I agree entirely. Just because I might not agree with someone on their politics doesn't mean we can't have a civil discussion, especially regarding apolitical topics

I guess some of that has come over here based on your comment scores, but at least your comments aren't being removed 🤷‍♀️ I haven't been downvoting anything here based on disagreement cause a) I think discouraging people from sharing their opinions here will kill the site, even if you don't like their opinions and b) I think it's wrong anyway.

Allow bigotry to fester in the thread for extended periods of time

I know this will be a controversial opinion but I just don't see this being a big deal. Those comments inevitably get downvoted and kicked to the bottom of the list, and if you expand a comment that's -10 karma you probably know what you're getting into. I created and modded a sub that now has over 2mil subs and never once have I locked a thread (granted, it's one that's non political but we got our fair share of weirdly bigoted comments)

I say this with the best of intentions so bear with me, but I think most of the disdain towards moderators on Reddit came from locking threads due to "excessive trolling" or "y'all can't behave" etc. It was so visible and immediately shut down conversation which was frustrating for average users. In my opinion excessive trolling isn't a reason to shut a thread. The only things that would really need to be shut down would be things that are straight up illegal. Obviously people saying offensive things or trolling is an issue but, again in my opinion, that's what the whole upvote downvote system is for, and moderators can step in for things that are blatantly out of line.

Forgive my ignorance but if you federate an instance, does that instance have to federate you back? In order for you to comment/upvote/see posts etc?

F's out for me and any other music producers. It's like trying to game on Linux 15 years ago. You can do it in theory but when it's your job it just isn't there yet and I can't imagine it ever will be