Sven Slootweg (soft-deprecated) @joepie91@pixie.town

Looks like opiuo's new album is out: https://opiuo.bandcamp.com/album/opiuo-the-opulent-orchestra

Kind of related to my previous toot about moderation...

Probably the most common mistake I see inexperienced moderators make, is trying to moderate by "fairness". This just doesn't work.

"Fairness" assumes that every party in a disagreement is acting in good faith, and so the concerns of each party need to be taken into consideration. But usually, the situation that one party is *not* acting in good faith is the reason you are called in to moderate in the first place!

Effective moderation always revolves about shaping a community, about working towards a certain experience for its members. This goal can be many things; maybe your priority is to make it a safe space, maybe you intend to 'rehabilitate' difficult folks, maybe something else. All of these are valid goals to have.

But crucially: you need to *pick* one. And only one. This is something you need to have figured out *before* you start a community, and *before* you do moderation work. You cannot have, for example, a safe space that is also a rehabilitation space; these goals will conflict.

Your moderation policy must follow the goal you have set, and you must be able to explain that goal to your community members, and how that has played into your decisions.

Sometimes this can mean banning people who "can't help it". Sometimes it can mean giving space to people who are being assholes. Sometimes it can mean other counterintuitive moderation decisions. It depends on what your goals are.

But those things should always be informed *by* your goals, not by complaints about "fairness". Approximately nobody ever thinks that action taken against them is fair, and basing your moderation on perceived fairness will only result in inconsistent moderation where the most aggressive and abusive users get to stay.

When challenged on a moderation decision, the conversation should thus not be about "was this a fair decision?" - it should be about "was this decision in line with the goals of the community?". You shouldn't assume that you always get it right, but you also shouldn't cave under pressure of chasing something that wasn't your goal to begin with.

Since this seems to have confused a few people: the "do what he feels like" quote in the original toot was meant literally.

Yes, that is almost word-for-word what every one of these people says. Yes, the language really is that consistent. It's a very specific expression of entitlement.

PostNL stop breaking your account portal challenge 2023 (impossible)

To emphasize: the point here isn't the specific thing that they were asked to stop. That may well have been something small and relatively insignificant.

The point here is that they have shown unwilling to consider the impact of their behaviour and words on others, as a matter of procedure, as a default response.

This means that the same will happen for more severe incidents, *including those that you will not recognize as incidents* because it affects a marginalized group that you are not a part of.

If someone gets asked not to do something by other community members, and responds by laughing at it and saying that he'll "do what he feels like"...

Ban them.

Doesn't matter if the person who asked them was "just another user". Doesn't matter if they're a productive contributor. Doesn't matter if they say they will listen to a moderator. Doesn't matter if it was just a small gripe. Ban them. Right away.

They are telling you that they have no respect for the well-being of other community members, and that this is a deliberate choice on their part.

There is no possible way in which they will ever be a positive addition to the community, unless they change that attitude. It will not magically improve over time. Waiting for them to offend "more obviously" will just harm a lot of people in the meantime.

Ban them. Do not let them return until they have rectified that attitude.

Huh. Just had a dream that was more lucid than any dream I've had in a long time.

I realized I was dreamy, and that I could 'simulate' pretty much any sensory experience. For some reason, I chose "walking in dry grass", "paddling a boat", and briefly "floating in the water".

Got everything; the crackling noises of the grass, the wavy feeling of the water, the proper directional feelings of movement and muscles - I even adjusted the rowing because it was initially not realistic enough, I was going too fast for the rowing I actually did.

My brain got one detail wrong, though; it believed that I was already half-awake and just lingering in dreamy thoughts, but in reality I'd just *dreamed* being half-awake, and I was still solidly asleep.

I guess that explains why I had difficulty waking up, and why it felt a little like sleep paralysis.

I think the #NixOS community should be a hell of a lot more hostile towards #LLM shit creeping into the community, actually.

This is just the next iteration of the tech hype grift, after NFTs and blockchains fell through (it's the same goddamn people!), and it's not something we should be legitimizing as a community.