Kia ora!
What’s the plans for moderation on this instance? I guess there’s probably going to be a bit of a flood from the NZ-oriented subreddits and this seems like a smart landing place for them.
Lemmy.ml apparently has owners with weird political beliefs, and this is putting a bunch of people off. Is there going to be a set of rules/CoC for this instance?
Also, servers cost money. Any plans for adding a way for users to support the server?
Thanks for setting it up!
I think this is ok, but it assumes everyone is commenting in good faith, and that everyone agrees on the definition of “being a dick” already. For a small community (ie under 10k subs) it will work fine but I don’t think it will scale beyond that. Maybe this current system will work for the medium term at least.
Here in NZ there is the HDCA, which lays out some basic rules in law about how people should conduct themselves online (though they aren’t strictly enforced). Might help provide a guide at least.
There are laws around breaching court suppression orders, and those are enforced a bit more strictly. Mods need to keep on top of this stuff to make sure you (the publisher) don’t get fined. I’m not sure how your obligations are affected by federation, but you definitely want to make sure court orders aren’t being breached by content accessible on your instance.
We are small, and it will be good to see to what level it scales. As I mentioned, I am watching Beehaw closely as they are trying this approach and are the second largest instance, likely to hit your 10k threshold in the next week (though they are actively denying new users from signing up).
The HDCA you link is pretty basic. I don’t think anyone would argue we would want any of that, and I think it all falls under the existing rule. In fact, I think our rule covers far more than that list.
Breaching court suppression orders also falls under our rule. My understanding of reporting is that if you report a post from another instance from here, then both instance moderators get a report. We can block a post from another instance, then it won’t show up here.
I think the general idea I’m getting at is that we as a community will decide over time what is or isn’t acceptable, but some things are black and white. This is not intended to be an unmoderated wild west instance where we allow things not allowed on more mainstream social media, instead it should be an inviting place, and we don’t get that from moderators behind the scenes deleting stuff that seems non-inviting based on their opinion.
Note that the moderator log is open to anyone, you can see this by clicking the “Modlog” link at the bottom of any page. However, this is federated, so shows moderator activities from communities on other instances that we federate with. I’d like to be very transparent about moderation and not to be ban-heavy but instead encourage the discussion you’d see in real-life communities.