So after a run in with a moderator yesterday I’ve had some thoughts I felt I wanted to share.
I won’t name them here, you are welcome to look at my comment history and make up your own mind.
In this instance a user posted some misinformation. I don’t think they intended to, they merely perpetuated a myth, they clearly simply knew no better.
I tried to respond diplomatically, they doubled down, other users piled on, the downvotes are plenty and then I responded with an article citing evidence supporting my assertions.
I also stated that the burden of proof lies with the claimant and asked for some context on why they seemed dead set on the lie they were aping back, asking if they subscribe to other myth based beliefs, religions, etc. That post was unceremoniously deleted with no notice to me and no reasons given… until the user pointed out in another post that they are the sole mod of the community and warned me that they were “not afraid to ban” me should I “cross the line” in a very *‘I’m the sheriff of this here town’ *tone. Which gave me a chuckle.
That’s my side of the story, it’s all there if you want to draw your own conclusions. It really doesn’t matter who is right or wrong in a ‘someone is wrong on the internet’ spat but I did spot a chink in the fediverse through this incident.
The real point here is that this kind of behaviour is one of things that made Reddit fucking awful and I’d hate to see it flourish here in the fediverse.
I don’t have the solutions just some suggestions that I’d be keen to hear others opinions on:
- No moderation without representation. IOW: mods should be democratically elected.
- Mod elections should be annual and no mod should enjoy that status for life.
- There should be a mechanism for inducing a ‘no confidence’ mode election at any time otherwise the communities are likely to splinter into “real_” communities just as they did on Reddit which no community in the fediverse can currently afford.
What say you my brothers and sisters and everything in between? Is there a way to safeguard against cronyism, corruption and other frailties of the human ego?
Not sure how it works where you are but in my country companies had started this trend where they began laying off “overpriced” programmers programmers who’d been hired in the dotcom boom, had remained loyal employees for decades and (here’s the real point) were reaching retirement age. They ‘offer a package’ (early retirement) and then manage out anyone who didn’t take it. Comes to pass that these devs have such deep domain expertise alongside their technical abilities that the majority of them get hired back as consultants at what amounts to a name-your-rate deal. Learn from us. Take the package and go freelance.