If I might make a suggestion, assuming it wouldn't cause more of a moderation nightmare: Maintain a list of soft banned topics that get relegated to a weekly "containment" thread. Complaints about explicitly stated instance wide rules get routed there. People have their space to complain but it keeps things cleaner. It also still allows this place to serve as kind of a watch for abuse. Just because it's a clearly stated instance wide rule, or that anyone can pick up and go somewhere else on the fediverse, doesn't necessarily mean it's not being abused.

Either way, I despise the idea of deleting the previous threads. There's nothing illegal and people should be able to draw their own conclusions about those shitshows. I think the previous threads should be locked to prevent any further comments requiring mod work, but left up. They are important context to this whole mess in case it flares up again. Really sucks coming into something late and being attacked for asking questions that are only obvious if you're already up to date, that come across as attacks to people already in it, but you have no way of knowing any better about.

I also have some concerns about this comm if certain topics start becoming forbidden. It limits the ability of this space to allow the community to pass judgement on and discuss mod/admin actions. But not limiting could end up with this com just devolving into a complaint quarantine for leapords ate my face "contestants".

Tl;dr- don't ban topic (maybe a weekly quaratine thread for certain topics), lock old threads and leave up

I agree, this community should be a place to discuss mod abuse, not bellyache over transphobia and hate speech being censored or being banned from it. Such discourse makes this community extremely toxic and unusable to vulnerable groups, it also creates inherent bias here favoring alt-right shitheads.

I think @[email protected] would very much agree with this decision as well.

This shouldn't even be a debate or question. This hateful bullshit against Blahaj just needs to stop and mods need to put their foot down and say enough is enough. Like if this kind of shit arguing against a queer friendly instance for being queer friendly is okay or permitted I don't think that [email protected] should even be on our instance anymore, and our admins should just remove it.

I hope it doesn't come to that. I hope this community can put an end to this bullshit and stop endorsing queerphobic users' complaints.

Everything involving this Blahaj slapfight has been BPR, and anyone continuing to rehash it over here is just BPR^2

Like, seriously, this should've ended the minute the obvious troll provoking everyone got banned. Nothing productive will ever come of continuing to talk about it now, all sides need to let it go.

I think you're doing the right thing. The trolls are really stepping up, which is obvious in this thread. I'm trying to share it a lot because if you really read it and understand the process of what they're doing, you'll save yourself a lot of time and energy.

“Once we isolate key people, we look for people we know are in their upstream – people that they read posts from, but who themselves are less influential. We then either start flame wars with bots to derail the conversations that are influencing influential people, or else send off specific tasks for sockpuppets (changing this wording of an idea here; cause an ideological split there; etc).”

https://archive.is/PoUMo

Edit: I forgot to add this part of the thread:

The goal is to keep opinions we don't want fragmented and from coalescing in to a single voice for long enough that the memes we do want can,...

I have a related question:

Where do the users who get banned from YPTB go, when they eventually get banned from YPTB?

As a blahaj'r, I would deeply appreciate this.

I think previous posts should remain up, to preserve the discussion in that post, but I understand why you don't want any further posts about this.

I think everyone has shared their views on the topic already.

Proposing a very specific limit on posts referring mod/admin actions taken against users on LBZ that directly fall afoul of their instance rules regarding very specific gatekeeping might have some value. The subject has been hashed and re-hashed too fucking much. Their rules are their rules, breaking those rules on the instance is clear YDI. Breaking those rules elsewhere and having action taken against you is arguably PTB. I'm in favor of the idea of putting that on wax.

Purging previous discussion is no good, and even the proposal, coming from a community mod as it does, rubs me the wrong way. It shouldn't, because you have just as much right to propose a change as any other community member, but it puts me on edge.

There is value in what's been said already, even if some of it is highly disagreeable. Suggesting removal of that record for any reason invites future discussion of the same, IMO. Not everyone who will ever be a member of this community is a member now. If we're going to consider making a rule about this whole mess, best to leave the roadmap that led us here intact.

Potential yes to a well-defined rule of specific, narrow scope. Hard, hard no to retroactive application of that rule.

I’ve made my take on the whole xenogender argument clear elsewhere so I won’t rehash it here. From an administration perspective I understand your thought process.

I would say leave previous posts up, as it is a very real part of the experience of the fediverse and should remain documented. I would also find it reasonable to limit further posts on the subject.

I appreciate this post, really helps me fill out my block list. It is sad that people cannot just let others live as they want.