I mean in that sort of case then the group would defer to the person more knowledgeable in that specialty, same as what happens when after brainstorming people split into small groups or volunteer for individual responsibilities. Crowdsourced decision making is meant to be for the bigger aspects, stuff like what the end goal of a project should be. Smaller, extremely specialized aspects should get handled by those best equipped for it, that’s not a hierarchy. Listening to an expert is just respecting someone’s knowledge, and as long as they don’t have actual authority over you, then there’s much less risk of corruption taking place. There’s a quote from I think Proudhon Bakunin that I can’t remember off the top of my head, I’ll come back and edit this when I find it. But effectively, it boils down to the difference between authority as in power over people, and authority as in knowledge.

And people who help organize and manage jobs also don’t necessarily need to be part of a hierarchy either. If the group agrees that someone is extremely effective at helping resolve conflicts or suggesting the best path to take and that sort of role is desirable for the project then that’s what they should do. The difference is that they aren’t in a position of power over anyone. They don’t have the unilateral ability to fire someone (nor does any individual), or take away their income/ability to live. And since they don’t have that power, they aren’t in a hierarchical position over anyone. If they start trying to force their way without taking feedback then the group will stop listening to them and appoint someone else if they still feel that it’d be useful. Without a position of authority over people no hierarchy exists in the definition used in anarchist theory.

Edit: Thanks @onoira@lemmy.dbzer0.com! Knew I read it somewhere on here recently.

Does it follow that I reject all authority? Far from me such a thought. In the matter of boots, I refer to the authority of the bootmaker; concerning houses, canals, or railroads, I consult that of the architect or engineer. For such or such special knowledge I apply to such or such a savant. But I allow neither the bootmaker nor the architect nor the savant to impose his authority upon me. I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism censure. I do not content myself with consulting authority in any special branch; I consult several; I compare their opinions, and choose that which seems to me the soundest. But I recognize no infallible authority, even in special questions; consequently, whatever respect I may have for the honesty and the sincerity of such or such an individual, I have no absolute faith in any person. Such a faith would be fatal to my reason, to my liberty, and even to the success of my undertakings; it would immediately transform me into a stupid slave, an instrument of the will and interests of others.

— Mikhail Bakunin, God and the state, Chapter 2

But yeah, respecting peoples expertise in topics, splitting up work, or appointing people to give managerial suggestions aren’t hierarchical. A lack of hierarchy is not a lack of structure, it’s just a lack of power and violence being used to oppress or control people. Efficient structures like these tend to naturally fall out of self-organization once the monopolies on violence used to prop up hierarchies are removed.

I think the main rebuttal to that argument is what stops that from happening in a hierarchy? If anything having one makes that more likely, since someone in charge can have a bad idea and no one below them has any real power to stop it. There’s a reason “incompetent boss/manager” is such a common trope. Having a horizontal structure where consensus is prioritized actually helps prevent those sorts of issues, since people who are the most knowledgeable and involved in the process are the ones making those decisions. It’s why group brainstorming sessions are so common, bouncing ideas off of other people involved in a project is extremely useful to help filter or improve bad ideas and build on good ones. Horizontal groups are sort of the natural state that you fall into when collaborating with people when there isn’t an existing rigidly enforced hierarchy between the members.

Yeah I know it’s technically visible, but unless I’m just dumb afaik the default ui doesn’t have a way to easily see which mod did an action unless you manually filter by every mod it could be. Since it is possible to do that it’s really not a huge deal, just something that could help prevent misunderstandings.

I’ve rewritten this a few times with various points I was trying to make, but for the sake of not having a wall of text I’ll try to keep it short lol.

For the whole tankie discussion, I saw @LH0ezVT@sh.itjust.works mentioned imperialism, and it made me think that the whole rule should probably be reworded imo

The big thing is that it feels like the whole debate is mostly based on semantics, so that should be fixed if possible. It basically boils down to what “tankie” means or is perceived to mean. As written the rule uses ideological labels to try and represent a broader set of beliefs, but the main issue with that is that by picking those sorts of imprecise labels it sort of muddies what specific kind of beliefs the rule is trying to highlight. Especially with tankie (and even more so on Lemmy), lots of different people use it to label very different things. Even if the rules are using it “correctly”, there’s still enough disagreement surrounding the term overall that it seems worth it to just elaborate more specifically on what it’s actually trying to refer to. Doing so helps prevent some misunderstandings that might happen between users and mods as to what is covered by this rule, means that new users who have been incorrectly called a tankie elsewhere on lemmy don’t see the term and assume they’ll also be banned here, and also just generally makes the rules more clear which is never a bad thing.

Maybe something like:

Support or defense of authoritarianism is not welcome.This includes but is not limited to: imperialism, nationalism, genocide denial, ethnic or racial supremacy, fascism, nazism, etc."

I feel like that covers the problematic stuff from any type of authoritarianism. Could even be safe and make it something to the effect of “Support or defense of authoritarianism, regardless of the state, is not welcome…” to make sure it’s explicit.

I definitely agree with being against states/state oppression. I think the main problem is just that someone doesn’t actually need to self identify as a tankie to feel excluded by the word. If someone gets a bunch of angry comments on .world calling them a tankie when they definitely aren’t, then even if this community/instance is trying to use it in a different, more accurate way it still has the possibility that they would feel unwelcome here. When the prevailing way tankie gets used by the rest of Lemmy is incorrect, then that usage kinda becomes the first thing people will associate it with when they see the term somewhere else on Lemmy.

I think for official rules tankie is vague enough that it’s better to just be explicit in what is actually against the rules like what’s already there with the “no genocide denial” and “no authoritarianism” lines. Adding “no tankies” on top of that just leads to a less clear definition of what sort of behavior is actually against the rules imo. Since everyone has different ideas of what someone being a tankie means it’s not always just the authoritarian aspects that get lumped into the definition but sometimes the leftist aspects too.

Obviously none of this is to say that authoritarianism, genocide apologia, or anything like that should be allowed. I’d just personally like the rules being more clear about that explicitly instead of muddying stuff unnecessarily by using tankie.

Polygender!

I had to look it up the first time I saw this meme too lol. Prideflags.org is super useful to try and reverse search for a prideflag. It doesn’t have this one but it tends to be the first place I go to if I don’t recognize a flag.

I like the anti-authoritarianism and no genocide denial rules, it’s just the term tankie being used specifically that feels like the biggest issue imo. It’s misused so often that it kinda ends up excluding a decent number of people. Someone doesn’t need to self-identify as a tankie to feel excluded, just getting called one enough by others for expressing anything left-wing can do it. Its not that I think any of the mods here would use it to wrongly remove stuff like a .world community might, but for people who don’t know as much about Lemmy/196 it wouldn’t be surprising for people to assume that because they get called a tankie on world that they wouldn’t be welcome here.

And definitely agreed human rights violations and genocides definitely shouldn’t be defended regardless of what country did them, but I think since we already have the no genocide denial rule those should be covered anyway.

I’ll also say I’m in support of removing the “no tankie” rule. I’m all for anti-authoritarianism, but with how often tankie gets misued on Lemmy at large having the rules specifically use it always kinda felt like just a potential avenue for removing general left-wing stuff. Not that it has been used for that on 196 necessarily, or that it will be in this community, but it still feels like tankie is a loaded enough term that just having more specific rules is better.

Like you said sectarianism sucks, and right now in the US at least it I’d say solidarity is more important than ideological differences. I’m super anarchist, but if a ML is also attending protests, building mutual aid, and fighting for immigrants and trans people then who am I to exclude them when currently the more support the better. (There are arguments for why this viewpoint is wrong or right, and whether solidarity with authoritarianism in fighting existing power structures is counter-intuitive or not, but it also doesn’t feel like those arguments apply as much in something like 196 imo.)

(Also 100℅ agree on adding misogyny. Obviously the list of prejudices isn’t exhaustive or anything but misogyny is a big one and it feels like it should definitely be there.)

I’m definitely a fan of sending a dm explaining why action was taken to the relevant user. In that sort of spirit would it be a good idea to include the username of the mod in the message for the modlog? With how hard it can be to try and figure out which mod did what action it can lead to misunderstandings, and trying to make that more transparent could be good. Would also help show if a particular mod is abusing their position or something (I don’t think it’s super likely you all would do that on purpose, but still).

Good idea yeah! The 20x20 one will look a little more crunchy than the actual icon would end up, since the actual image file is still higher quality than 20x20 in terms of pixel density, its just the displayed height/width that gets smaller.

The 20x20 one will probably be closer to the same quality as the 120x120 one you posted (probably a bit more blurry), and the 120x120 size will be closer to the full quality one.

On the default lemmy ui at least, it looks like icons tend to be either ~20x20 when they’re the small circle in the actual post, and 120x120 when they’re in the community view as the 2 main sizes, and 24x24 also shows up in the community list section. Figured I’d mention some sizes in case it helps anyone designing an icon!

Yeah those are basically my thoughts too lol. Even if it ends up not working out the process of trying it will still be good since it’ll give me more experience. Those aspects you’re wary of are also definitely my 2 biggest concerns too. I think (or at least hope) that with the rules I’m thinking of for how trust is generated it would mostly positively effect behaviour? I’m imagining by “rewarding” trust to recieving positive replies, combined with a small reward for making positive replies in the first place, it would mostly just lead to more positive interactions overall. And I don’t think I’d ever want a system like this to punish making a negative reply, only maybe when getting negative replies in response, since hopefully that prevents people wanting to avoid confrontation of harmful content in order to avoid being punished. Honestly it might even be better to only ever reward trust and never retract it except via decay over time, but that’s something worth testing I imagine.

And in terms of gaming the system I do think that’s kinda my bigger concern tbh. I feel like the most likely negative outcome is something like bots/bad actors finding a way to scam it, or the community turning into an echo chamber where ideas (that aren’t harmful) get pushed out, or ends up drifting towards the center and becoming less safe for marginalized people. I do feel like thats part of the reason 196 would be a pretty good community to use a system like this though, since there’s already a very strong foundation of super cool people that could be made the initial trusted group, and then it would hopefully lead to a better result.

There are examples of similar sorts of systems that exist, but it’s mostly various cryptocurrencies or other P2P systems that use the trust for just verifying that the peers aren’t malicious and it’s never really been tested for moderation afaik (I could have missed an example of it online, but I’m fairly confident in saying this). I think stuff like the Fediverse and other decentralized or even straight up P2P networks are a good place for this sort of thing to work though, as a lot of the culture is already conducive to decentralization of previously centralized systems, and the communities tend to be smaller which helps it feel more personal and prevents as many bad actors/botting attempts since there aren’t a ton of incentives and they become easier to recognize.

I’ve been looking at the Lemmy api and stuff, and into some existing libraries/implementations of trust networks but that’s about it so far tbh. I think I’m gonna start working on some implementation later today maybe, this whole mod drama and the discussion it led to make me really want to start lol.

I’ve been thinking recently about chain of trust algorithms and decentralized moderation and am considering making a bot that functions a bit like fediseer but designed more for individual users where people can be vouched for by other users. Ideally you end up with a network where trust is generated pseudo automatically based on interactions between users and could have reports be used to gauge whether a post should be removed based on the trust level of the people making the reports vs the person getting reported. It wouldn’t necessarily be a perfect system but I feel like there would be a lot of upsides to it, and could hopefully lead to mods/admins only needing to remove the most egregious stuff but anything more borderline could be handled via community consensus. (The main issue is lurkers would get ignored with this, but idk if there’s a great way to avoid something like that happening tbh)

My main issue atm is how to do vouching without it being too annoying for people to keep up with. Not every instance enables downvotes, plus upvote/downvote totals in general aren’t necessarily reflective of someone’s trustworthiness. I’m thinking maybe it can be based on interactions, where replies to posts/comments can be ranked by a sentiment analysis model and then that positive/negative number can be used? I still don’t think that’s a perfect solution or anything but it would probably be a decent starting point.

If trust decays over time as well then it rewards more active members somewhat, and means that it’s a lot harder to build up a bot swarm. If you wanted any significant number of accounts you’d have to have them all posting at around the same time which would be a lot more obvious an activity spike.

Idk, this was a wall of text lol, but it’s something I’ve been considering for a while and whenever this sort of drama pops up it makes me want to work on implementing something.

Thanks! This is the first time I used nail polish remover first and put a top coat on at the end and it feels way stronger and hasn’t chipped at all yet. I’ll have to get a base coat though, the brand I’ve been ordering from doesn’t sell one but I heard good things about using one online too so I’ll look for one. I appreciate all the advice lol, I’m still figuring out proper technique and stuff to prevent bubbling, or getting it all over my fingers, or having the top be textured like the brush, etc. This attempt felt way better than my first couple for sure, but I’m also definitely still learning lol.

I definitely will, just need to wait for 786 to have some of the colors I’d need back in stock (or finding another brand to buy from would also work lol). I just like that they’re vegan/cruelty free and also have a shop I can order directly from rather than going through amazon.

One rule I think might be a good idea is that mods aren’t allowed to moderate their own posts/comment chains. Not that it’s really been an issue on 196 in the past afaik, but there are some communities where the mods will get into an argument with another user and then remove comments for incivility or a similar rule which obviously has massive potential for abuse. Assuming there are enough mods where it’s not an issue to do so (which seems very likely based on the number of people interested in moderating) preventing situations like that entirely seems beneficial.

This is awesome, I love random little trinkets like this. Are you planning on mounting it (idk if that’s the right term lol) to some kind of jewlery or just keeping it as a figurine?

Honestly if this gets all the people who have problems respecting “weird” pronouns/gender identities to leave for .world it’ll probably be a net positive for 196 and blahaj.zone as a whole.