I've seen a lot of instances of people on Lemmy saying you can get banned from Blahaj for forgetting someone's pronouns. And then Ada has to come in and explain why they're wrong in their interpretation of the rules. These people were banned for good reasons, they're transphobes. But I think they misunderstand the rules of Blahaj for a legitimate reason.
It's because Blahaj doesn't have rules. It has two guidelines. Very subjective ones. People want to know what will get them banned, so they try to understand the rules of that subjectivity. The rules for what Ada considers to be empathy and inclusion. The rules of Ada's psychology. Because like it or not, with highly subjective guidelines, Ada's interpretation and understanding of that subjectivity is the rules.
And Ada didn't write the rules of her psychology in the sidebar. So people have to speculate. And people are speculating wrong, and starting arguments about it.
I think a ruleset should be a transparent explanation of how a mod team thinks about acceptable behaviour. By not having rules, Blahaj is being opaque about how the mod team thinks. And the only way for people to deal with that is to practice amateur psychoanalysis. Which is unpleasant and creates division.
If people understood how trans people think about acceptable behaviour, they wouldn't be transphobes. So the result of this system is that everyone who is banned for transphobia doesn't understand why and needs it personally explained to them. If the sidebar explained acceptable behaviour in a way everyone can understand, they wouldn't misunderstand it so often.
I think the current system is creating pointless drama.
Late reply, these people are just complaining they were banned for being assholes and that this space doesn't let thinly veiled bigotry and gatekeeping slide like many places do. I don't think we need clearly defined rules for people to try and look for loopholes, there aren't any loopholes to not being an asshole and not being a bigot, you can either be a bigot or not be one. Introducing a list of rules just makes it easier for people to look for loopholes and claim that they were banned unfairly. Better to not give them any benefit.
I disagree. There are infinity loopholes, because everyone defines them differently. Everyone has their own personal loopholes. Which loopholes exist in practice is basically random, but in theory, it's all loophole.