6d ago

Community rules rule

Hiiii everybody! We need rules to keep the place from going off the rails and your mod team would like you to give them a review and let us know what you think. We're going to implement them now as a temporary ruleset so I'll slap them into the sidebar shortly, then make amendments based on commentary. Here's what we've got:

Community Rules

Be nice. Assume others have good intent (within reason).
Block or ignore posts, comments, and users that irritate you in some way rather than engaging. Report if they are actually breaking community rules.
Use content warnings and/or mark as NSFW when appropriate. Most posts with content warnings likely need to be marked NSFW.
Most 196 posts are memes, shitposts, cute images, or even just recent things that happened, etc. There is no real theme, but try to avoid posts that are very inflammatory, offensive, very low quality, or very "off topic".
Avoid AI generated content.
Avoid corpoposting.
Avoid misinformation.
Avoid incomprehensible posts.
No prejudice such as transphobia, racism, ableism, etc.
No threats or personal attacks.
No spam.
No tankie, nazi, or any other authoritarian behavior.
No genocide denial.

33 comments

Can we also add a no links to twitter.com / x.com rule like other communities are starting to add? Not that many people are generally doing a lot of linking here, but still would be good to have sort of rule against it
- Does that include no source links? Like when you copied some image from X (formerly known as Twitter) over here, can you still put source URL pointing to original X (formerly known as Twitter) post?
  
  There are mirrors and such like xcancel.com where you can link without giving Musk revenue

For what it's worth, I'm adding my voice to the "keep the no tankies rule" pile.
People who don't know what they're talking about hurling it as a generalised insult at leftists doesn't devoid it of its actual meaning, nor of the importance of explicitly keeping tankies out for the safety of the rest of the community.
People licking Xi or Kim boot deserve the exact same treatment as people licking Trump or Musk boot do.

To add to the tankie discussion
I'd like to support the explanation of tankie, but keep the wording. It's been around for a reason - being that it's far easier to self-regulate and keeping "authoritarian socialists" out.
The reason we should keep tankie is for education. States using tanks against it's citizens are not cool. I myself learned a lot about authoritarianism after encountering the word initially.
Tankie is misused, but easily explained as to what it actually is, and I have shown people to wikipedia, not much harder than that.
196 has a long history of having no tankie rule, from reddit to lemmy. And I honestly think it's important to keep it.

I would like to voice my support for the "no authoritarian" rule. Just because liberals use the term "tankie" to wrongly describe non-auth leftists, doesnt mean the word isn't clearly defined or that it shouldnt be used.
If you're auth-"left" or find yourself doing apologia for the few genocides and instances of human rights voilations that the west opposes, you're a tankie. It's safe to say that genocide apologia and human rights violations of any kind should have no place on 196.
- I like the anti-authoritarianism and no genocide denial rules, it's just the term tankie being used specifically that feels like the biggest issue imo. It's misused so often that it kinda ends up excluding a decent number of people. Someone doesn't need to self-identify as a tankie to feel excluded, just getting called one enough by others for expressing anything left-wing can do it. Its not that I think any of the mods here would use it to wrongly remove stuff like a .world community might, but for people who don't know as much about Lemmy/196 it wouldn't be surprising for people to assume that because they get called a tankie on world that they wouldn't be welcome here.
  And definitely agreed human rights violations and genocides definitely shouldn't be defended regardless of what country did them, but I think since we already have the no genocide denial rule those should be covered anyway.

Misogyny should be added to list of no prejudices since it was common on the previous community.
Also I’ll repeat my request for removing ‘no tankie behavior’ because ‘tankie’ has no consensus definition which makes it a divisive term. In this community I’ve seen several people describe all Marxist Leninists as ‘tankies’. I strongly dislike sectarianism and I would like ML’s to feel welcome here. Any posts that are harmful to the community should just be moderated on the basis of its harm.
- Misogyny should be added to list of no prejudices since it was common on the previous community.
  Might be worth adding more examples of bigotry to that rule, yes. Good shout.
  Also I’ll repeat my request for removing ‘no tankie behavior’ because ‘tankie’ has no consensus definition which makes it a divisive term. In this community I’ve seen several people describe all Marxist Leninists as ‘tankies’. I strongly dislike sectarianism and I would like ML’s to feel welcome here. Any posts that are harmful to the community should just be moderated on the basis of its harm.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie
  I am personally not in favor of removing the "no tankie" rule. Marxist leninists are by definition or at the very least in practice auth. It is true that the term has been used by libs against other socialists however, which is annoying. It's also true that no authoritarianism would include marxist leninism, however specifically calling it out has merits as well.
  
  I feel like tankie is a very precise term for the kind of "communists" that cheer when people get run over by tanks. Therefore, a good test to see if someone just cheers for "imperialism but red" or genuinely cares about liberation.
- Yeah, I've seen the term applied more broadly than MLs even, and agree that 'no tankie behavior' should be removed.
  Just having 'no authoritarian behavior' should suffice anyway right?
- I prefer the "no tankie" rule, all it means is if you identify as tankie, you are not welcome. Which filters out a lot of problematic behavior.
  
  This.
  It works as a great self sorting filter, a lot like how mentioning the patriarchy does - those who feel it personally applies to them feel attacked and get defensive, outing themselves.
  I'm an an-com, and have never felt attacked or excluded by the term tankie because I'm secure in the knowledge that I don't support authoritarianism in any form. If someone calls me one (and they have), I have a chuckle to myself at how people would rather display their own wilful ignorance than address a valid point or face an uncomfortable reality, then move on with my life. It's pretty simple really.
- I'll also say I'm in support of removing the "no tankie" rule. I'm all for anti-authoritarianism, but with how often tankie gets misued on Lemmy at large having the rules specifically use it always kinda felt like just a potential avenue for removing general left-wing stuff. Not that it has been used for that on 196 necessarily, or that it will be in this community, but it still feels like tankie is a loaded enough term that just having more specific rules is better.
  Like you said sectarianism sucks, and right now in the US at least it I'd say solidarity is more important than ideological differences. I'm super anarchist, but if a ML is also attending protests, building mutual aid, and fighting for immigrants and trans people then who am I to exclude them when currently the more support the better. (There are arguments for why this viewpoint is wrong or right, and whether solidarity with authoritarianism in fighting existing power structures is counter-intuitive or not, but it also doesn't feel like those arguments apply as much in something like 196 imo.)
  (Also 100℅ agree on adding misogyny. Obviously the list of prejudices isn't exhaustive or anything but misogyny is a big one and it feels like it should definitely be there.)

what was the thought process that went into
no incomprehensible posts
? for example i just posted a surreal eyeball image. what content was invisioned to be prohibited with this rule and could the rule be better communicated?
- Fair point. Most garbage that should be removed is covered by no ai and the vague no "off topic" rule. I think I was thinking of text posts with no context at the time, but might not be worth having that line.

I've rewritten this a few times with various points I was trying to make, but for the sake of not having a wall of text I'll try to keep it short lol.
For the whole tankie discussion, I saw @LH0ezVT@sh.itjust.works mentioned imperialism, and it made me think that the whole rule should probably be reworded imo
The big thing is that it feels like the whole debate is mostly based on semantics, so that should be fixed if possible. It basically boils down to what "tankie" means or is perceived to mean. As written the rule uses ideological labels to try and represent a broader set of beliefs, but the main issue with that is that by picking those sorts of imprecise labels it sort of muddies what specific kind of beliefs the rule is trying to highlight. Especially with tankie (and even more so on Lemmy), lots of different people use it to label very different things. Even if the rules are using it "correctly", there's still enough disagreement surrounding the term overall that it seems worth it to just elaborate more specifically on what it's actually trying to refer to. Doing so helps prevent some misunderstandings that might happen between users and mods as to what is covered by this rule, means that new users who have been incorrectly called a tankie elsewhere on lemmy don't see the term and assume they'll also be banned here, and also just generally makes the rules more clear which is never a bad thing.
Maybe something like:
Support or defense of authoritarianism is not welcome.This includes but is not limited to: imperialism, nationalism, genocide denial, ethnic or racial supremacy, fascism, nazism, etc."
I feel like that covers the problematic stuff from any type of authoritarianism. Could even be safe and make it something to the effect of "Support or defense of authoritarianism, regardless of the state, is not welcome..." to make sure it's explicit.
- Couldn't have said it better
- Thanks for your feedback. The mod squad talked it over and we're absolutely taking your advice, plus stealing most of your wording. The rules are updated!

corpoposting
I think it would be best to define those terms. I have a vague idea of what "corpoposting" means, but rules should be concrete and subject to as little interpretation as possible.
If you want to keep the neat list format, you could use :::spoiler tags to create rollouts that contain a detailed description. For example:
- Using a better term than corpoposting might be wise, yes. I interpreted it as no advertising by companies and similar
  
  not just by companies but also people going like "omg I LOVE McDonalds!!! EVERYONE should go give money to McDonalds RIGHT NOW!!!" (exaggerated but u get what I mean X3)
- What app are you using? That spoiler tag isn't working for me on Jerboa.
  
  Ah, right, it's nonstandard markdown. According to Jerboa's issue tracker, missing spoiler block rendering was reported in June of 2023 and solved a few days later. ~~Is it possible that you're using an outdated version, or that you have to enable nonstandard markdown in the settings?~~ Scratch that, I just checked and confirmed that it is still an issue. If you can, you should open an issue on Jerboa's github.
  I'm using the standard Lemmy web UI (version 0.19.3 hosted by LW) on a desktop browser. I've just checked Alexandrite, Photon, Voyager, and the old.reddit-style UI, and they all work fine.

Seems like reasonable rules to me

I'd like to second Sop's request to remove "no tankie" because i have seen people use it to insult any kind of person left of the united states liberal parties. Anarchist? get called a tankie, slrpnk got called "tankie", and the list goes on
It has the same energy as "woke" it is just a pejorative used to split us
besides anything a "tankie" says that would be out of pocket would be against every other rule anyway so why not make a small gesture to include leftist trans shitposters that get called tankie on the lemmyverse no matter what their political ideology is
- I prefer that we leave the "no tankie" rule intact, its sadly very important on lemmy with all these lemmygrad, hexbear etc. servers around. Mods know what tankies are, and we dont have to cater to people who dont know the definition of words we use.
  "Tankie" is an important destinction because it seperates leftists from the edgy geopolitics enjoyers, and we would loose that destinction if we drop that word. Lastly, "tankie" is mostly willingly misunderstood by tankies, who want to water it down so they can infilitrate other leftist communities. Thats what happened back on reddit at least.
  
  I think moderators of LBZ's own Liberty Hub have been called tankies by people at .world or sh.itjust.works
  So it already is a muddled definition so who is on either side of the distinction is not consistent and can be used to alienate people from this community who would like to participate. If a stalin meme gets posted remove that or whatever but i dont think the community needs to be worried about malicious infiltrators

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33 comments