c/neurodivergence isn’t being moderated at all lately. Three months ago there was the great post from NoOnesLazyInLazyTown@beehaw.org concerning ableism against people with NPD, and the amount of toxicity I saw in that thread was shocking. Some great people pushing back on the ableism and hate there, but I couldn’t believe those hateful comments were being left up, or the sheer volume of them.

Yesterday I posted a new article I wrote also concerning NPD, hoping I would get the same kind of positive response I’ve gotten from Beehaw in the past when talking about neurodiversity. But instead I saw nothing but hate, personal attacks, and vicious toxicity. This isn’t the kind of discourse I come to Beehaw to see, and I don’t think I’m alone.

Looking at the community history, it looks like the post volume has dramatically reduced since immediately before that first NPD post. I’m not surprised people are avoiding the community, I don’t intend to use it anymore either if what I received yesterday is going to be the norm.

The modlog of this community hasn’t been touched in 7 months, and the only comment removal visible at all is tagged with the removal reason “stupid comment”, which I frankly find quite ironic.

Can we please have some actual moderation on this community? If there is absolutely nobody else who can volunteer their time then I’d even be happy to do it Myself.

  • alyaza [they/she]@beehaw.orgM
    29·
    6 months ago

    this whole thing has been a mess so, here are some bullet points of what we expect going forward.

    most immediately: both sides of this are going to have to make peace with being uncomfortable. it is Grail’s right to argue the premise that there is ableism against people with NPD; but, it is also the right of everyone else to disagree with that, and to disagree with it for personal experience reasons. if that’s a problem for you, don’t engage with this stuff and block people, full stop. genuinely: do something else. this is our third discussion on this subject and i have seen exactly zero minds changed as a result on either side, so i doubt you’re going to be the first if you’re obstinate enough.

    if you would like more elaboration on the line we take here, please see our essay On Content Removal, and specifically this section:

    However, from a pragmatic standpoint: Beehaw is ultimately a public space - curated as it may be - and you will be exposed to content you neither agree with nor feel comfortable with as a product of that. This is perfectly fine. It is also fine to disagree with some things we allow here that you personally would not. These are normal parts of existing in public spaces with other people and using services that are not your own respectively. But that also means you must be willing to compromise or take personal action to protect yourself sometimes - our moderation cannot and will not guarantee a completely agreeable space for you.

    From a logistical standpoint: we simply cannot privilege your personal discomfort over anyone else’s, and we cannot always cater specifically to you and what you want. Your personal positions on right or wrong are not inherently more valid than someone else’s when weighing most questions of how we should moderate this space. There are often plenty of people who do not feel like you that we must also consider in moderation decisions.

    secondarily:

    • it is understandable that neopronouns (especially of the sort in play here) give people trouble, but if someone politely asks you to use their pronouns/corrects you on what their pronouns are then we’d request that you either do that or just disengage entirely. this seems pretty straightforward. you especially do not need to give your opinion on the validity of them, because it benefits nobody.
    • same deal with the word “narcissist”–if someone doesn’t want to be called that personally, honor the request, find some other agreeable word to use between you, or just don’t argue and move on with your day. there are undoubtedly more important things you could be doing besides getting into an argument over whether this is a proper ask to honor.
    • jarfil@beehaw.org
      8·
      6 months ago

      this is our third discussion on this subject and i have seen exactly zero minds changed

      FWIW, I haven’t read the previous discussions, and this one changed my mind in a few ways, so that’s something, which leads me to…

      don’t engage with this stuff and block people

      Technical question 1: as an alternative to a full block, is there a way to “soft block”, or tag, or whatever, some people, to act as a sort of CW?

      if someone politely asks you to use their pronouns/corrects you

      I think part of the issue here, lies in what different people consider to be “polite”.

      Technical question 2: what is the policy about mainly submitting links to own posts on external sites? Some places would see that as “self promotion”, but I could see the value of keeping a canonical source for one’s exposés. What is the stand of Beehaw in that regard?

      • t3rmit3@beehaw.org
        8·
        6 months ago

        Wrt technical question 2, I don’t personally believe this should run afoul of self promotion guidelines. This was not a monetized service, just this person’s personal thoughts.

        I think this method actually works really well for having more in-depth discussions, so you can have a lot of background information in a longer form piece that lets you keep the post itself about a tighter discussion, rather than being a text dump. It’s also more useful as a method to use for reference elsewhere.

        I’ve been considering doing this for some of my posts, I just don’t have a blog myself. :p

        • jarfil@beehaw.org
          7·
          6 months ago

          Good point about monetization. There could still be issues like political or religious views, though.

          It would be nice to have some guidelines about stuff like topics, frequency, whether there should be a summary of the link content included with the post (like in the case of news), and similar.

          I used to keep personal pages and blogs since the 1990s, but lately got fed up with the constant spam and intrusion attempts, and health issues didn’t make it easier. I’ve been considering at some point migrating everything to markdown on something like GitHub Pages, with the added bonus of revision tracking, and just linking to it in whatever way… with forking as a solution to the bus factor.

          • coyotino [he/him]@beehaw.orgEnglish
            5·
            6 months ago

            It would be nice to have some guidelines about stuff like topics, frequency, whether there should be a summary of the link content included with the post (like in the case of news), and similar

            fair point. I guess I would say that beehaw is in a place where more content and more things to talk about is basically always better, so admins and mods are going to leave the floodgates open until they have a reason to moderate it. The news communities have no explicit requirement to summarize the content in the post - some folks just do that to highlight a specific point. At least that’s what I do.

      • can@beehaw.org
        2·
        6 months ago

        Technical question 1: as an alternative to a full block, is there a way to “soft block”, or tag, or whatever, some people, to act as a sort of CW?

        Not ideal, but Sync for Lemmy premium (ultra) has a custom tagging/highlighting feature. Not sure about other apps. It’s subscription or a large lifetime payment. But there is cloud syncing (and other features).

        • jarfil@beehaw.org
          1·
          6 months ago

          Right, I forgot about that. Maybe I’ll give it a try, only it feels a lot like lock-in 🙁

    • Grail (capitalised)@aussie.zoneOPEnglish
      5·
      6 months ago

      Thank you. I have no wish to silence discussion on the matter, I’m more than happy to talk about the issue with people who disagree respectfully. I only have a problem with the kind of people who call Me slurs and misgender Me because I stick up for disabled people and have an unusual gender. And I can see you’ve removed a lot of those comments, so thank you.