Hey all,
In light of recent events concerning one of our communities (/c/vegan), we (as a team) have spent the last week working on how to address better some concerns that had arisen between the moderators of that community and the site admin team. We always strive to find a balance between the free expression of communities hosted here and protecting users from potentially harmful content.
We as a team try to stick to a general rule of respect and consideration for the physical and mental well-being of our users when drafting new rules and revising existing ones. Furthermore, we've done our best to try to codify these core beliefs into the additions to the ToS and a new by-laws section.
ToS Additions
That being said, we will be adding a new section to our “terms of service” concerning misinformation. While we do try to be as exact as reasonably able, we also understand that rules can be up to interpretation as well. This is a living document, and users are free to respectfully disagree. We as site admins will do our best to consider the recommendations of all users regarding potentially revising any rules.
Regarding misinformation, we've tried our best to capture these main ideas, which we believe are very reasonable:
- Users are encouraged to post information they believe is true and helpful.
- We recommend users conduct thorough research using reputable scientific sources.
- When in doubt, a policy of “Do No Harm”, based on the Hippocratic Oath, is a good compass on what is okay to post.
- Health-related information should ideally be from peer-reviewed, reproducible scientific studies.
- Single studies may be valid, but often provide inadequate sample sizes for health-related advice.
- Non-peer-reviewed studies by individuals are not considered safe for health matters.
We reserve the right to remove information that could cause imminent physical harm to any living being. This includes topics like conversion therapy, unhealthy diets, and dangerous medical procedures. Information that could result in imminent physical harm to property or other living beings may also be removed.
We know some folks who are free speech absolutists may disagree with this stance, but we need to look out for both the individuals who use this site and for the site itself.
By-laws Addition
We've also added a new by-laws section as well as a result of this incident. This new section is to better codify the course of action that should be taken by site and community moderators when resolving conflict on the site, and also how to deal with dormant communities.
This new section provides also provides a course of action for resolving conflict with site admin staff, should it arise. We want both the users and moderators here to feel like they have a voice that is heard, and essentially a contact point that they can feel safe going to, to “talk to the manager” type situation, more or less a new Lemmy.World HR department that we've created as a result of what has happened over the last week.
Please feel free to raise any questions in this thread. We encourage everyone to please take the time to read over these new additions detailing YOUR rights and how we hope to better protect everyone here.
https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/#80-misinformation
https://legal.lemmy.world/bylaws/
Sincerely,
FHF / LemmyWorld Operations Team
EDIT:
We will be releasing a separate post regarding the moderation incident in the next 24-48 hours, just getting final approval from the team.
Obligatory "I'm not a vegan," but this comment seems like it's at least partially mischaracterizing the issue.
Some of the comments removed seem to advocate for a vegan cat diet that specifically includes the amino acids and protein that cats need, albeit sourced in a vegan-friendly way:
I am also not a vet (go figure) but this seems reasonable on its face and lines up with the 5 minutes of Google research that I did. It sounds like not all vegan formulated cat food actually strikes the balance cats need and that this diet would need to be balanced very carefully, but it seems possible to do it in a healthy way, especially if done in concert with a vet and frequent checkups.
Yes, it is possible, with constant blood tests (which means monthly vet appointments and the corresponding stress for the cat) and a heap of knowledge.
it's very easy to fuck this up to the detriment of the cat, and because of that every vet i've talked to about it said it is just too risky and stressful for the cat (and monthly bloodwork is costly too). Just putting the information "cats can be fed vegan" out is asking for trouble, because you can be sure that someone just does it without taking the necessary steps to make sure the pet is safe from harm. it is not even recommended to do BARF with cats, because it's too easy to mess things up; there's just not enough margin for errors to do it safely.
I agree with you but wanted to add that non vegan cat food has the same quality and nutritional value issues.
I think some people assume vegan cat food means feeding them whole foods prepared at home but thats ridiculous. It would be just as ridiculous to decide to start formulating your own cats nutritional needs with non vegan food.
Preparing your own animal food is its own subject entirely, and vegan and non vegan cat foods share a lot of the same processes and ingredients.