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?
Hey Elon: Let Me Help You Speed Run The Content Moderation Learning Curve This is a great article that explains why every website has a draconian amount of rules and moderation, even if they start out claiming they’re about freedom of speech. It’s the same reason why countries that are free and democratic have lots of police and lawyers and judges and courts.
If you actually want debate and discussion, you essentially have it already. Sorry to point it out, but your ideology is not popular here. Fox News and Not The Bee articles will be downvoted, and comments in opposition to them will be upvoted. That is open debate and discussion. You can remove the comments that are overly aggressive, but the community will still be downvote central for anyone who actually supports what is being posted.
If you want a safe space for people who like Fox News and Not The Bee, then you can do the whitelist thing and only allow you and people who agree with you to post. Though I’d imagine the community would be incredibly small.
In the end, it’s your community! I won’t be offended no matter what you do, but if there is a whitelist or the rules are such that having an opinion is going to get my comments removed, I’d just block the community from my feed. No sense seeing posts I can’t interact with!
There’s also the middle ground option. Ban the people who are just here to start shit and spam how much they hate conservatives, but otherwise allow dissenting comments when they’re left in good faith and generally promote discussion.
Most of those 20 level of bullshit can be skipped, and it just reads as a bunch of cope, written by someone upset that they can’t just get everyone they don’t like banned.