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Blahaj Lemmy Meta @lemmy.blahaj.zone
OccultIconoclast @reddthat.com

Blahaj's lack of rules invites criticism

I've seen a lot of instances of people on Lemmy saying you can get banned from Blahaj for forgetting someone's pronouns. And then Ada has to come in and explain why they're wrong in their interpretation of the rules. These people were banned for good reasons, they're transphobes. But I think they misunderstand the rules of Blahaj for a legitimate reason.

It's because Blahaj doesn't have rules. It has two guidelines. Very subjective ones. People want to know what will get them banned, so they try to understand the rules of that subjectivity. The rules for what Ada considers to be empathy and inclusion. The rules of Ada's psychology. Because like it or not, with highly subjective guidelines, Ada's interpretation and understanding of that subjectivity is the rules.

And Ada didn't write the rules of her psychology in the sidebar. So people have to speculate. And people are speculating wrong, and starting arguments about it.

I think a ruleset should be a transparent explanation of how a mod team thinks about acceptable behaviour. By not having rules, Blahaj is being opaque about how the mod team thinks. And the only way for people to deal with that is to practice amateur psychoanalysis. Which is unpleasant and creates division.

If people understood how trans people think about acceptable behaviour, they wouldn't be transphobes. So the result of this system is that everyone who is banned for transphobia doesn't understand why and needs it personally explained to them. If the sidebar explained acceptable behaviour in a way everyone can understand, they wouldn't misunderstand it so often.

I think the current system is creating pointless drama.

67 comments

  • I've been building and nurturing communities online and offline for decades now. So when Kaity and I were creating the guidelines for this instance, I knew upfront that there would be guidelines, not rules. And that reason for that is because the rules aren't the source of truth on what's acceptable and what isn't. Rules are attempt to codify and communicate what is acceptable, but they get treated as if they are what is acceptable.

    If I had a situation where someone needed to be removed from the community, but they technically weren't breaking the rules, then the rules are the problem. They don't get to stay just because the rules didn't capture that specific scenario. But changing rules brings about confusion and contention, because people think it means what is acceptable has changed, when in reality, they just had a mistaken understanding of what is acceptable, because the rules were centered as the source of truth.

    It also creates a lot more work on moderators and volunteers, because they have to turn in to mini lawyers, and their actions become shaped by the rules, again, giving the rules first place in what is ok and what isn't, when they should never be that, because they never can be that. Rules are always imperfect.

    And so, guidelines. Guidelines get to the heart of it, because they don't attempt to define every scenario that is and isn't acceptable. Instead, what they do is let people know the lens through which decisions about moderation are made. I acknowledge that that means some level of ambiguity. However, there is ambiguity with rules too, we just pretend/forget that there isn't. But with guidelines, it's easy to address the ambiguous scenarios and uncommon cases, because the guidelines for dealing with them are simple.

    • I think the idea you're working off of, that people are capable of accepting ambiguity, is flawed. Some people, sure. But a lot of people will never accept ambiguous guidelines, because the human brain isn't designed to see things that way. The autistic human brain often especially not. These people will always want certainty, and they'll psychoanalyse you to get it.

      I've tried to psychoanalyse you too, because I'm the kind of autistic that craves structure. Haven't started arguments over it, but I have seen some weird decisions I didn't understand and struggled to get my head around them. Because if your mind is unpredictable to me, then the way Blahaj is moderated is unpredictable too. And people like me want to feel like we understand the rules, even if it's an illusion of safety. An illusion of safety can be very important to a person's wellbeing.

      An environment where the rules are unclear and I don't feel like I understand them, well that reminds me of elementary school, personally. Personally, due to my own trauma, I don't feel like I'm capable of accepting that kind of environment without falling into despair. When I was a kid who didn't understand the rules, I acted out. I didn't see the point in trying to follow rules I didn't understand, so I didn't bother trying not to misbehave. I've matured quite a bit since then, but to be completely honest, using Blahaj makes me feel like that confused little kid again, on an emotional level.

      A lot of people say growing up is hard, but for me, every year I got older made things easier. The rules became clearer. When I entered university and the workplace I got shown codes of conduct and ethics guidelines. Loved it. Way better than the chaos of childhood. It feels safe. You're saying clear rules aren't actually safe, and I agree, but I still like being able to lie to myself and say I'm safe. I breathe easier. I relax.

      • As I said, the ambiguity exists whether its convenient or not. Rules just create a facade that makes people think there isn't ambiguity. But the ambiguity is still there, because the rules aren't the final source of truth. The decision about what is and isn't acceptable will never be determined by what rule was codified, it will be determined by the reason behind codifying that rule. The ambiguity is always there. Rules don't' change that.

        I have seen some weird decisions I didn't understand and struggled to get my head around them

        There will never be explicit rules here, because they add workload and stress, without addressing the ambiguity that you struggle with

        As you can also see from the replies here, a lot of people don't share your viewpoint, so it's not a clear cut case of rules being universally better for the community. I have to take the communities needs and my own needs in to account, and there is no clear consensus or support for concrete rules from the community.

        What I can do is offer the chance to address that ambiguity through other avenues. If you can tell me the things that you've seen that seem ambiguous or unpredictable to you, I can explain my thinking and reasoning, and reduce some of the ambiguity. I can't promise we'll see eye to eye, but hopefully you'll have a bit of a better understanding of how things work going forward.

  • Transphobes getting mad and sealioning about "rules" is not pointless drama because it accomplishes the goal of keeping those people out.

    Literal rules can be designed or twisted to undermine the fundamental goals of those rules. It creates lawyers focused on rhetoric over morals; lawyers trying to find a way to get away with the very things the rules were supposed to prevent. Words have no meaning so long as they can be abused to accomplish what they want. This is how fascism is so easily able to overtake liberal democratic systems and how powerful interests rig the state in their favor.

    Anyhow, most of the drama comes from people like you who care more about semantics than having queer people feel safe and secure. If you want to help banned transphobes overcome their bigotry, find a way where you can do that off blahaj. That's how you can actually achieve your goals without relying on Ada to do it. When many of them inevitably refuse to change, then you can feel secure in knowing that most of this "drama" is bad faith bigotry. Complaining here is a waste of effort for accomplishing what you supposedly want.

    • Complaining here is a waste of effort for accomplishing what you supposedly want.

      Making Blahaj a safer place for trans people with less drama? I can't do that on Blahaj?

      I read most of the other comments and didn't reply because I don't want to start a ton of arguments, but your comment stood out to me as making a lot of assumptions about what I want that I don't understand.

      This is actually a great example of why I'm not a huge fan of Blahaj's guidelines. You're trying to use your sense of cognitive empathy to figure out how I think. And the guidelines say empathy is good. But I don't like it. You're making mistakes, and I'd rather you didn't try to psychoanalyse me. I want you to empathize with me less, please. You haven't read enough of what I have to say to make accurate guesses at the level you're trying to. It's too early for the amount of empathy you're pointing at me.

      One of the reasons I created this post is because I assume Ada doesn't like being psychoanalysed by internet people either. This post is a warning that the current system leads to lots of amateur psychoanalysis. It's unpleasant for me, I'd assume it would be unpleasant for her too.

  • i've been here since almost when it was created and never once had any issues. it's not hard to not be a terrible person that respects everybody they encounter :)

  • I disagree completely

    Principles are always better than rules.

    Rules are inflexible, and lead people into thinking that there's ways around them, that you can game the system because the rules aren't written that way. It also leads to thinking that if it isn't a rule, you can do it.

    Guiding principles are flexible, more enduring. But they take more work on the part of the people handling situations as they arise.

    A set of principles, with examples, tends to work much better long term.

    Otherwise, you just keep stacking rules. You stack rules high enough, nobody can remember them all, and they topple.

    Besides, ain't nothing about lemmy fully democratic. At some point, someone is handling the hardware and keeping the connection alive. Whoever that happens to be is the one that has to carry the weight of decisions, even if there's an illusion of collaboration. Maybe if society as a whole gets rebuilt, it could be fully community run, but I tend to believe humans suck at that once the group gets over about a dozen people, so I'm dubious something as big as an instance is ever gong to actually function without an organizer (be that a smaller group or an individual).

    But, here, now, on this instance, it's working very well. It weeded out folks that didn't agree with the principles as explained. It made a clear line to anyone not on the instance, and it is definitely known that those principles are not to be fucked with

    That seems like a highly successful forum to me.

    Who cares about external criticism at all? Even internal criticism is of dubious value when the goal is a protected community. Hell internal and external validation is of dubious value. What matters is that things work. And they do. Very, very well.

    The whole idea that someone banned for transphobic activity needs a personal explanation is, frankly, malarkey. Blahaj ain't about the folks that aren't on board with the goals. That's the only explanation needed: you done fucked up, bye.

    You know the idea of "It isn't my job to educate you"? It's part of every marginalized group's evolution. At some point, it isn't the black person's job to educate white people about their lived experience. It isn't the gay man's job to explain to the straights what gay culture is, and why they have a right to exist.

    It isn't the admins' job to educate any of us. Their job is keeping things running, and keeping the space one that folks can just be in.

    Rules. Rules. They're fine for some things. I don't think they're useful here.

    Which, please note that my statement of external validation being of dubious value applies to this entire comment.

    But, for me, I see what they're doing here, and it's beautiful.

  • trolls aren't going to not troll just because there are well defined rules, in fact in can have the opposite effect, trolls using the rules as a weapon in their trolling.

    in some of your comments you talk about checks and balances in terms of governance. well lemmy is not a democracy plain and simple, server owners have full control, and this is a feature not a bug. having full control means that you can abuse your power sure, but echo chambers aren't fun without people to troll, and the open nature of the fediverse means people will go wherever they like best. and for what it's worth the vibe here is better than anywhere else on lemmy in my experience.

    and as for your last point, this space is not intended for transphobes to better themselves, it is meant as a place for trans people to feel safe. if a troll comes here and betters themselves somehow, great, but that's not the goal of this place. we're here because we're sick of having cis het normative being the standard, and we wanna be ourselves, not conform to the straights and what they want us to be.

    • [it] can have the opposite effect, trolls using the rules as a weapon in their trolling.

      I agree, I think the most likely outcome would be that the rules would be weaponized, used to try to argue that their particular kind of transphobia wasn't covered and it's unfair to ban them because it wasn't specifically cited, etc.

      EDIT:

      this space is not intended for transphobes to better themselves, it is meant as a place for trans people to feel safe

      I keep wondering if it's worth having a separate instance for an /r/AskTransgender kind of community for people with questions and to help cis people engage in dialogue and learn more about trans folks.

      While it's an unmitigated good to have safe spaces (esp. since there are so few for trans folks), I personally love to torture myself by talking to trans-naive or even transphobic folks, and would love to help well-intended people learn and grow if they are interested (even if realistically, that's not how most of those interactions go, lol). Obviously this isn't the place for that, I just wish there were a sort of border zone where those kinds of interactions could happen.

  • I think the rules here are just fine. If I were to to sum it up, just don't be bigoted towards minority people. I don't get how that is difficult to grasp.

    If you clicked your way onto this specific community, you would had have to have atleast some knowledge of the the LGBTQ+ community, how to treat them etc.

    The guidelines aren't hard to grasp either, first they ask you to have empathy for minority groups, so that right there is telling you that you need to have some kind of understanding for minorities, where they come from, and what they might expect from others. Such as being called the correct pronouns.

    Even if you didn't know ahead of time, you could always ask and listen. Do some research, right? the internet can be used as a research tool?

    The inclusion and acceptance part of the guidelines, Is so clear however, I don't think it needs more explaining, 'don't be bigoted' is so common place Lemmy, let alone the Fediverse. Which is why it just seems to me, that if you made your way to this server that you should know what is expected, or at the least, you should know to not treat minorities badly, because these types of guidelines are such common place on Lemmy. Even on Reddit, this isn't exactly an unknown concept.

  • I'm not sure I get your logic for how transphobes wouldn't be transphobic if they understood the rules. Anti-lgbt behavior is very clearly listed as an example of not okay behavior within the guidelines. This is a safe space and anyone who needs to read some comprehensive incredibly detailed ruleset to act cordial won't read that ruleset in the first place. The guidelines as is seems to work just fine with only transphobes complaining as far as I can tell.

  • To be honest this sounds similar to a critique that general laws are weak because they rely on the subjective evaluation of judges.

    For example, the famous quote "I know it when I see it" by a U.S. Supreme Court Justice on the threshold of what is obscenity.

    Just as we rely on judges to interpret laws and apply them fairly and reasonably, we rely on moderators to be reasonable in how they enforce the rules.

    Like obscenity, it is hard to capture a set of necessary and sufficient conditions that can define transphobia or homophobia.

    Even if we tried to come up with a long list of rules to create more transparency, there is a principle of good legislation that "hard cases make bad law," meaning laws should intentionally be written in a general way aimed at the average case, and not written based on exceptional cases.

    While it might feel more transparent to engage in making many explicit rules to cover every case of what is transphobic and bannable, it might also just make a mess and add no clarity.

    In our case we would not want to write rules that cover every exceptional way that transphobes might behave that might get them banned, especially if doing so makes it harder for moderators to ban transphobes.

    Instead it is better to have a single, simple rule that bans transphobia and let the moderators make judgements about what counts.

    That said, I understand the desire for transparency - I wouldn't mind if there were something separate from the rules that illustrate some examples of behavior that would be considered rule violations, much like how famous cases help set precedent and create a kind of record of how judgements have happened in the past and so you can get a sense of how the rules will be applied to future behavior.

    But I believe the moderator logs are already open, and it sounds like you already knew the people who were banned and were complaining were transphobes - which I assume you know by looking at the modlogs or by their behavior.

    So, is the issue that the transphobes were not obviously transphobes to others (so they pulled the wool over the eyes of others)? Is the idea that making more salient what they were banned for would help with this situation?

    • I wouldn't mind if there were something separate from the rules that illustrate some examples of behavior that would be considered rule violations

      Examples are listed in sidebar too!

      • Ah, good point - I don't really feel your rules are too ambiguous. I can somewhat understand a rigid mindset for rule-following (which is maybe unrelated to OP's concerns, and is more about how I am relating to their request), so admittedly what I had in mind was more like a list of very specific examples of violations, maybe links to modlogs where users were banned for what they said, that act as examples for each category of violation.

        It's overkill and probably not that helpful, but it is one way I could imagine a way of creating the kind of transparency OP wants without creating a bunch of very specific and rigid rules. That said, it sounds like OP could come up with their own list of those things themselves - AFAIK modlogs are public, so anyone could comb through them and build a kind of taxonomy of rule violations that way.

67 comments