community management, moderation 

What nobody tells you about community management is that 90% of moderation work is having to endlessly deconstruct systemic and ingrained misbeliefs that people have picked up from toxic politics, debate culture, rape culture, etc.

None of which you were responsible for them starting to believe, but somehow you have become responsible for making them *stop* believing it, and the people in question may not even realize themselves that they believe it

community management, moderation 

@joepie91 I have probably picked up some of these misbeliefs myself. Can you point me at any recommended reading about these?

re: community management, moderation 

@matt Hmm, I don't immediately have a good source to link to, but I'd say that a couple of the big ones that I run into all of the time, would be:

1. Debate culture; the idea that combatively arguing things will somehow result in the correct answer. But it doesn't: twitter.com/joepie91/status/14

2. Assumed consent; the idea that unless someone has explicitly said "no", that means they must be fine with it. Even if they don't know about it being done in the first place.

3. Privilege; the assumption (by privileged folks) that everybody experiences the world the same way, and any fortune that befalls someone must be due to their qualities, and not due to luck or privilege.

Also manifests in more subtle ways; like eg. how privileged people will complain about "rights being taken away" because of some rule or law change that removes their unjust advantage over others and equalizes things.

Common factor is that they've never considered what things are like for those who do *not* have the same privilege; sometimes deliberately, sometimes out of ignorance.

4. Positive vs. negative rights; believing that the only 'rights' that matter are those that allow you to *do* stuff, and not those that *protect* you from stuff being done to you. Again, frequently shows up with privilege.

"Expecting a right to be heard", like complaining loudly about getting banned or defederated as a "violation of freedom of speech" is a common case of this - the right for others not to be harassed is not taken into account.

5. Statism; the belief that the only way to run a society or community is through rigid top-down enforcement. This can can take different forms.

One common form is the belief that a few people will ruin the society/community if left to its own devices. Generally does not consider that those people would seek positions of power, and hierarchies make this problem *worse*.

Another common form is the belief that random people simply aren't competent enough to make decisions, and need some sort of leader to do so for them. Generally unfamiliar with different forms of consensus-making (or only familiar with the "endless meeting" caricature), and unaware that consensus-seeking is widespread and successful *already*.

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That's not a complete list of course, but hopefully it'll at least give some useful pointers :)

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re: community management, moderation 

@joepie91 @matt

Might be a worthwhile reframing of "privilege" which seems to set people off by the excellent Dr Muna Abdi.

ma-consultancy.co.uk/blog/lang

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