep spat in my face personally along with the rest of my community’s. I just don’t have a proper justification within the rules – and that includes the per-day limit applied as a backdoor in a way that’s not in the spirit of that rule.
That said, I will show no leniency to intentionally de-attributed posts in the future, and I’ll be making sure all have proper credit.
i understand.
I was pretty anti-post limits, but after seeing lemmyshitpost today… well. I can understand why they’re in place.
Yeah, several factors converge to make a bunch of daily posts (even well-meaning) a bad idea to allow; among them:
- The threadiverse is small enough that basically anything with even tepid reception shows up on ‘All’. So users who are lukewarm on the community but don’t want 5 million posts per day are incentivized to just block it altogether instead of whack-a-mole problematic users.
- It crowds out posts from other users, propagating a monoculture.
- It incentivizes the poster to value quantity over quality.
- It’s much harder to properly moderate.
- It dilutes discussion around a bunch of posts instead of in-depth commentary around a handful of posts.
- It causes ceaseless arguments that can even dominate the community (hell, even leak out of it) when one or two users get way out-of-hand.
Welcome new mods!
Hold onto your butts.
.dlǝɥ noʎ ɟᴉ ʎluO
Welcome mods! Looking forward to an active mod team, thanks for taking on the challenge!
Kudos, dohpaz, on the call about beep. The ban hammer is an easy out; I think this shows a lot of integrity and a considered approach to a controversial situation.
.llɐ ʎɐp’פ
ᴉɥ
(;＠‾＠) dlǝɥ ǝsɐǝlԀ
But what about beep@lemmynsfw and beep@lemmy.world? Will only one of his personalities behave? Can’t wait to find out
Personally I am more concerned with the ones not yet made, as the known ones are already blocked. :-|
Thanks, much appreciated!
Modding a big community is a herculean effort but needed if we want the fediverse to thrive, so thanks for stepping up to the plate!
This was removed?
This was posted (and reported) before the rule change, and I removed it due to it’s non-“family friendly” nature. There were a couple of other posts that I removed for similar reasons. Now, if you would like to repost it with the appropriate NSFW tag, you’re welcome to do so now that the rules officially support this content.
My main point is that family friendly is something you may want but not necessarily the community. The rule wasn’t enforced before.
Tagging is essentially the same as removing and not a compromise in my book.
That being said, I get this is a transition period and you guys have better stuff to do. I also think too many Meta threads at once is a bit annoying. I’m hoping we can have a more thorough discussion with everyone’s opinion in a dedicated thread at a later date, hopefully with examples so we can give a proper opinion.
Thanks for taking on the responsibility in any case!
Tagging is essentially the same as removing and not a compromise in my book.
Come check out Mastodon sometime, where we also tag movie spoilers, politics, mentions of any medical condition, and eye contact.
There’s nothing wrong with eye contact. It makes some people really uncomfortable. So we tag it so that they can filter it.
Imagine if eye contact and NSFW used the same tag, so if you wanted to see one, you also had to browse pictures of dicks.
I’m all for using custom tags in brackets in the post title like [spicy], but that’s not the same as banishing it to the NSFW part of Lemmy.
I’ll admit Lemmy is lagging behind in terms of built in tags. We need an adult tag to differentiate from straight up pornography.
It looksnlike the bottom of that was cut off, where attribution would usually be. I never removed it, but I would say that could be the reason. And maybe no NSFW tag, thats… spicy?
It was for NSFW. I don’t think many of beeps unattributed posts got removed. It’s hard to know since the modlog doesn’t handle images very well and you can’t actually see them from. This was the only comic for which I recognize the name, I can’t say if the other removed comics for NSFW were actually NSFW.
My problem with this is that, yes it is spicy but it isn’t NSFW.
The pg-13 rule was the one most brought up in the last thread. I feel like it’s being sweeped under the rug.
Tagging it NSFW is the same as removing it and a fake compromise imo. I’m guessing almost all users surf this comm with NSFW off. I see NSFW as being strictly pornography and things of that nature, not a comic with a joke alluding to sex, and is more of an instance wide thing.
The rule before was unenforced. I think, seeing as this is the biggest comic community, a minimum would be a thread about it with examples of what would and wouldn’t be allowed. Idk, maybe I’m asking for too much. It’s mainly that we are talking about changes to what type of comic is allowed, which seems major.
I don’t really want this place to turn into happy meal comics over time. Thanks for your response though.
There’s going to be plenty of growing pains. As of right now I will just enforce things that I think are egregious. Most of Beep’s old posts will stay, there was just so many that we all just hit the ‘resolved’ button and moved on. There is no point to bully when everyone knows we will be nose down the microsecond they post anyway.
As far as the NSFW tag goes, I could lean either way but that comic toes the line for me pretty close.
It doesn’t toe the line for instance wide rules, based on what gets posted in meme subs for example. And the instance wide rules was what this community has been going with for more than a while.
How you guys plan to deal with spicy comics is different than how it was dealt with before.
I’m happy there are new moderators. I don’t get why we have to lose a whole category of content though. Feels worse knowing the guy that caused all this, and basically spent a month insulting everyone here is staying but the content is getting censored. What was the whole point? I could block him but there isn’t a way to see the content you guys remove.
I guess we will see. The part about it not showing up in the modlog makes it tad bit more frustrating.
Im not sure where your getting loosing a while category, the community rules state NSFW is more than allowed, just needs to be tagged.
I don’t know enough about the modlog to comment on it beyond my previous statements.
There are bound to be differences between how things worked before, the entire team is new. Not necessarily new to modding, but new for the community. We will do our best to reign the bad actors in, and stay out of the communities way letting this place run well. Hopefully.
Im not sure where your getting loosing a while category, the community rules state NSFW is more than allowed, just needs to be tagged.
Basically, tagging and not allowing it are the same thing since most don’t surf with NSFW, NSFW being mostly for actual porn from what I understand.
It’s been brought up before that tagging something with NSFW is basically sending it into the abyss for this comm. No one sees it. I won’t at least and I don’t think I should have to start surfing porn just to see content I had access to before.
Just to be clear, it is a change and I don’t think that change is wanted overall. I could be wrong which is why I invite further discussion maybe later. Just, deleting old comics with Pixar cartoons feels like a bad start. I can also imagine it getting worse over time since a lot more stuff stuff can toe the new line.
But in any case, happy to see this place with a new mod team!
Ultimately I am happy to be here, I hope that we can all together make this a better com than it was before. Might prod around later to see what others think about the tagging rules.
Personally I think it should be tagged nsfw.
I like the metric I came up with the other day.
If you’d get arrested for showing it to a 16yr old, tag it. If you’d shoot your “creepy uncle” for showing it to your 16yr old kid, tag it.
It’s not that I think a 16yr old isn’t mature enough for this type of material, but it’s a lot different if a much older person shares it with them. When in doubt - tag it.
The first thing I want to say is this: for the time being, I have decided that beep is allowed to stay
That is disappointing to hear.
I think if you follow the rules as they’ve been laid out now, you should be allowed to stick around.
Previously the rule requiring a source or attribution link was not a rule.
While I don’t agree with Beep’s public POV on how website links for the artists are equivalent to an advertisement, it wasn’t against the rules. Just kind of rude.
If they’re willing to follow the rules now, they can stay. It’s that easy.
Also holy sheet what happened to not feeding the trolls? The whole thing was obvious bait and so many people took it
Thank you for taking on the task. We (mostly) appreciate it.
Nice work, DohPaz and folks! I guess it will be interesting to see if the various beeps clean up their act across the other comics /c’s they post at…
Also, I confess a swell of jealousy about getting so many mod volunteers in past days. I haven’t had a single volunteer at my comics place over the years, altho of course it’s smaller (~1.1K users), and more niche than yours. Anyway, thanks for your efforts, here!
Nice! Thank you!
Glad to be here. Hope we can keep this place clean and on topic!
