Hey all,
As discussed here, I am looking for 3 new moderators to help with this community.
Please review this post and vote for the candidate you would like to see help on this community.
In no particular order, the candidates are:
- @goat@sh.itjust.works
- @Difficult_Bit_1339@sh.itjust.works
- @Apytele@sh.itjust.works
- @Seraph089@sh.itjust.works
- @sweetholymosiah@sh.itjust.works
- @annegreen@sh.itjust.works
- @imaqtpie@sh.itjust.works
I invite you to review users post history when deciding on voting.
This thread will be open for 72 hours (until Friday June 23rd, 8PM ET) at which point voting will stop. Any votes after this time will not be counted. I will try to lock this thread after that time so people do not accidentally continue voting.
Everyone gets 1 vote, including the users being considered. The top 3 will be given mod powers of this community to help with organization of discussions and votes.
Please vote by calling the persons name. For example, if I you wanted to vote for TheDude you would reply with: TheDude
You must log in or # to comment.
Yea @imaqtpie, Yea @annegreen, Yea @Seraph089.
From account history they have good engagement.
Nay @Apytele, Nay @sweetholymosiah.
Limited engagement. Can’t really comment on them yet.
Nay @goat, Nay @difficult_bit_1339.
Actively enshittening Agora and flame warring since its inception. @goat is evidently some manner of troll and “controversy” isn’t a selling point for moderation. This is an alt for his burggit account; he’s butted heads with admins over there because not allowing gore isn’t “free”.
That wasn’t my argument at all.
My entire argument on burggit was that I found it hypocritical for the admins there to be banning gore-related content because they personally found it unsavory, while still allowing Loli-content which many others find equally unsavory and many who have asked them to tone it down.
Your link is broken, this is the link to my Burggit account (Be warned, Burggit has Loli porn and content similar to it)
Controversy isn’t a selling point of moderation in most cases, true. However, the prime function of Agora is to encourage diverse debate, even when that means challenging views you disagree with. Having a bias in moderation will cause nothing but a multitude of issues down the line.
As for “flamewarring” – I don’t insult other members or tell them they’re wrong, despite often being the crux of insults and ridicule myself. I believe I’ve proven that I can handle being challenged, something that most other candidates have not shown yet (with the exception of Imaq and Bit, of course)
You can also only vote once.
Your vote will be thrown out if you don’t narrow it down, I recommend @imaqtpie@sh.itjust.works
My entire argument on burggit…
Your argument was that an unsavoury instance was against hosting your personal flavour of unsavoury content; hence you felt the need to browbeat instead of simply finding a better instance.
This appears to be your main method of “engagement” in discussion: incessantly hammer on your point, making persistent bad-faith invitations to “debate,” then when you rile up the user to the point of them flaming you, you claim that you’re remaining civil. It’s called sealioning, it’s a common enough trolling phenomenon that there exists an often cited web-comic about it..
Co-existing in a space isn’t an open invitation for you to repeatedly argue the same point past a persons point of comfort, for the sake of your personal definition of “debate”. When it’s clear the debate has run its course and the person is clearly being emotionally effected, if you persist then you’re acting in bad faith.
Your argument was that an unsavoury instance was against hosting your personal flavour of unsavoury content; hence you felt the need to browbeat instead of simply finding a better instance.
Your interpretation falls apart when I have found a better instance; sh.itjust.works
Nor am I sealioning, that isn’t even what sealioning is. Sealioning constantly asks for sources, feigning ignorance when produced with a counterpoint and dismissing a user’s points.
I make a deliberate attempt to not sealion, by often asking the other user if they’d like to continue the discussion, if they’re comfortable, asking about common interests or things we can agree upon and conceding and agreeing with their points without questioning them as a person – All of this is public information you can check.
I have been proven wrong many times, and I admit when I am. Most who I have a lengthy discussion with tend to come to a certain agreement or mutual understanding.
I make a deliberate attempt to not sealion,
spoiler
“Where is the evidence for that opinion?”
“But doesn’t [x] really mean [y]?”
“What about [other issue]—how do you explain that?”
“What’s wrong with a polite question?”
“I’m just trying to engage in civil debate.”
This series of questions may seem like a well-intentioned search for answers. It’s not—it’s a simplified example of a rhetorical strategy called sealioning. Sealioning is an intentional, combative performance of cluelessness. Rhetorically, sealioning fuses persistent questioning—often about basic information, information easily found elsewhere, or unrelated or tangential points—with a loudly-insisted-upon commitment to reasonable debate. It disguises itself as a sincere attempt to learn and communicate. Sealioning thus works both to exhaust a target’s patience, attention, and communicative effort, and to portray the target as unreasonable. While the questions of the “sea lion” may seem innocent, they’re intended maliciously and have harmful consequences.:::
You’re sealioning in this very thread; you’re just feigning ignorance and exploiting the fact that a term originating from a webcomic isn’t well defined. Here you are incessantly replying in multiple comment chains, asking asinine rhetorical questions, insisting you just want an open discussion, and making sure to explicitly mention how civil you have remained. The only point of contention is that you’re asking rhetorical questions instead of asking for evidence.
It’s abundantly clear what you’re doing. I’ve given my points, you’ve countered. It’s in a public forum that others can access and make their own judgment. My standard for engaging discussion doesn’t include chasing comment chains and rebutting throwaway remarks only to have them slightly rephrased or framed in a flimsy example. I will not engage with you after this comment.
Asinine rhetorical questions? bruh, I’m defending myself from your insults and falsehoods. And yeah, I’m responding to comment chains, so what? I want to hear what people say; I’m a candidate. I’m already learning a lot.
Truthfully, I think you’re sealioning, at least according to your moving definitions, which you’ve already changed.
You only have 6 comments on Agora in the past day, all of which contain you attacking others.
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You’re calling me a troll.
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You’ve called other people trolls in this very thread,
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You’re telling others they’re arguing in bad-faith,
And you’ve also listed your information incorrectly twice, both my burggit account and Bit’s comment chain. I like the Bit thread a lot since you make claims about Bit despite not knowing what the deleted comments contained.
But hey, let’s read through this paper anywho!
Sealioning, which can be performed by a single user or as a tag-team effort, may feel familiar: it evokes the toddler who incessantly asks why, the adolescent who has just discovered philosophy, the condescending family member who disapproves of your life choices.
Questions—shaped by explicit or implicit expectations about who has the right to question and who can be questioned about what—impose labor by demanding the questioned party either answer or appear indifferent; providing explanations and maintaining patience takes time and effort
What a nice broad definition, this can include everything – convenient! But condescending and denying people the ability to question you? Sounds familiar, perhaps the very same that calls others trolls, bad-faith actors and sealions whenever they disagreed with you.
Oh, and uhhhh… This is really embarrassing, but you’re also sealioning by your very own paper, oops.
On the other, sealioning exploits threading capabilities and often launches through search. A social media platform with comprehensive search functions is a database in which every word is indexed, and every public word retrievable. Keyword searches thus become scouting tools for attacks.
Like you listing my burggit account (having to find my separate account that I’ve never linked before), you listing deleted comments from a large comment chain.
(Honestly this is a stupid definition. Using the search function is sealioning? Fuck off with that, Amy Johnson.)
my take? Sealioning is just a narcissist person’s argument to get out of one or deny anyone shooting them down. As you said yourself:
Co-existing in a space isn’t an open invitation for you to repeatedly argue the same point past a persons point of comfort, for the sake of your personal definition of “debate”. When it’s clear the debate has run its course and the person is clearly being emotionally effected, if you persist then you’re acting in bad faith.
Ah, the irony~
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I’m actually going to have to agree with you there as I’ve personally flip flopped on this issue a few times, but I look at it like some gore is acceptable, whereas a lot more Japanese anime porn tends to hit the creepy-crawlies mark
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admins on burggit actually allow “guro” which is kinda gore but anime version
your link to goat’s profile is wrong, here’s a second try
clarify on difficult bit pl0x
Here he is actively flaming/trolling in Main Community and Agora. He even states he’s willingly losing sleep because he likes arguing so much. Just because the person you’re disagreeing with is being salty doesn’t mean you have a free ticket to stoop to that level. It’s not moderator-worthy conduct.
https://sh.itjust.works/comment/282908
https://sh.itjust.works/comment/291136
I checked. Maybe you can enlighten me because apart from being against the idea of willfully defederating instances & making note of OPs conflictive way of talking, I don’t see what you see. Maybe you’re conflating the fact that you disagree with his words with your idea of “flaming & trolling”.
That’s a bad faith interpretation of my comment. Note that I did not link to every single instance of him being against defederation, as the issue isn’t him stating an opinion. The problem is the sarcastic and aggressive way in which he chooses to interact with other users; sarcastically calling for defederation from lemmy.world because he saw a racist meme, and stating that he’s up at 3am losing sleep because he loves arguing with idiots.
If you are being flamed, you report. Stooping to their level makes you no better.
More than responding to your comment, I’m also reading his profile. You mention that the problems are sarcasm and aggressiveness. I don’t have anything at all against sarcasm. And the aggressiveness I see is against someone who was being very aggressive, and even then it was measured, in what seems to be an amused reaction to someone being unreasonably triggered.
Anyway, I read until page 4 and I’m not going to spend more time on this. I won’t go too deep into this, but 20 minutes of research was enough to tell me I disagree with you. I spent like 3 minutes trying to write some way to “justify my position”, but I don’t really feel like doing that. Let’s call it a day, too much time spent on this for me at least.
That’s fine. I stick by my philosophy that stooping to someone else’s level makes you no better. I’m not in this to change minds; this isn’t some /r/changemyview substitute. I’m offering examples which I find make him a bad choice for mod, and it’s up to individuals to assess whether those posted examples are acceptable conduct for a moderator.
Have a good I agree it’s too much time; I’m also getting too many notifications while overleaf is open. Have a good one.
stooping to someone else’s level makes you no better
tbh i read his msgs and i didn’t see him “stoop” to chalkman’s level, chalkman was insulting ppl and being unreasonably mad @ everyone who disagreed w him & DB seemed to simply be trying to counter chalkman’s points while also showing that chalkman was not being reasonable.
in his profile DB seems to like free speech while he also shows that he understands that there are limits to free speech. I think the defed-EH thread was just him trying to stand his ground against what he saw was a breach.
I haven’t stooped to the levels of some people calling me names, yet you still don’t like my speech. Doesn’t seem too fair, no?
Your comments are missing a lot of context.
I happened to interact with Chalkman (I believe they may have been banned from the community), and every single response of theirs was nothing but insults. If you want to defend a banned user whose content you can’t even see, I guess that’s your right.
Do find it strange though how you hold me accountable for trolling as well when during my interactions, I haven’t stooped to the same level of insults. I’ve been called worse than shit on a boot, a troll by many, a fascist, etc, etc~
What level of discussion are you even searching for? I know that your top pick, imaq, has even had negative experiences and even hostility towards certain users.
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Nay for me too, way too controversial.
It’s important to have diversity, especially in your moderators. Not having diversity is a death curl for any community.
There’s a whole lot more to being a good mod than just having a different opinions.
A contradictarian would make for a very bad mod, but if we just base it on diversity of opinions we would believe they would be right in their place.
Oh, I’m aware of the qualities needed for moderation!
In my main comment, I list my qualifications. Feel free to check it out.
Having experience doesn’t make you a good moderator and seeing what you were moderating it’s not as if you had moderated any serious sub.
WatchPeopleDie was a very serious sub. It had constant contact with the admins and was strictly moderated.
They are trying to infiltrate
Infiltrate? No.
I’m providing dissent and lively discussion. It’s important to have diversity, especially in communities that are centred around fairness and equality.
And I will be your devils advocate
Thanks, but you don’t need to advocate for me. Try advocating for free discussion instead.
Much obliged, TendieMaster.
A seat will be awaiting you on the Supreme Council on the day I assume the throne.
Edit: oh shit, this was supposed to be a PM!!
Why not?
I follow the rules very strictly. Is it the Donald posts you dislike? Those are satire. I figured that’d be obvious.
Regardless, I’ve generated a lot of controversy despite following the rules, and I think that’s a good thing. It’s important to have dissent and opposition. Otherwise, you devolve back into the problem of Reddit, where the mods have a certain bias that makes fair discussion and arguments impossible.
If you’re going purely off downvotes or upvotes, my account’s been bombarded by certain users who really don’t like me. Dunno why they felt the need to downvote my profile and downvote my music threads, but whatev~
I follow the rules very strictly. Is it the Donald posts you dislike? Those are satire. I figured that’d be obvious.
It’s not satire.
Let me be clear, I’m not questioning whether you believe it’s satire. I’m saying that after 7 years of edgelords coming up with worse and worse posts and memes to one up eachother, and now politicians saying things that were once “just a joke”, it’s not satire or a joke anymore. It’s becoming truth to some people, and that’s a problem.
I’ll also point out that r/the_donald also followed the rules strictly. That usually meant pushing the rules right to the line, and making the admins have to adjust the rules that were more ambiguous. I hope you’re not following that example.
My posts are satire. One says God Save the Queen, and the other has Trump portrayed as a child.
If Trump is going to be running again with God Save the Queen and wearing a Fortnite Shirt, then shit, my bad.
Just like the original subreddit, am I right?
That’s right, yeah!
Until CisMaelWhitestorm gained moderation and booted the original mods. Then it became that
The problem is that if all content is sarcastic then you start having members that truly believe what’s posted and the whole community starts going down the shitter.
By the way, mods on Reddit have seniority, a new mod can’t boot mods that were there before them, that means the other mods were perfectly ok with T_D becoming what it became.
I think The_Donald on sh.it is already down the shitter lol, have you seen their modlog?
But yeah, I’m pretty sure the Sub creator booted everyone, gave Cis the position and then deleted their account. Unfortunately due to the blackout and T_D being banned, I can’t reverify this.
But you’re admitting to helping make the situation worse and you want to be a mod here?
Make the situation worse?
Hopefully your message doesn’t count for a vote for goat…
No, it doesn’t.
I don’t think you’re responsible for counting the votes, are you?
As mentioned in the OP, people need to vote by mentioning the user’s pseudonym, that’s what they did with you name but to say they didn’t want to vote for you, hence my comment.
In the bottom part of their comment they mention imaq.
imaqtpie
My first order of business would be developing a more organized way of voting here. No offense to TheDude, he’s got a lot on his plate.
Agreed. I think we need to separate the discussion from the vote. It’s confusing to have amendments take place on voting posts as discussion develops. We also need clear parameters on how to draft a vote and then how the vote gets resolved.
I think a parliamentary system could work well, though that’s complicated.
Maybe some strawpoll site that requires authentication? Link your account, have it approved, then vote.
That’s perhaps one of the better ways of doing it.
I’m seeing the desire for both verification of users (with accounts on this instance) and for the protection of anonymity. It’s possible to provide both those things at the same time, but I don’t see how we can do so on the native server.
Perhaps we can have a separate community just for voting, maybe call it Polling Station?
And if it’s possible, have a bot invite users of this instance to the community. Have the bot set to only invite users that are 1 week old and with X number of comments to combat the spam and bot accounts. The account age limit can be whatever we want, since most of us aren’t quite a week old ourselves.
Once the mod vote is over we should probably create a Discussion post for this.
At the very least, make it standard to start one thread “Vote upcoming: discussion below” and then later on open the polls.
Hey, it’s me! For what it’s worth, I’m excited to see this community grow and would be happy to be a part of the mod team helping guide it. Either way, I’m looking forward to seeing what’s next for this community. I don’t have a lot of experience with online moderation, but I do a lot of conflict resolution and strategy, which I feel are valuable skills for a moderator. If you choose me for a mod, I commit to helping make sure this instance and this community hold to their original vision of being friendly, chill, and democratic. I feel like I’ve already been able to bring some valuable contributions to the table, like the idea to use the [vote] format, and I believe I’ve got a lot more to offer the community. Thanks!
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(Limiting the vote to 1 person and not allowing us to rank is severly limiting, especially for a consensus-based community decision making system as what I remember being described in the post that announced the creation of the Agora.)
@imaqtpie@sh.itjust.works I support, while Goat’s method of engagement I think is fine for a member of the community but isn’t mod-material. Not a chill dude, and seeing how people have reacted to him already he would be starting from a position of adversity with too much of the community.
I agree I wish we’d have a top 3 ranked vote, but I can appreciate thats more work for all involved.
Naturally a controversial selection.
My post history is quite extensive and varied. I recommend you sort by Top. Unfortunately, my account has been mass downvoted, so do be aware.
As for experience:
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I used to be a moderator on /r/watchpeopledie for Reddit, roughly 150k members before it got banned. Seeing gratuitous content and horrible psychotic comments isn’t anything new to me.
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I also worked alongside /r/AgainstHateSubreddits during my time on WPD, particularly on dealing with /r/CringeAnarchy, which I assisted in shutting down.
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I’ve had active accounts and was well-known on all reddit alternatives. Voat, Said.it, Ruqqus, Drama, Tilde and now Lemmy (which is the best thus far). So I’m very familiar with the sort of development that communities need to grow and the typical shortcomings that occur in these types of communities. One of which, like all things, is a lack of diversity.
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I went to College for Journalism and worked for my local area’s newspaper. Meaning experience with documentation, information and quality control.
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Currently, I’m in Law, working my way up the Lawyer Ladder (hopefully). So I naturally follow the rules and will moderate fairly. I’m also a professional writer.
I’m from Australia, meaning my time zone is most likely the opposite of yours. I think this is a plus, as it means there won’t be any downtime in the community where no moderators are on duty; think of it as the night shift. From what I’ve seen of the other candidates, it seems like most are from the same location.
Politically? I’m an environmentalist. I don’t really use the left-right political spectrum as being Australian – it doesn’t really apply, meaning you can ensure my moderation will be unbiased and fair, which is required for communities such as these.
As you can probably see from my profile, I’m the most active of the candidates.
I also come equipped with knowledge~~~
Simply downvoting or upvoting doesn’t affect the vote. It’s purely on a comment basis, though I’m unsure if replies to existing comments count.
Please ask me any questions you have!
@goat is a good egg
u too! :3
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Seraph089
Of course I’ll vote for myself, but I’m happy to see that it’s a close race. Win or lose, I’ll be here trying my best to help our budding democracy flourish.
Vote: imaqtpie
Additional commentary: goat in particular seems based on activity to be trolling/sealioning/derailing discussions
How?
@annegreen@sh.itjust.works gets my vote. Though @Difficult_Bit_1339@sh.itjust.works is a really close second, wish we could vote for more than one candidate.
Sorry, dude, but this vote is primarily for Sh.it. users
feel free to make an account though~!
imaqtpie
Aye @iamqtpie, aye @annegreen aye @Seraph089
@goat@sh.itjust.works Especially in a place for voting and unbias, its good to have people from all sides of politics to prevent the deletion of votes because mods dont agree with them.
Oh, I wasn’t expecting to get any.
Thank you.
@Difficult_Bit_1339@sh.itjust.works
If I could vote for more, I’d also vote for imaqtpie and annegreen.
Difficult_Bit_1339
I read a few profiles, i like this one more: @Difficult_Bit_1339@sh.itjust.works
that’s my vote
@imaqtpie@sh.itjust.works
