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Does anyone know why we’re defederated from beehaw.org?
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this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2023
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sh.itjust.works Main Community
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Home of the sh.itjust.works instance.
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Beehaw mods had issues moderating a flood of new users and low quality posts from here. As they put it, it was more “we don’t have the tools and staff to handle tons of new people” and less “we don’t like SIJW”.
Good explanation.
If I remember correctly they defederated from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works because they were two huge and largely unmoderated instances but did say that they'd like to refederate if solid moderation was put in place.
The SIJW admin and them had talks and agreed that they'd refederate when Lemmy would have decent moderation tools that allowed for that, which hasn't happened yet.
If what you're saying is accurate, and these huge communities are largely unmoderated, then we have a pretty outstanding community here on Lemmy. Can you imagine the hate, vitriol, and absolute trash that would be visible if Twitter or Reddit were unmoderated? Yes we have some weird opinions and content, but nothing I've seen is overtly dangerous or hateful. Pretty cool, Lemmy. Pretty cool.
A lot of it is self-selecting IMO. We're big enough to have a good sized community, but we aren't so big as to become a big target. That will change as Lemmy gets bigger, but it least for now, it's small enough that the trolls probably don't get enough attention to bother sticking around.
If you want trash, you can find it on Lemmy, just check the list of most defederated instances. You don't see it because... well, they're defederated, which itself is one of the moderation tools available in the Fediverse.
I hope we'll get to a place where they'll refederate with us. They have some really interesting communities. I didn't sign up for an account there because I wasn't willing to write a 7 page essay and take the blood oath to be admitted. I'm exaggerating... a little.
They want to be the "Elks Lodge" of the fediverse and that's totally fine. They were pretty transparent about their reasons for defederating with us and their reasons were understandable.
Anyone who cares about downvotes needs to get their head examined. A downvote can mean the person doesn't agree with your comment, doesn't like your tone, thinks you are incorrect, thinks the comment doesn't add to the discussion, hell they could downvote you just because they don't like your username. None of that matters. All it does is show you if your comment goes against the zeitgeist or not.
The whole point is that people can downvote you for any stupid reason and doesn't accurately reflect why a post is being rejected by the community. People will do it simply because they want to silence you.
And it causes issues with brigading, botnets, etc. It's why hexbear and lemmygrad are being defederated -- and their members are able to get around it simply by making accounts on other servers and going right back to the brigading. Removing the voting option and giving admins tools to IP ban everyone from an instance upon defederation would go a long way toward fixing the problem. Just putting the hurdle of needing a VPN to regain access alone will deter a lot of idiots.
That’s my biggest problem with downvotes. I want to know why someone disagrees. That can initiate an interesting conversation.
If I’m factually incorrect, I want to know. Same goes if I expressed myself poorly. A downvote alone doesn’t tell me anything.
I've had plenty of times where a comment I made got downvoted like crazy, but a response I made to a comment asking for clarification got a lot of upvotes. It seems people really like to jump on that downvote button, especially if they see something already getting downvotes (i.e. maybe they don't even read it, they just downvote on reflex).
Votes happen to be really easy to deal with in software, which is probably why they're so commonly used. However, when it comes to people actually casting votes, they behave a lot differently than software creators expect.
So perhaps we should try something else, like maybe sort by "activity" (how many times the comment was replied to) to sort of counteract that reflex-like urge to use it as an agree/disagree button (if you agree or disagree strongly, you're likely to comment).
You can also be "downvoted into oblivion" if you're 100%, objectively correct, but your conclusion goes against the "hive mind." I have had comments with a ton of sources and detailed analysis that got downvoted like crazy, and then the top comment is like "X group, amirite?"
You're 100% correct that reddit rewards snark far more than constructive discussion. That's part of why I'm here, and why I'll probably be perennially disappointed with social media.
So what is the desired end result of a voting system, to promote popular opinions, or to promote interesting opinions? Because as implemented, voting-based SM tends to promote the former, and I think many people prefer the latter.
So to me, it is a problem because it's not meeting the goals that presumably most people have.
Many platforms, like Reddit, hide comments that get too many downvotes. So many people just won't see the interesting, controversial discussion, and I think that's a problem.
We should be sorting based on likeliness of being interesting, not popularity.
It's both. You're not wrong with the groupthink thing, but they absolutely do help to combat disinformation and useless comments. I get that you've made a decision, but you don't need to rationalize away the negatives.
Actually, on Beehaw, you can. If Beehaw has the equivalent of kbin’s “activity” info, I haven’t found it.
Votes still get federated. Even if not exposed via UI anyone running their own (federated) instance can query for who voted on beehaw posts. Only a matter of time before that's directly exposed as a mod tool.
I upvoted this post even though I don’t agree with it. See the downvoted pic of the girl taking a shit to see why I think downvotes are needed at times.
Isn't that something that mods need to take care of though? Why should that burden be on the community members?
The word "community" goes a long way in answering that question imo.
If we look to the mods take care of everything, we're a group of content consumers, not a community.
And then we have to deal with the community collectively adopting shitty or evil ideas and enforcing them, shutting down victims or anyone who opposes them. So who checks the community? Who protects the individual?
Sometimes mods are asleep or not locked to their desks. Downvotes help get shit like that (pun fully intended) out of most peoples feeds unless they are browsing by new or are way way way down on the hot scroll list.
I totally agree here. And I want to take it a step further and instead of sorting by average votes, we should merely be including it as one of many indicators, such as:
And so on. But instead, we seem to just sort by
upvotes - downvotesand call it a day.Sometimes comments are just wrong, and detract from the community. Downvotes (plus an interface that hides negative voted comments) clean things up without need for formal moderation.
Whatever can be said about downvotes (an automated system for marking one's disapproval) is probably true of reporting (a human reviewed system for marking one's extreme disapproval), too.
Well, at the time, they hoped for eventual refederation, too. Personally, I do as well. We’ll see!
Yeah, you're not welcome. Everyone calling a couple questions an "essay", can shitpost somewhere else. I'm not exaggerating a bit, if someone can't be bothered to think through a couple answers ONCE, I don't trust them to think through the rest of their comments either.
'low quality posts' is such pointless elitist bullshit
To me, low-quality is when someone replies “lol” or “no you’re wrong lmao” vs a thoughtful post of multiple sentences.
Except that wasn't how they described it. They said they were getting a lot of posts that required moderator action, and people there said it was trolls and harassment.
A lot of NSFL stuff not tagged, a lot of blatantly transphobic and homophobic stuff meant to upset beehaw users since it's designed to be a diverse and welcoming space. Definitively not "lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works users were posting a lot of low effort memes" and much more "a small subset of lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works users are gaming the open sign ups to make the lives of our users worse"
Exactly - that description was kind of frustrating. It makes it sound like they took a drastic action to deal with a very mild annoyance, when apparently that wasn't the case
I've said before that I think Beehaw's goal of a harassment-free and troll-free space is unlikely to succeed on a federated platform, but I respect their right to give it a shot and their actions seem reasonable given the situation.