I've now probably read more posts about 196 on here than I've read posts on 196.
I'm just not really getting all the hate hate. These people started a community or worked their way into a mod spot. They had a specific set of rules for the community that was posted and reasonably fair. Their community got popular. They realized their site admin was modding their community according to rules that they didn't want to also enforce. They tried to move the community to a better fit instance as non-dramatically as they knew how.
That's all perfectly reasonable to me. Clearly they did a shit job at doing it non dramatically but they're communicating and adjusting their position to try and accommodate others and that alone should buy them a little good will. They are trying to figure out what to do, everyone is trying to figure out what to do. What's with all the hate?
From what I’ve seen it appears that (at least one of) the mods claim to “own” the community - which is a disturbing way of thinking about moderation, in my opinion.
I mean one of the things that I hated most about Reddit in my final days was that the admins removed and replaced mods that purposefully closed in protest.
If someone starts a sub they should be allowed to close and nuke it at will. If someone wants it back enough then they can make a clone.
I don’t disagree with your first paragraph but partly do with the second.
If it’s a unique channel-type community you started, produce most of the content for and actively moderate quickly and consistently then, for sure, you should have almost complete control… but 196 is/was none of those things.
I don’t think requiring a mod team to mod and create all the content is reasonable barrier for control of their sub.
It's like, imagine you’re renting a house with a few people and one of the people none of the housemates really like (they don’t follow the house rules everyone has agreed on) marches in and announces “We all, as a group, are moving to Florida!” And then moves out and takes the refrigerator and expects you to follow. No thanks, good riddance, we’re getting a new fridge and a better housemate.
They can do whatever they want with the space, paint it blue, burn it, close it, whatever. They shouldn't expect people to follow them.
I think this post and the reply highlight the tricky waters we are trying to navigate here in the Fediverse.
I've moderated web forums since there was a Web and usually, the final call is with whoever is paying the bills. Here that is more complicated because, although this instance is fully-funded by the users and I consider myself largely a caretaker in my Admin role (and, by extension, Mods don't "own" their communities they are looking after them for all of us), my name (and @GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk') is above the door and we do have legal responsibilities based on the laws in the jurisdictions we operate in.
On the other hand we have the ethos that came over from Reddit, that Mods have some degree if ownership over the communities and some instances tend to operate with that idea, to the point it can be difficult to get new Mode appointed if others have gone AWOL, leading to people starting duplicate communities on the same instance.
Where these two ways of thinking clash you can get some degree of drama, as we are seeing here. Ada and her team take a strong line on certain things, as you'd expect from their instance but the 196 Mods didn't appreciate what they see as interference in the running if "their" community.
This would be just another day in the Fediverse and an example of why it is wise to have a word with an Admin on an instance before starting what might be a large, potentially controversial, community in order to ensure the Admins and Mods are on the same page.
Nah, it's one of the use cases for sites/services like reddit and lemmy.
A way to have a forum for your specific interest that you can build into the kind of community you want.
The barrier to hosting a standalone forum is very high. Prohibitively so. The time, the money, the level of skill needed.
Reddit, for a long time, treated subs exactly like that. It hosted your forum, and as long as you didn't do illegal shit, they would leave you alone. You owned it as much as you can own anything on someone else's hardware.
Lemmy is entirely a clone of reddit based in a reaction to reddit stopping that way of doing things.
The key to lemmy though, is that instances are individual reddits. You host the instance, you decide how "subs" are allowed to function. Some instances have a looser way of doing things, others are more hands on.
But, really, a moderator that creates a community should be as close to the owner of the community as you can get when it's hosted on someone else's hardware. You can try a fully democratic community, and they can work. But they don't work better than what amounts to a dictatorship model. It's just that it takes a higher number of people being jerks to fuck up a community when it's democratic. Organization by a panel is slower to adapt, and also more open to disruption because of that.
It's all about the benefits and drawbacks.
All of that is still trumped by the fact that whoever literally owns the instance can nuke, take over, ban, whatever any community or users. So it isn't like you can escape ownership without making a formally run instance with a legally binding structure. Without that, you still have to hope that the owner doesn't go crazy.
As I’ve mentioned somewhere else I’d take all that in to consideration if it was a more niche sub - but it isn’t. It very much seems to be that a already existing community found its way to Blahaj where (almost) all of the contributors were happy. Then some mods arbitrarily decided that they didn’t like the instance and moved to… .world, of all places. Back towards centralisation and the possible looming spectre of interacting with meta users too.
Fair enough.
Though, I would call 196 pretty niche, just not small. That's piddling over word usage though, and not at all relevant to the real point you made.
I definitely agree that the moving was a bad call, btw. Particularly where it moved to, and for the same reasons you gave. I don't have a stake in it, I've always found the 196 thing a bit too silly even for my absurdist tastes. It still seems like a horrible way to handle everything overall.
Yeah, at the end of the day Lemmy is just a colloboration between the users, the mods, and the admins.
The admins do have the final say, but in order for users to use their instance in the first place and communities to grow there, they also have to follow the desires of the users and work with the moderators to a major extent. It's just teamwork and being able to compromise on some things but stay true to your principles on other things.
This really shouldn't have been as big a deal as it became, and I would blame that mostly on the mods, somewhat on the users, and maybe just a little bit on the admins for not discouraging the moderators from taking this action in the first place. Everyone could probably have done a little bit better, but it was mostly on the mods for making a bonehead decision without realizing the consequences. That being said, raking them over the coals in the aftermath doesn't really accomplish anything other than letting people feel self-righteous.
It's very easy to see from the outside and in retrospect, but when you're making moderator decisions every single day, you tend to lose a bit of perspective. It can be frustrating especially if admins are interfering with a community that you dedicate so much time and effort to, and I like to think if everyone had walked a mile in those shoes before, they probably wouldn't be acting so condescending right now.
That being said, raking them over the coals in the aftermath doesn’t really accomplish anything other than letting people feel self-righteous.
The mods are still in place, and trust is definitely eroded, so we're probably not in the aftermath yet.
I like to think if everyone had walked a mile in those shoes before, they probably wouldn’t be acting so condescending right now.
I have issues taking seriously a mod that still doesn't have a local account to get the reports after so long, and blame it on the admins
So perhaps if LBZ was the right instance to check reports from, it would have been super helpful for both parties if they accepted my application. I’m still waiting two years later.
You're overlooking that the users don't want to move. The mods seem to think that they're the reason we use 196 and that they can just pack us into a suitcase and take us wherever they like, when the fact is we use blahaj zone for a reason and they can't take us anywhere. They're perfectly free to close the sub and make a new one elsewhere, but no one's going to follow them.
It's like, imagine you're renting a house with a few people and one of the people none of the housemates really like (they don't follow the house rules everyone has agreed on) marches in and announces "We all, as a group, are moving to Florida!" And then moves out and takes the refrigerator and expects you to follow. No thanks, good riddance, we're getting a new fridge and a better housemate.
I understand I'm being a pedant but it sounds more similar to a landlord telling their tenants that the house being rented is legally being moved across state borders. The landlord had house rules under the umbrella of state law and wanted a new umbrella. Tenants are saying "this state is fine and, fuck off, we brought all the furniture in this house."
If you want to be pedantic, the landlord is the admin and the house rules have been set by them. The only power the mod housemate has is ownership of something everybody uses that's replaceable. We're not going to Florida to follow the fridge.
The actual tenant here would be the admin. They own the house and don't want to get involved in the housemates internal discussions
I think the problem was the fact that they blocked the "old" community, despite a lot of people coming forward to actually keep the "old" community alive.
And then they unlocked the community. They fucked up and they apologized. Certain users really need to take a deep breath and stop writing essays on the topic calling for everyone's heads. It's giving off major Karen vibes, which belong as far away from c/196 as possible.
This is the internet, this is Lemmy, it's really not that big of a deal. Laugh about the drama, make memes about it, but for the love of God please stop taking everything so seriously.
This comment isn't directed towards you, but rather to a bunch of others I've seen from my cursory glance at a few threads, calling for everyone's resignation and expressing their outrage. Like calm the fuck down, you're embarrassing yourselves, and by extension the rest of us.
This comment isn’t directed towards you, but rather to a bunch of others I’ve seen from my cursory glance at a few threads, calling for everyone’s resignation and expressing their outrage. Like calm the fuck down, you’re embarrassing yourselves, and by extension the rest of us.
It just gave very Reddit API shutdown vibes, which is not something people have very good memories of.
Also most of the energy was dedicated to the creation of !onehundredninetysix@lemmy.blahaj.zone , which was the evidence that the community was ready to restart elsewhere had the mods kept the community locked
The old community was being led by a corrupt admin, wasn't it? Isn't that the entire issue? Sounds like they can't fix it.
It was just a difference of opinion in the way they wanted to moderate the community and how the admin wanted to moderate her server. And of course, the admin has the last word.
But this stuff happens all the time on Lemmy, the only unusual thing is they decided to take the nuclear option and lock the community. Then they realized their mistake and unlocked it. It is what it is. I just get annoyed at all the people who flock to this drama like flies to shit so they can pile on the mods. It's super lame.
And of course, the admin has the last word.
Ada has expressed she didn't want to intervene
I am not going to take a community off of people who haven’t broken any instance rules. Mods need to have confidence that the communities they run aren’t going to be arbitrarily taken away from them because of an issue with an instance admin.
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/12477708
That's an interesting difference to note with the usual admin/mod hierarchy
so they can pile on the mods. It’s super lame.
Mods shouldn't make such decisions without asking the community first. That was supposedly the idea of Lemmy, having power tripping mods being kept in check by meta communities like !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com and the ability to move to another community on a whim. Still impressive to see how !onehundredninetysix@lemmy.blahaj.zone got active in only a few hours, that's definitely something that's interesting.
"as they knew how" is carrying a lot of weight there. Just reading through the responses to https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/20937206, people were very incensed, and as people are saying here the mods responses are only making the already tense situation far worse.
moss: “we don’t want to moderate under Ada”
us: “…. okay? then quit. there are plenty of us who will gladly take over. :)”
moss: “NO NO NOT LIKE THAT”
Is it just me, or is there seemingly always some massively petty drama happening somewhere in the fediverse that people just can't help but whinge about? I swear it's like 50% of the All feed sometimes 😂
Open things come with open drama. It's honestly fun to me, it's my own very niche drama show
If there's more than one person, there's drama brewing. I never check the All feed and yet can always find something. On this occasion I did a meme, but normally, I dodge that shit like Neo.
All I've seen is "differences in opinion" but no one actually saying what they disagree over? Seems like a lot of drama over nothing from my perspective?
This is heresay from another thread on the topic, but I’ll repeat it here:
The 196 mods were from the lemmy.world instance despite 196 being hosted on blahaj.zone, resulting in delays of moderation actions. Blahaj.zone admins stepped in to pick up the slack, but the mods didn’t figured a better solution would be to just move it to lemmy.world, but apparently some instances are federated with blahaj but not world, or had other reasons to not want it to move, causing drama…
Sometimes, users make comments and posts that are tricky to moderate. In those situations, it appears the 196 mods wanted to be a bit more lenient, while the admin wanted to be a bit more strict in terms of removing that content. It's not one specific thing, it seems like more of an accumulation of small decisions that built up and caused the mod team to make a rash decision.
Locking the existing version of a community and forcing people to move to another instance without any prior consultation is indeed quite rash
Ada does not accept sealioning and "Just asking questions"-types in the very trans-friendly space on blahaj.zone, which doesn't seem to be an issue for the mod team (showing how much they are out of touch - moving 196 to .world is a bad move, because such user conduct is more acceptable on .world). Also, it seems that the decision wasn't "rash" - A commenter in the "what went wrong"-post remembered that a mod off-handedly wrote that they were thinking about moving to .world about a month ago (and got pushback even back then). Also, trying that move without even consulting your community once is either pretty bold or pretty stupid, depending on viewpoint.
What is this 196 and why do they keep popping up on my feed
Memes about the Fediverse.
Other relevant communities:
