This Community is intended for posts about the Lemmy.world server by the admins.
For support with issues at Lemmy.world, go to the Lemmy.world Support community.
Any support requests are best sent to [email protected] e-mail.
If you would like to make a donation to support the cost of running this platform, please do so at the following donation URLs.
If you can, please use / switch to Ko-Fi, it has the lowest fees for us
I think that community guidelines/ code or conduct should still exist at a top level, in a digestible form, and not nested within a legal document.
They can still be part of the legal document, but should be made more accessible if said guidelines are cared about.
Otherwise you'll find that it's a set of expectations that no one reads (And likely cannot find even if they where looking for them), when those expectations are critically important to community health.
Do not engage in content manipulation such as posting spam content, vote manipulation through using several user accounts or consistently down-voting a user. Vote for the content, not for the person.
Whoa there. I don't do any of that, and I think my account history and behavior speak for themselves, but in any given single thread, when trolls be trollin' they rarely limit themselves to just one comment because the point is to ignore and provoke, NOT to converse or exchange ideas.
So a little clarification would be helpful. If you are speaking about following a user from thread to thread via their post history and downvoting them whenever they post anything at all, in any discussion about anything -- "downvote stalking" -- then sure, I see your point and it's well taken.
But if you're saying I can only downvote the first asinine volley of provocative stupidity from a given user in one specific thread, and must not downvote any of the successive proofs of idiocy and/or bad faith they offer in that same thread to support the first, I just don't know if I can keep my itchy trigger finger holstered.
As an aside, one of the cool things about the Fediverse is that many users can see who downvoted them; I think that's more of a real deterrent against weaponizing downvotes than any other policy or action. If you were to turn that on for lemmy.world as well I think it would get you better voting behavior from users all around.
The best way to fuck a democratic process up is making votes public. No one should feel like there's a "deterrent" to voting. All that does is create incentive to reward/punish people for how they vote.
Voting is what fuels the content aggregation, too. It is a very bad idea to deter people from voting how they please because it strangles the algorithm of the data it needs to sort the content. You want people voting, a lot. That's what makes the whole thing work.
Edit: which is to say nothing of how bad it will get when people make tools that help automate retaliation for downvotes. You can potentially state an opinion in a comment and set up a bot to auto block every downvoter, then share that list publicly. You may think that sounds like a great system for weeding out hate but I promise you it's going to be far messier than that, and more importantly, this kind of retaliatory shit hurts the aggregation even more.
Votes are public on Lemmy, in the sense that if you have admin access to an instance that is federated you will be able to find who upvoted which posts/comments in the database.
I’ve had a user disagree with me and then go through my entire post history and downvote every single one of my comments. I don’t get why someone would do that but I can see why Lemmy.world would put it against their terms of service.
5.0.6: No visual content depicting executions, murder, suicide, dismemberment, visible innards, excessive gore, or charred bodies. No content depicting, promoting or enabling animal abuse.
This rule needs an exception for war reporting, and posting evidence of criminal activity or police misconduct.
Not just war reporting. There are legitmate medical discussions that can be aided by such depictions. There should be an exception made for legitimate educational images. Otherwise technically a biological textbook on dissection runs afoul of this rule.
I like what I see. Everything looks like a set of conditions I can support. I am not sure about the gore part, but I can understand why people wouldn't want that can of worms.
4.1: No one under 16 years of age is allowed to use or access the website.
Someone's going to need a stretcher for the roblox mods.
I'm not sure if I should be angry at yet another attempt to exclude young people when the internet is already practically the last refuge in which they are allowed to exist at all...
... or laugh my ass off that literally anyone thinks this rule will be obeyed.
It’s about legal liability. The admins don’t want to have to worry about dealing with all sorts of EU and US regulation for minors so they can have an official policy that minors can’t use the site.
Nobody really cares if kids participate but it’s not the admin’s responsibility to bend over backwards for regulations to accommodate them.
Sir, I just need you to confirm you date of birth is indeed: Jan 01 1999
But have no fear. It's not the rule people should worry about, its the punishment!
Clause 66, section 6: All ages 16 of less will be sentenced to 15 days in the meme mines. And possibly made mandatory mod of Boomer Memes for an hour. May the odds be ever in your favor.
I'd like to see rules for moderators, for instance they cannot ban users based on participation in other groups
This was something that caught me off guard on Reddit. I saw some edgelord in the comments of a shitpost sub roleplaying as a third reich Nazi. I commented „Halt die Fresse.“ which is German for STFU. I immediately got banned from the main BLM sub.
And it happened over and over again. Some Mods on Reddit are just full of themselves.
5.0.4: Do not post illegal content of any type. Do not engage in any activity that may encourage, facilitate or provide access to illegal transactions. Do not share or encourage the sharing of abusive or sexually suggestive content involving minors. Any violent or otherwise inappropriate behavior involving a minor will also always be strictly prohibited.
5.0.4 seems to be in conflict with the existence of !piracy. I'm not complaining about its existence, just mentioning that it seems to be a conflict.
"Illegal content of any type" is an incredibly thorny concept. Illegal where? Where the poster is? Where lemmy.world is hosted? Within some nebulous consensus of Western nations? Only the US states that matter, excluding Wyoming and Montana?
It's illegal to be gay in Saudi Arabia or Uganda. Is gay content not allowed? Switchblades are illegal in California but not in neighboring Oregon. Am I not allowed to talk about switchblades? It's illegal to export strong encryption technologies from the US. Am I not allowed to talk about encryption? Etc., etc., etc.
Regarding Section 1.0, the portion “lemmy.world (“Lemmy.World,” “we,” “us,” or “LW”).” You may need to include the term “our” since it’s used quite frequently throughout the document.
trusting you to fairly enforce these rules since they are beyond my willingness to parse. IANAL That said, golden rule always applies. If a suspension or ban is warranted, please require a clear reference to the violation so behavior can be modified in the future. Hate getting banned with no reason or hope of avoiding future violations.
In this regard, this is pretty damning: https://kbin.social/m/RedditMigration/t/554307/Just-wanted-a-warning-Lemmy-World-is-perhaps-worse-than-reddit
Also, adding having to agree to the Terms of Service when a new user creates an account is good, but does nothing when they create the user from another instance. Lemmy instances that want to implement this might want to consider forcing users coming from other instances to have to agree to general Terms of Service before they can fully participate.
This seems to bring LW closer to Reddit. /s
But seriously, what is the point of all of this? It only seems to overcomplicate things. Now a user will have to:
In that order, or any other order? I see nothing about protesting the breach of the ToS by either the CoC or some community, or some community's mod... so which supersedes which?
How is this going to be communicated to users commenting/posting from other instances? Or is this only applicable to users registered on this instance? In which case, what is going to be applicable to federated users?
What are the user's rights?
If you want to establish this as a legal document, then you're missing at least a section.
If this is about giving as many reasons as possible to remove/ban content/users, it's all unnecessary, just say "mods can remove/ban whatever"; it's a private instance, you can do that.
If this is about having a ruleset that protects the users from arbitrary mod decisions... I see none of that in there.
Ultimately it's just "we're gonna act like how reddit admins act".
You really expect me, your average idiot, to read a legal document to learn the rules and abide by them?
Thanks for being upfront and clear about things. I know it’s not easy.
If you don’t have anyone on the team who has great soft skills I’d suggest you put out a call for “community managers.” Mostly for things like this.
Keep up the great work! I’m glad to see how everything is coming together. 🍻
Thank you! But funny you bring this up..
Because that's exactly what we are working on. Community Management and Engagement Management teams are being formed. Community managers will be checking up on moderation and are about keeping communities healthy. Community Engagement team will be responsible to help provide content, putting community's in the spotlight and more.
Formation of these teams is ongoing, if anyone reads this and is interested contact me or @[email protected]
Anyway, more on that in a different thread soon!
7.0: The website and the agreement will be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and the Republic of Finland Suomen.
oh ok, some operational details make more sense now
How does a TOS work with federation??? I have no intention of breaking rules to be clear, and I assume if I did I would just get banned? I'm just curious what the legal implications are.
I can see and interact with content on lemmy.world without ever visiting it, which feels like a grey area on the "accessing or using" part right at the beginning of the TOS. Maybe include a definition for what "accessing" is and can include in the context of the fediverse?
Then again it might not matter, idk.
In miscellaneous:
In this event, the laws applicable to us, which were mentioned in Section 12
Which section is this referring to exactly?
Not on the same page?
Minor correction, “4.0.3” is used twice:
4.0.3: You are responsible for your own experience on the website. While we are looking to provide an entertaining platform, we are not responsible for your individual experience. 4.0.3: The reporting function may not be used without good reason. Only report content that violates the rules defined in the Terms of Service, or content that violates the rules of the community it was posted to. Personal messages may be reported if they violate any of the terms defined in this document. User profiles may be reported by messaging any of the admins listed in the website’s sidebar, or by sending an e-mail to [email protected].
