So, since we’re starting to get some actual traction, even being posted about on the hard R. I figured we should probably have a little post explaining the instance and it’s goals.

What Burggit aims to be

Burggit aims to be a platform for Free Thought and Expression. Our goal is to have a place where people can freely and respectfully express their ideas/opinions without fear of being censored because they decided to use the wrong terms/wordings.

We will also not immediately suspend a user for their first infraction, though we will definitely warn them and won’t be afraid to take action of it continues.

What Burggit is not

We are not another Kiwifarms, Gab or Voat!

While we’re fine with people posting offensive speech and imagery, we won’t allow them to use their right to “Free Speech” as a weapon against the overall health of the platform. Threatening, Berating, Dogpiling, Doxxing and otherwise being complete and total assholes to other users will not be tolerated.

Having a different, unpopular opinion on a sensitive topic is fine, but there’s absolutely no reason why anyone would not be able to express those opinions respectfully. And if you can’t express those opinions without being shitty to other users directly, that’s not something we’re going to be putting up with.

If we believe that a user of ours is causing problems for our instance or other instances, we will not hesitate to deal with them.

But what does it mean to be shitty?

For clarification I’ll add some examples of behavior which would be deemed not okay.

Please note, this is not an exhaustive list.

  • Calling out death to a group or individual
  • Targeting another individual/user regardless of reason (Discussing something in a way which could be percieved as rude doesn’t count, some people argue passionately and that’s okay.)
  • Going out of your way to cause trouble with other friendly instances
  • Attacking someone’s character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than addressing the substance of the argument itself. Also known as Ad hominem’s
  • Nazrin@burggit.moe
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    1 year ago

    Burggit is not what you think we are! We are a Touhou community pretending to be a loli community.

  • doritospineapple@burggit.moe
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    1 year ago

    We are not another Kiwifarms, Gab or Voat!

    Yes, please, remember this!

    Every platform accepting loli also had an ongoing case of ‘freeze peach’ syndrome, and eventually got drowned by far right lunatics.

    • Burger@burggit.moeM
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      1 year ago

      That’s definitely not going to happen here. I find those types to be really insufferable. Culture war nonsense from either side is annoying as it is, for that matter.

  • Elyusi, Kei@burggit.moe
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    1 year ago

    Neat place. I’m a fan of basically just sticking with the golden rule for general moderation policy. It does leave a lot of discretion to moderators which inevitably means someone is eventually going to get uneven treatment since we’re all just human. But even in places with nicely codified sets of rules, I’ve seen some high profile cases where the moderatorship (or rather, some “ardent” subset of the team) bends over backwards to justify their position irrespective of the rules. Enough to make me question what the point is, for most use cases anyway.

    Having said that, I personally rarely run up against moderation since I mostly just lurk. I’ll try to do slightly less of that latter bit here. 👋

    • Disa@burggit.moeOPM
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      1 year ago

      Yes, we are only human; however, we will try to the best of our ability to stay objective whenever any actual issues end up arising. I think the fact that we don’t punish based on the first infraction definitely helps with overall communication and transparency.

      Welcome to Burggit! We’re happy to have you here and would definitely appreciate your contributions, especially at this early stage. Regardless, we hope you enjoy your stay!

      • Elyusi, Kei@burggit.moe
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        1 year ago

        I think the fact that we don’t punish based on the first infraction definitely helps with overall communication and transparency.

        Much agreed. I’ve been on the other side of the moderator-moderatee divide before, and my main “contribution” was pushing for a more lenient infraction ladder during a rules rewrite. In retrospect though, I’m not sure I’m happy about having done what I feel is the right thing compared to having effectively pushed extra work on some very good acquaintances. At the end of the day, repeat offenders tend to climb the ladder all the way up to a ban regardless of its length, even if I’d like to think otherwise.

        Still, I hope things work out well here; I definitely agree with the approach, at the very least in principle.

  • Grim@burggit.moe
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    1 year ago

    Couple thoughts:

    • It might be smart for the admins to make a community specifically to ask the admins questions, or a thread somewhere. I think people might have questions or suggestions.
    • Could there please be a site-wide rule about communities not using NSFW/NSFL images for their community icons? Ngl, it’s kind of gross to be scrolling through the community list and see a close-up of a butthole. It defeats the purpose of marking things NSFW and having pics blurred to be considerate to other users.
    • Disa@burggit.moeOPM
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      1 year ago

      I’ve been meaning to make an askanadmin community for awhile now. Will do that now. https://burggit.moe/c/ask_an_admin

      As for the NSFW Icon thing. Most of our users actually use a script to unblur images. The reason for marking NSFW/NSFL is mainly to prevent those without an account from viewing it (or those who have their account set to hide NSFW content) it’s not really about the content being blurred due to this marking. If anything, that feels like a side effect than anything else. We’ll think a little more about it though.

  • livixPmfOQRj@burggit.moe
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    1 year ago

    Can we have some clarification on what’s allowed in regards to “hate speech”?

    On one hand:

    “Burggit aims to be a platform for Free Thought and Expression. Our goal is to have a place where people can freely and respectfully express their ideas/opinions without fear of being censored because they decided to use the wrong terms/wordings.”

    “While we’re fine with people posting offensive speech and imagery, we won’t allow them to use their right to “Free Speech” as a weapon against the overall health of the platform. Threatening, Berating, Dogpiling, Doxxing and otherwise being complete and total assholes to other users will not be tolerated.”

    And in the rules:

    “Minimal Restrictions on Content/Speech.”

    “Do not out right harass other users. Opposing opinions and potentially offensive speech is fine, but don’t go out of your way to endlessly berate someone. This includes users of other instances.”

    But on the other hand:

    “Anything is allowed here as long as it’s not anything illegal in The Netherlands”

    “No illegal content under Netherlands law”

    Looking it up, the hate speech laws are:

    "The Dutch penal code prohibits both insulting a group (article 137c) and inciting hatred, discrimination or violence (article 137d). The definition of the offences as outlined in the penal code is as follows:

    Article 137c: “He who publicly, orally, in writing or graphically, intentionally expresses himself insultingly regarding a group of people because of their race, their religion or their life philosophy, their heterosexual or homosexual orientation or their physical, psychological or mental disability, shall be punished by imprisonment of no more than a year or a monetary penalty of the third category.”

    Article 137d: “He who publicly, orally, in writing or graphically, incites hatred against, discrimination of or violent action against person or belongings of people because of their race, their religion or their life philosophy, their gender, their heterosexual or homosexual orientation or their physical, psychological or mental disability, shall be punished by imprisonment of no more than a year or a monetary penalty of the third category.”"

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_laws_by_country#Netherlands

    Sorry I don’t mean to rock the boat by getting all technical. My personal belief is that no speech should be restricted or regulated Except calls to harm someone physically, and/or calls to prevent someone from doing what they need to survive. (I.e. Telling a crowd to surround someone’s home, preventing them from working and buying food, etc.)

    What’s your consensus for terms like t–p, n----r, f----t etc?

    I don’t use these terms (except t–p because come on.) But I’m wondering what’s allowed here.

    • Disa@burggit.moeOPM
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      1 year ago

      The “Anything is allowed here as long as it’s not anything illegal in The Netherlands” is honestly just to cover us for things such as IRL bestiality porn and other content without explicitly having a like 10-page ruleset of what is and isn’t allowed. We do not have to comply with the speech restrictions of The Netherlands, so “Hate Speech” is not enforced here. Individual communities might make their own rules about it and can enforce them as they wish, but it’s not enforced site-wide.

      Words such as “Trap, Nigger, Faggot” etc… would all be fine. The primary thing we do not tolerate is specifically harassing groups/individuals. For example, you could say “what a faggot” in response to a post and in a general context. But actively throwing slurs at another user with the malicious intent to bully, harass, dogpile or otherwise be an asshole. That might cause some problems. Especially if you continued to do it after the user expressed discomfort, or tapped out of the conversation.

      It’s fine to express a controversial or widely disliked opinion or say controversial things. However, all opinions should be able to be expressed respectfully, if you can’t express an opinion without being a complete asshole and actively causing problems for other users, that’s where we draw the line. And to be even more clear, when I say “actively causing problems for other users”, I don’t mean saying a word which is seen as offensive and someone acting like you literally just shot their dog. I mean actively going out of your way to target and berate people.

      For users who see this as a problem, Lemmy has a block feature and if you object to the speech of certain users, we encourage you to block them on your end.

      In the end, this is a very complex issue, so I can’t cover every situation that might come up, and I’d also like to leave some leeway for interpretation.

      This ofcourse all goes out the window when interacting with communities on other instances. When interacting with communities of other instances we ask you follow the rules of those instances and communities, we’d rather avoid making any more enemies than we have to.

      I hope this could answer most of your questions, though. In the end, just try to stay respectful and kind to other users.

  • why@burggit.moe
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    1 year ago

    Unless this place gets a lot more active a look at the top local posts of all time will mean this place will become exactly what people will think it is.

    • Disa@burggit.moeOPM
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      1 year ago

      I honestly love what the community is sofar and think it’s a very comfy atmosphere, personally.

        • Disa@burggit.moeOPM
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          1 year ago

          I’d literally never consider banning you for something like this, you have the right to feel uncomfortable and say you feel uncomfortable. I’m not going to ban you just because you disagree with me.

          • Burger@burggit.moeM
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            1 year ago

            This isn’t Reddit. We don’t ban people just because we disagree with them. If you want that, then just go to Beehaw.

    • Disa@burggit.moeOPM
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      1 year ago

      Welcome, we hope you enjoy your stay! We’re still growing, so even we don’t quite know how this will pan out. But we aim for this to be a fairly open community for the open discussion/sharing of ideas. All ideas.