On Content Removal
docs.beehaw.org
On Content Removal # Harmful, bigoted, or generally distasteful content isn’t as frequent on our site as it is elsewhere, but these do still appear enough that we sometimes get questions about why certain comments are left up. This post is meant to help you understand a bit about how we moderate. As stated in our sidebar and in tons of other places on our site, Beehaw aspires to be(e) a safe, friendly, and diverse place.

Hey all,

Moderation philosophy posts started out as an exercise by myself to put down some of my thoughts on running communities that I’d learned over the years. As they continued I started to more heavily involve the other admins in the writing and brainstorming. This most recent post involved a lot of moderator voices as well, which is super exciting! This is a community, and we want the voices at all levels to represent the community and how it’s run.

This is probably the first of several posts on moderation philosophy, how we make decisions, and an exercise to bring additional transparency to how we operate.

  • jarfil@beehaw.orgEnglish
    6·
    1 year ago

    Your original comment was this one: https://beehaw.org/comment/604794

    Its contents are still in the modlog, no need to copy either content in here, it was not a nice comment. You hit someone’s nerve, which made them reply “in kind”. I personally disagree with your interpretation of their comment, even if I agree with your premise, but neither of that is relevant here. What matters is you shouldn’t also escalate “in kind”. Such escalation, along the other escalating comments, appears to have been correctly seen as “needlessly antagonistic”. There was no need for any of it.

    And since I have your attention… let me tell you an anecdote: a long time ago, I used to have a blog, which allowed people to comment. Not all comments were nice, and for some time it was fun to moderate them by editing and replacing the not nice parts with “[slur]”, “[ad hominem]”, “[straw man]”, and similar, to the point where some comments ended up 100% edited. This place doesn’t do that, but I would find it fun to find a place that did (…and wonder if some AI could help with the process).

    • alyaza [they/she]@beehaw.orgMEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      i’d just pop in to note that it’s kind of bizarre we’re even seriously debating whether this is a “liberal sanitized space” when:

      1. comments expressing the same sentiments that were removed are all over that thread and not removed, and;
      2. when several liberals in that thread were also removed for being unproductive and you can see them in the mod log

      if this is a “liberal sanitized space” then we’re not doing a good job of enforcing that, lol

      • jarfil@beehaw.orgEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        Hey, weren’t you on a break?! 🏖️😉

        Don’t take this discussion too seriously, I think @Lionir@beehaw.org put it best at the beginning, but I just wanted to practice some of my understanding of the place after what I’ve discussed with @Gaywallet@beehaw.org (sorry for drawing out that one too).