I think many people feel this way, and I think in many cases another thing that plays into it is not realising the amount of good moderators, because good moderation usually doesn’t make as much noise as when it’s bad.
If I think of all the communities in lemmy/piefed I like, the perfect/near perfect moderation from my browsing heavily outweighs anything problematic.
I remember I was an administrator, and the moderator threatened to ban me. That was fun, I was like “Oh no, please don’t”. And I just played along.
As an administrator, I had only 2 modes: Not sure, can’t ban this person without more evidence, and “that is a liability, shut down the server!”. So I didn’t react to most things that were done, even if they were technically against the rules. Then when I became the owner, I set a pol for people to decide if I should just delete the server, because I knew I didn’t have the time to make sure some truly heinous stuff does not happen.
How do you see overly heavy opinion based moderation if you’re never the target of it? You don’t. You just see communities that are weirdly same-think. Though I bet you’d just dismiss it as a consequence of the fediverse already self-selecting for a certain type, but that is wrong.
There is bad moderation all over the place, but you don’t see it, because many mods/admins prefer to ban and delete than to let the vote system do its job.
and what happens when a mod or admin abuses their power? If the answer is only people whine about it, all you have is a minor step in the right direction and not an actual solution.
By noticing people complaining about it :)
Also being aware of certain biases and such, and looking for the existence of posts that would be deleted if the bias was heavy, etc.
Sure, some stuff might fall under the radar or stay for a long time, definitely a thing.
Nah, the complaints get deleted faster than the wrong-think. The point is you aren’t given enough to ‘notice’ when the hammer comes down as it does in many communities here.
I have a pretty low opinion of moderators generally.
In the vast majority of cases, the people who actually want to be moderators are precisely the worst kinds of people to do the job.
Of course there are exceptions but all too often they’re doing it because they like the power and attention.
I think many people feel this way, and I think in many cases another thing that plays into it is not realising the amount of good moderators, because good moderation usually doesn’t make as much noise as when it’s bad.
If I think of all the communities in lemmy/piefed I like, the perfect/near perfect moderation from my browsing heavily outweighs anything problematic.
I remember I was an administrator, and the moderator threatened to ban me. That was fun, I was like “Oh no, please don’t”. And I just played along.
As an administrator, I had only 2 modes: Not sure, can’t ban this person without more evidence, and “that is a liability, shut down the server!”. So I didn’t react to most things that were done, even if they were technically against the rules. Then when I became the owner, I set a pol for people to decide if I should just delete the server, because I knew I didn’t have the time to make sure some truly heinous stuff does not happen.
How do you see overly heavy opinion based moderation if you’re never the target of it? You don’t. You just see communities that are weirdly same-think. Though I bet you’d just dismiss it as a consequence of the fediverse already self-selecting for a certain type, but that is wrong.
There is bad moderation all over the place, but you don’t see it, because many mods/admins prefer to ban and delete than to let the vote system do its job.
That’s why I rigorously review the modlog. Unlike Reddit or other social media, there is a public record of everything every mod does.
and what happens when a mod or admin abuses their power? If the answer is only people whine about it, all you have is a minor step in the right direction and not an actual solution.
Make an alternate community on another instance without abusive admins.
By noticing people complaining about it :) Also being aware of certain biases and such, and looking for the existence of posts that would be deleted if the bias was heavy, etc.
Sure, some stuff might fall under the radar or stay for a long time, definitely a thing.
Nah, the complaints get deleted faster than the wrong-think. The point is you aren’t given enough to ‘notice’ when the hammer comes down as it does in many communities here.
That’s also why there are mod abuse report comms. There’s more than one, too, since some of the originals are on an instance with an abusive admin.
So then why is this still here?
Because this is hardly a contentious discussion or topic, and something doesn’t have to be a guarantee to never the less be a trend…?