Hey and let me the first, and a happy first, to welcome you to /c/TenForward, a place dedicated to hanging out and talking Trek. Whether you're theorizing about old tech (or a new season), talking about your favorite class of ship (Crossfield, but are you surprised?) or just wanting to check out some memes, Ten Forward is the place for you.
Ten Forward was founded with the express purpose of providing a calm, relaxing hangout atmosphere where people could talk about all aspects of Trek. A community that was built to be a real community with friends and strangers coming together to help entertain each other and provide a happy place for us all to go. We want this community to be broad enough to encompass all things Trek under one umbrella, whether that be your typical source of memes, some recent news about a new Picard movie in the mix, some really cool fan art you've found or just how existentially horrifying the transporters really are.
We do have a set of rules in the sidebar but they're no more stringent or severe than you would see in any other general subreddit, but we do ask people to be familiar with them and to follow them to the best of their ability. They're all pretty basic though. Be kind to one another, don't be bigoted, try to avoid negativity and support people when you can, stick to being on topic (as long as it's Trek related, you're good!) and try to tag recent spoilers of anything released within the last 3-ish months.
And who are here to enforce the rules and help provide the community with a framework of what to expect? Well there's myself of course but also the stellar @[email protected], the celestial @[email protected] and the out-of-this-world @[email protected]! And of course we won't just be moderating but posting as well. And boy do I personally have a backlog from dealing with personal stuff over the past month or so. If you have any issues with something you see, please report it. If you feel that mod action wasn't particularly fair, reach out to one of us. We're here to help provide a great experience for everyone across the board.
So welcome to /c/TenForward! And to borrow, and slightly alter, a quote from a man I miss everyday...
Since my customary farewell would appear oddly self-serving, I shall simply say... 🖖 ... Have fun.
What happened to Risa?
Nothing. Community still exists. But myself and others have a different moderation philosophy and wanted to set up our own place so we made TenForward
What makes it different?
Risa has a single moderator. We have a large and robust team (edit: I typed in teal for some reason). Risas moderator is barely active on Lemmy and not at all in communities he isn't a mod in. Our mods are active across lemmy. The most important though is that Risa has no rules which makes it unclear for users and mods what is okay and what isn't. We have clearly defined rules to give a framework for everyone.
This answer you've given a few times now implies that /c/Risa allows bigotry and honestly, I take offense to that. I removed bigoted and uncivil comments the whole time I was modding either Risa under the same "no real rules" framework currently there. Risa has essentially the same rules about civility and tolerance that you have, applied instance wide.
The current problem with Risa isn't abstract. The lone mod is enforcing unwritten content rules.
But that's not Risa disallowing bigotry. That's you disallowing bigotry. The community itself has no public facing rules against bigotry and never has. You did and I applaud that. It's a great thing. You deserve all the props for making Risa a great place and clearing all that up. The current mod does not share that same philosophy and has not implemented that part but due to it never being stated to be part of the community, at least to us basic users like in the sidebar or something, then it's tacitly allowed. Especially when the sidebar explicitly says "no rules, just don't break the weather control network." Also just because the instance overall bans it doesn't mean that the instance steps in. There have been multiple times that something has been reported, left up by the mod on Risa, and then ignored by the admins who specifically used the phrase "we try to leave Risa reports for the Risa mods. Once it’s been handled at that level, we’ll determine whether we want to escalate it to the higher level."
The core reason that TenForward was created was directly responding to the lack of written rules that are visible for the user. Background rules that the mods are using aren't clear to users and aren't helpful to us.
Community rules are absolutely subordinate to instance rules and the instance rules are fully public. Therefore, Risa's written policy is no bigotry, and it always has been.
Of course that's the policy. I wouldn't have volunteered my time and effort to a project that didn't have that written in stone as a core principle.
Now, if that written policy is going unenforced by mods and admins... well that's a different story. But I'll be honest: I find that very hard to believe. I disagree with the content moderation approach endorsed by the admins of that instance, but in my experience they are all tolerant and empathetic individuals.
That's a very fair point and I'm sorry for not taking that into account overall. I will make sure to keep that in mind.
No worries. You're good, and your overall guideline for setting expectations is one I strongly agree with: be transparent about what the rules are.
Still, the last thing that I want to do is cause issues here. I don't want to upset you or anyone else so really wanted to make sure that I was only saying this with the best intentions and a light tone. Hard to put that across in text sometimes.
I am genuinely sorry though if I offended or upset you. That was not remotely my intention and I didn't mean to play down your extreme work and how grateful I am for it.