So there are a few topics that came up lately that I think would be nice to discuss with members of this community.
Basically this is part of writing a Code of Conduct for our instance and I think we need to talk about some specific type of posts:
Doomers
Naturally the themes discussed in our communities are attracting a lot of climate doomer comments and I would say we also have a significant number of “recovering doomers” here as community members.
Earlier this week I considered closing the /c/collapse community on SRLPNK, because it is not actively moderated and attracts a lot of these types, even though ex_06 (who asked me to have their account re-activated, but not as an admin) originally intended it to be more of a psychological self-help group for people trying to get to terms with the likely loss of many things that defined their life so far.
While the typical doomer could probably need some psychological support, they are usually still in a stage of grief that makes them lash out and not engage in a constructive exchange how to make the best of the current difficult situation we sadly find ourselves in.
Mostly I have been doing temporary bans for such doomers to cool down and not spread their doom and gloom endlessly in our communities, but I think we need to come up with a common idea how to deal with this better.
Discussing civil disobedience
aka Direct Action or the other man’s “Eco Terrorist” (yeah right…).
Obviously this is a topic many climate activists find themselves more and more confronted with and you might already be involved with a group engaged in such actions of civil disobedience. And lets not forget about the punk in Solarpunk either :)
However, obviously this is a public web-site and thus easily monitored by law-enforcement and other people that might be interested in reporting such discussions to the local authorities. Thus to protect this service and also our users from themselves we can’t really allow planning discussions with specific targets or generally calls for action against specific persons to happen here out in the open (or in the semi-public direct messages).
Obviously, we can never condone violence against persons, but aside from that please be careful with discussing climate activism on the clear-web and rather use fully end to end encrypted means with people you can trust!
However this has obviously a large grey area and people might have stronger views on what should and should not be discussed here.
Absolute Vegans
Vegans are obviously welcome on SLRPNK and I think we can all agree that strongly reducing the consumption of animal products is a worthy goal.
However, there are some very opinionated (online) Vegans / animal rights activists that (intentionally or not) are indistinguishable from trolls and generally very toxic to deal with. Please don’t feel personally attacked by this, but I think we need to come up with something regarding this in our code of conduct.
So these were the three topics I had in my mind lately, but feel free to discuss others as well.
I am looking forward to your thoughts on this!
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I think one of the big attractions of solarpunk in general is the sense of tempered optimism it offers in the face of darker narratives (cyberpunk, doomer) – ie. there is hope out there but it is going to take a lot of hard work to get there
And significantly that doing anything is better than doing nothing, even if we’ve already crossed a point of no return. While the earth will not get better in our lifetimes, it can very certainly get worse. Giving up, while less selfish than profiteering from the climate crumbles (I saw that term in another comment and I like it and I’m going to keep using it) as many of the most profitable companies are, is still a selfish act. I think there’s an argument to be made that it also links up with eco-fascism and eco-colonialism, but I’d need to do a bunch of work and research to see if there is one, so it’s just a gut feeling.
I think we need as part of our code of conduct something about if reading the climate news bums you out so much you don’t know what to do (and I suspect we’ve all been there) then go sprinkle some native wild flower seeds some where, go for a walk, try to find a pollinator and say hello, eat some local fruit, look at your municipality’s bus map, anything that gets you in touch with your inner hopeful and joyful climate advocate. The news sometimes is a bummer, and the fact it bums you out means you care. But you can’t feed that bummer part of you. You need to feed the part of you that envisions a better future and wants to do something to make the bummer feelings less of a bummer.
This whole thing won’t get fixed all at once. It’s going to take all of us doing lots of small things that add up. And some of it is going to be advocating not doing business with those super profitable companies. But look… We’ve all bought something from amazon we couldn’t get closer because we’re broke. In those moments you are the exploited worker you advocate for
About the /c/collapse sub, I like the idea that Robert Evans uses, of not referring to “collapse” but instead “the crumbles” - podcast link. The point is it’s not going to be a single moment and it’s not going to be absolute, so the idea of it being a thing that either will happen or won’t happen is a false dichotomy.
It’s a slow, inexorable process of change and that implies that rather than a landslide that will just fall on us all without any hope for remedy, it’s a process whose path we can influence and change. Maybe you could close /c/collapse and create /c/the_crumbles or something like it? Maybe explain the purpose of the rename and put some resources in the sidebar to ideas about radical hope and practical ways people can help. I also think directing people’s despair in that direction can only be a good thing.
I wish I could volunteer to moderate something like that but I’m afraid I can’t really give the time or consistent energy to it. It’s just an idea :)
Maybe c/crumbling
edit: c/rumbling
Yeah, I think that’s better. “The Crumbles” is dramatic but it doesn’t quite flow so well as a community name.
Makes me think of a dessert
To your edit: Why not both? /c/rumbling would definitely develop a theme of shitposts about people getting into playfights. I say go for it.
I think if we look at the fall of past civilizations, we’ll notice that they don’t disappear in one day, but rather slowly… crumble, with occasional events that precipitate the decline suddenly, only to return to a more steady pace, with society changing and evolving around the differences. There’s also always the chance to change and build something new from the remains of what was.
Regarding doomers: Big agree in general. My understanding of a “doomer” is someone who thinks all hope is lost and there’s no use doing anything. That extreme pessimism doesn’t add anything tbh, especially in a hope-oriented instance.
Regarding civil disobedience, I also strongly agree.
Re: absolutist veganism… while I agree it can be as much of a hindrance to discussion as doomerism, I’m not sure we should have something codified specifically about vegans. The thing is, anyone can be so fervently for ANYTHING that they’re not able to have an open-minded discussion assuming good faith. Heck, that includes the “I don’t eat greens I’m not a rabbit” folks. I think it’d be a better step to have a rule against… I don’t know what to call it, dogmatic arguments? Absolutism, ad hominem attacks, etc, the stuff we see with a lot of online Veganism but that certainly isn’t only vegans. For sure we could use the example of veganism, but also of religion vs. atheism (not as relevant here, but I feel prone to the same behaviour, at least from my experience in online Atheism), maybe it could even tie in with the doomerism rule.
Either way, I want to echo what others have said and say this is already a lovely, inspiring community, and I’d love to see that wonderful community codified in some way.
I really like your point about this not being unique to the debate over animal consumption.
Maybe some sort of rule about avoiding absolutism in discourse, maintaining an open mind, or not attacking those with different views?
Its hard to come up with a rule because its such a nebulous line between allowing for a diversity of views, and maintaining an open and productive discourse.
These are very good and useful talking points.
After all, what attracts me to solarpunk in general is that it is positive in the face of a negative situation. Yes, vegan and collapse-concerned viewpoints are very welcome on my feed.
My personal rubric that I try to adhere to when posting is: Hopeful and Helpful.
Collapse topics and promotion of veganism can certainly be expressed in hopeful and helpful ways.
My attraction to the banner of solarpunk is that I hope it will also attract others who still want to try. These are the people I want on my team as the slow disaster unfolds.
As for the talk of direct action, this is definitely not the forum for safe planning. I personally would welcome discussions about what makes for effective activism in various contexts, but that discussion would also include awareness of when and where to talk specifics.
Thanks for showing the leadership to make this community healthier and better. May your solar array always operate at peak efficiency.
Besides a discussion where the hotheaded can be nudged towards a safer ‘when and where’, we could also include some pointers to good practices in the link collection.
For the civil disobedience bit in the CoC, it might not hurt to link to Kolektiva’s recent snafu, as a reminder for caution.
I feel like these discussions should be separate posts, since a lot of the comment threads are kind of unwieldy.
Doomers: I would make part of our code of conduct an agreement to avoid non-constructive negativity.
Civil disobedience: I think the code of conduct should include a requirement not to speak in a way that could incriminate anyone or inspire harm against specific people. I think this is broad enough to take care of the worst concerns while still allowing people to debate the merits of industrial sabotage philosophically.
Vegans: I would make a rule against community gatekeeping. This should be sufficient to address anyone who tells someone that their diet or lifestyle disqualifies them from participating in this community, without singling out any specific diet or lifestyle choice.
I feel like these discussions should be separate posts, since a lot of the comment threads are kind of unwieldy.
Yeah, but having a lot of local sticky threads is also annoying. I just wish Lemmy 0.18.3 hadn’t introduced this bug that breaks loading deeply nested comments 🤷♂️
We need to brainstorm a bit how to formulate this in the CoC so that it does not single out vegans but still makes it clear what we discussed in this thread. I would like to avoid adding a lot of examples to keep it short and to the point. Otherwise no one reads it.
What do you think of discouraging it through a provision against gatekeeping? Along with basic requirements to be civil, that would seem to me to cover most cases in which anyone – vegan or otherwise – is acting in a hostile manner towards others.
I would like to avoid adding a lot of examples to keep it short and to the point. Otherwise no one reads it.
Would it be possible to have the CoC short but with links to explicitely non-exhaustive examples for what is meant by each point?
Maybe links to screenshots with blocked out user names?
These are all very well worded! They address the issues without being overly restictive.
we can’t really allow planning discussions (RE: disobedience)
You can’t. We can’t also be spouting off and calling for people’s heads on a stick either, as permitting that kind of talk emboldens the one guy out there that’s unhinged enough to do something because he’s got ‘online backing’ even though it’s mostly people just venting. I get the punk part. I don’t always agree with it, though. I think there’s a lot of peaceful ways to make meaningful changes without blowing up a pipeline (Ludwig style) or chaining yourself to a tree.
as an aside, I’m kind of a doomer? maybe? I’m certainly disillusioned with our state of inaction and the way things are headed. It may well be way too late to do much other than brace for impact, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. You’ll see me over in /c/reclamation shilling restoration strategies and talk. I think encouraging research and industry to work together is a good way to make changes and more responsibly source our minerals and resources.
Idk, man. shit’s fucked, but in the meantime, I’ll be chewing gum and trying to stick it in the leaking dam.
as permitting that kind of talk emboldens the one guy out there that’s unhinged enough to do something because he’s got ‘online backing’ even though it’s mostly people just venting
I think this is really really important to remember. Conservative media loves to dance up to the very edge of calling for violence because they know unhinged people will take it further. They want the violence and they also want the plausible deniability so they can keep inciting violence without punishment. It’s called “stochastic terrorism” and it’s exactly how we got January 6 - a certain politician and his enablers using coded language to a mob of his most radical supporters, hoping those supporters would turn to violence, and believing they themselves would be safe from legal consequences because they didn’t explicitly order violence.
We can do better. We have to do better.
I didn’t know where to ask this so I’ll ask it here: where can I donate money to the instance?
Thank you for the amazing job, guys
There is currently no way to donate to SLRPNK directly and it is also not urgently needed. I’ll probably set up a Liberapay site later this year or so, but for now please donate to the main Lemmy developers if you have some funds to spare. Thanks 🥰
Thank you!!
That’s nice to hear. Slrpnk is my favorite instance and it’s good to know it’s in good shape financially.
Hey there. New member, freshly registered.
I would say that the biggest threat to a solarpunk community like this one is greenwashing. More specifically, I’m thinking about techno-solutionism - a devious form of magical thinking that lets us think that tech is going to solve everything.
It is okay to share news about the latest technological advancement, to marvel at the ever lowering price of solar energy. But if it leads people to think that we can just replace fossil with another energy source and keep our societies and economic structures as is, this is toxic.
And I get that if you get enthusiastic about some tech and post it here, but then someone starts raining on your parade in the comment section, that person could easily be disqualified as a doomer.
How can we foster a sane debate about technology in this community ? Honestly I don’t know, but I’m eager to try!
All the best,
Could not agree more! I’m also fairly new. I think the most constructive possible way to do so might be to try to brainstorm how to apply the technology in a non-capitalist (non-statist), mutual aid context? Admittedly, lots of times, that seems far-fetched.
That could be an approach, but as a leftist I would argue that leftist ideologies are not necessarily ecology-friendly. For example the soviet economy was not capitalist but very extractivist and destructive nonetheless.
I like the notion of conviviality as defined by Ivan Illich. A technique is convivial if it serves humankind and not a small elite. It is convivial if I can choose to live without it …
I think the key here is authoritarianism. Authoritarian leftism is not eco-friendly at all.
You have some more right wing ideologies that are eco-friendly like geolibertarianism.
That’s very well put. People tend to cling to the ideas of silver bullets, and that’s, more often than not, detrimental to climate goals and tends to just slow things down.
I started drafting some ideas for the code of conduct here: https://wiki.f-hub.org/books/slrpnknet/page/code-of-conduct
Feedback appreciated.
Down-vote etiquette is well-neigh unenforceable. You can encourage people to do the right thing, but aside from catching brigading, you’re going to have a really hard time doing anything with it.
Anything encouraging people to use end-to-end encrypted communications needs to give examples, as many people really don’t know what that means.
I added a section to remind people that votes are fully public on Lemmy ;)
I have it on my todo to write a basic environmental activists online communication guideline or to try and find a good one that we could copy into our wiki. Tips and suggestions are welcome.
You’ve got me curious now. How are votes publicly viewable here?
I had heard that was the case on kbin, but thought that wasn’t so on lemmy. Is it just the admins that can see that, or is there a way that users can see that too?
The Lemmy UI hides it, but it is all in the database of every server you federate with and it’s trivial to write a script to query this.
Is it possible to get those information via the API or can only those with access to the database get those information?
I don’t think there is an API endpoint for it, but since anyone can spin up a small Lemmy instance and start federating, they can easily have it federate into their own database and look it up there.
even without the visibility, the point of “etiquette” isn’t strictly that it’s enforceable it’s just stating good manners
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I think these are solid - I might add a mention to the section on End-of-the-world pessimism that Solarpunk is built on both realism and hope. We need to see things how they are, but we also need to keep looking for ways to make things better. This is kind of the last place to encourage people to give up.
The gatekeeping one (the issue I was more involved in the discussions about) seems workable to me. There’ll be disagreements over what’s disrespectful vs realistic, but the emphasis on making it a welcoming space should be enough.
Thanks again for all your work on this space!
What’s said below I agree with and think should be the line drawn in the sand on doomerism here
This is kind of the last place to encourage people to give up.
But ultimately, being collapse-aware is what brought me here. I’m not one to give up without a fight tho and I love the hopefulness and optimism here. But I still often find myself being pessimistic. I would hate for other people that may have some fight in them too to feel that a grim outlook on things might make them unwelcome.
The way I see it sometimes is that, yes, we are kinda fucked at this point but we should still be working to save whatever we can and to learn/teach how to be more resilient for what’s likely to come.
Yeah, that is kind of what I was trying to get across. Recovering doomers (even with the occasional relapse) should not be discouraged to participate here, but I hope this place can help them to overcome this self-defeating mindset without flipping over into unrealistic optimism or outright denial.
Thank you for the clarification!
About the “Discussing civil disobedience” section: Maybe its possible to mention more types of actions. Because I feel like I does not make sense to discourage civil disobedience and not mention other types of criminalized activism like direct action, sabotage etc. But besides that I really like this section because explains the “why” very clearly.
This does not mean that you can’t point out something you find problematic, but it needs to be done in a respectful way.
I would love to have small definition about what respectful for us means included or to use a different word. I feel like “respectful” often gets used to tone police those that are rightfully angry / emotional about something or to dismiss their concerns. I dont have a concrete proposal tho
Hmm, to me those other types all fall under the more general and also more positively connotated “civil disobedience”, no? Also I hope this doesn’t come across as discouraging it, just that concrete plans for it can’t or rather should not be discussed here openly.
As for “respectful”… yeah I am aware of the “tone policing” sound of it, but the alternative of not being “intentionally offensive” like I explained elsewhere in this thread is probably even more subjective and thus open to misunderstandings. As seen here in the thread and elsewhere there is a real risk that people will think this doesn’t apply to their “rightful indignation” but only to the indignation of other people. Edit: I reformulated it a bit to make it more obvious that this isn’t meant to be “tone policing”.
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First, I just want to say that this community is, in my opinion, superb. I’ve found myself in total agreement with @poVoq@slrpnk.net’s decisions and thought process regarding the direction this instance is going. It seems to have resulted in a vibe and an atmosphere that I find compelling, to the point that I feel this one of the nicest little corners of the internet I’ve seen in quite some time.
Seconding this - I really dig this community and @poVoq 's doing a great job guiding it. It’s quickly become my favorite place to hang out.
I’ve posted my comments on the community elsewhere but realized I hadn’t said anything about the overall quality of the place
I’d say meat-based recipes can be found on any other mainstream instance on lemmy but Slrpnk should stand for things that help improve our environmental impact. For me it’s like having tuning tips for gas guzzlers.
Nobody needs to eat meat.
So it seems you’re automatically defensive about wanting to moderate vegan speech (preempting with "don’t feel personally attacked) and deep down I think you know why.
I understand you’re just trying to make a space where everyone feels welcome. But harrassment policy and other conduct policy should cover people getting out of bounds and requires no vegan specific clause. Making a vegan specific clause is a little hostile.
Unless you are truly aiming to ban people for having the opinion that it’s not ok to not be vegan. That would be tone policey and censorious, in my opinion. If a vegan is actually harassing someone that calls for moderation, but its already a rule to refrain from harassing. If you want to make a rule on harassment and include several examples, and one of them is a vegan example, that would be fine.
It just reminds me of other contentious issues like racial justice or gender issues. Sometimes people didn’t like getting called racist, but do you censor a racial minority because their message is intense and makes someone a little uncomfortable? People have the right to decline interactions that arent going well but they shouldnt expect to always be perfectly comfortable when writing in the public square.
I understand you’re just trying to make a space where everyone feels welcome. But harrassment policy and other conduct policy should cover people getting out of bounds and requires no vegan specific clause. Making a vegan specific clause is a little hostile.
This. I don’t think it needs anything vegan-specific, but general rules that cover harassment and/or obviously trolling.
Ok fair enough, but I think calling animal husbandry “slavery” is intentionally going for the shock value of it and just deeply offends people that otherwise strive for the same values and are usually very much aware of the of how badly animals are treated in industrial farming.
I also get your examples with racial and gender issues, and while you are right that there are some parallels, I think it is not right to attack people who very much have similar concerns about animal rights, but just came to somewhat different conclusions what to do about that.
And while I agree that it should in theory just fall under the general no-harrassement etc. rules, I am near certain that if I would actually start moderating such posts I would have to explain why anyway, so I would rather pre-empt such discussions now and not do them in the heat of the moment when someone likely feels wronged about a moderation decision.
Forbidding the comparison of animal captivity, forced reproduction and child stealing, and economic exploitation to slavery would be a clear example of indulging a censorious impulse.
I rarely use this comparison personally because it’s subject to this kind of confusion (thinking comparison to human slavery is equating to human slavery). Nevertheless it’s my personal opinion that when you account for the massive scale of the suffering, billions of animals yearly, a comparison of severity can still be drawn, even with any inspecies prejudices about the richness of human lives and experience potential compared to animals.
Context matters… if you say “slavery” in the context of massive industrial animal farming people are unlikely to be offended.
Using it in the context of someone having some backyard chicken or a video about a small scale sheep herder that produces wool (both actual examples from the last couple of weeks) is IMHO a different matter.
Context matters here when we’re talking about what speech you’re going to outlaw on this platform. You can have whatever opinion you want on whether its ok to exploit a backyard chicken but if you ban someone for this, that’s quite censorious. Why don’t you just say to them what you said here and let the people suss it out.
There is nothing “censorious” about moderating trolls. Regardless of the actual matter, if someone writes comments with the explicit purpose of offending others that is trolling. If we leave people to “suss it out”, there is going to be exactly one outcome: the nice people leave and only the trolls remain.
I don’t think drawing parallels between small-scale farming and slavery equals trolling. It’s certainly a position many non-vegans will disagree with, but that doesn’t make the point automatically invalid.
I’m pretty new to this style of vegan - is the slavery analogy a genuine attempt at outreach or just fishing for a strong emotional reaction? Because so far I’ve only seen it when it’s off topic and usually bundled with other insults.
My ancestors were never enslaved, my family doesn’t bear scars from that atrocity (which happened within living memory in many places, especially when you count things like prisoner-lease) so I’ve had the luxury of moving on and staying on topic, and the slrpnk community has, I think, done a good job of not taking the bait in all the conversations I’ve seen.
But it doesn’t exactly make for a welcoming place. Maybe I’m wrong, and misjudging what will offend people (I wouldn’t be the first white guy to speak out of turn). But it just doesn’t seem worthwhile to me - how many people repented their carnist ways VS bounced hard off vegans using this analogy or calling them murderers, pissbabies, etc?
These days I’m watching the world burn down around me and I want results, not people grandstanding about their moral purity and how hard it is to be surrounded by the rest of us. I’ve fallen in love with the slrpnk community because it’s so action-oriented, because it’s somehow both realistic and optimistic, because people here are making real steps, even small ones, to improve the world around them. It’s inspired me to do more of the projects I had on the back burner, to prioritize planting and fixing and zerowaste-type reuse.
I think because this place had that effect on me, I’ve come to see it also as a recruiting tool - I want others to read the conversations and to reconsider consumer culture, the way our societies exploit natural resources and animals, the source of their electricity, and yes, their diet too. But I recognize that we’ll be meeting people where they are and that insults make for bad recruiting.
There are many ways to help and at this point, if someone is willing to just plant some native flowers in their yard, or build a bat house, or they’ll give something away instead of throwing it out, that’s progress. Small steps are better than nothing, which is what we’ll get if we drive people away by insulting them.
Yes, it is a discussion worth having and I would not moderate it as such if done in a civilized manner and in the appropriate community.
The problem is that this is not happening. Rather people intentionally barge into other communities and and intentionally try to offend people in some misguided attempt to speak the truth as they perceive it.
Do you know what they do to male chicks and hens after their amount of eggs go down, even on small farms? Do you know what they do to sheeps for wool when their wool quality lowers after half of their lifetime? Even small farms don’t offer retirement homes for them. They live to produce eggs and wool which are taken from them, if they fail to deliver they get slaughtered.
It’s sad when people with empathy for animals are being called trolls. Nobody is trolling on this topic.
Yes I know all that and people involved in such small scale farming are surely the ones that are especially aware. But I also recognize that people can be fully aware of the situation and still come to different conclusions and I try to not judge them for it.
You are not going to educate or convince anyone by barging into a discussion and loudly proclaiming that this is “slavery” and write reports to the mods asking any such discussion to be removed.
Here’s my take: I think this sort minute rule making in a code of conduct is harmful. The purpose of permanent bans is to remove trolls and other bad faith actors, but no one you’ve described is bad faith. We shouldn’t be against diversity of opinion here. If anything, I think a time out or temporary (24h) ban is more appropriate to stop people from raging or behaving badly, but all opinions should be welcome.
With regards to the doomers, do we think there is enough hopepunk content out there to sustain a dedicated community that may act as a counterbalance to something like !collapse@slrpnk.net
Recovering doomer here (and frequent relapser)
I’ve yet to see anything too crazy on Lemmy as a whole in those regards. Nothing like some of the more wild takes one often sees on r/collapse.
There’s also at least 2 other active c/collapse on different instances as well. It wouldn’t bother me none if they were to consolidate with the others. But, I think as long as ours doesn’t devolve into eco-fash territory, I’m happy to have our c/ remain too
To be clear, I am doomer as fuck but I think there is increasing need for positive content generally. That said, I also think doomerism is necessary at this point in the climate reform process.
100% agree.
The hopeful side of things is ultimately what brought me here. But I think as long there’s a balance in the content here, it will be fine.
With regard to direct action, I don’t think general discussions of, or even encouragement of, illegal or violent activity should be discouraged. It’s when you get to talking about specific acts, specific targets, and actual planning that it should be disallowed (and people should know better than to discuss that shit online anyway). Like, encouraging people to shoplift, generally? To defend their communities? To engage in anti-fascist action? Why not?
I think some folks here are going way too far with suggestions like “[don’t] go beyond recommending safe/legal ways to resist the system” (@ProdigalFrog). If we’re stuck in that liberal mudpit, IMO there’s no point in having radical spaces (like I hope this is/can be) at all.
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I am not overly concerned. I am well into my fourties and not (anymore for quite some time) into activist stuff that would attract legal attention like in the Kolektiva’s case. The local police here also seems to be not overly interested in anything but illegal marijuana plantations and real-world child sexual abuse (going by the local newspaper).
However, I would caution our French friends especially, as their police has been over-zealous in using antiterrorism laws against activists and is known to abuse the Europol system for it as well.
But I think it is good to uphold operational security in any case and I agree that we could work together on some secure online communication for environmental activists guide or so.
