The plain and simple of it is that I’m not a good moderator. I have no idea what I’m doing. I wanted a community where people could post conservative stuff without it getting overwhelmed by lefty stuff, and then you could have discussions/arguments in the comment section. Bring to light stories that wouldn’t normally be seen on lemmy. Since that didn’t exist on lemmy, I had to do it myself.
Right now, there’s a lot of toxicity, some straight up telling people to kill themselves. My whole moderation policy was basically “So long as it isn’t a straight up slur, you could comment it”.
You’d think it’d be simple, just ban those who do that. Well, what about those who defend baby murder? I know lefties genuinely believe it isn’t, but I do. How do you tell what is horrible shit, when lefties act like horror movie monsters?
What about those who I’m like 90% sure are arguing in bad faith? I want to encourage discussions and arguments, and if I’m wrong, what then?
Me doing keyword-based moderating was a bad idea, but I am at a loss of how to do better, without breaking what this sub was supposed to be about.
I need ideas.
How should I moderate this community?
Honestly, I think that if your objective is to have a community based on a particular belief, you cannot have honest discussions, as you already know what you would like to talk about and it seems like you are not ready to challenge your ideas.
Let’s take a look at one example from your post
I’m assuming you are referring to abortion rights. That is a hard take to take as a universal truth, there are many many countries where that is a guaranteed right, and you are not even considering discussing your belief. How would a honest discussion be held about this topic if you are already calling baby murderers your contestants?
Props to you for wanting to be a better moderator, but a discussion topic requires the other part to be able to freely express their opinions even if you don’t like them. That would happen in a discussion community called “politics” or “United States politics”, but if your community is called “conservatives”, every discussion will be in the form of “conservatives are correct, leftists are murderers and terrorists” (and vice versa in a community called “leftists”, what I’m talking about is not limited to conservatives) and as you notice, this polarity and fanatism attracts the worst of both parts, ready to fight and be toxic.
A large part of the problem is that communities that reasonably should be neutral are still skewed insanely left due to the platform largely leaning left. So you go to a community called “politics” and it’s nothing but leftists jacking each other off, and then get banned because you dared to criticize them for it.
Those types of communities are generally leftist because the right cannot compete in a free market of ideas such as the internet. That, and conservatives have a habit of bigotry, hate, and personal attacks that get them banned.
Don’t expect to stick around in a community with good moderation if you tell people to kill themselves and such.
I can agree with that, but you don’t solve the problem by repulsing them and making a right-only community, this polarization will just create two echo chambers where members jack each other off.