Disclaimer: The issue here is not completely related to the bot presence, but more about the justification used. People would probably be less annoyed if the mods stated “this is our decision, and it is final”, rather than to try to use admins as an excuse.
As usual, for people looking for other world news communities
- !globalnews@lemmy.zip
- !world@quokk.au (warning: single instance admin)
https://lemmy.world/comment/12825224
https://lemmy.world/comment/12834553
For other threads about the MBFC bot:
Why do mods feel the need to lie about something like this? Like seriously. Saying the admins require it, instead of saying they just don’t want to remove it. That’s dumb, and makes them look dumb when the admins see it and deny it, or when people just ask the admins. Life lesson, don’t lie as a moderator about stupid things like this, it only erodes your credibility and doesn’t do anything else for the situation.
Some people are terribly conflict-averse. Not a good trait in a moderator.
Probably more fitting for !fediverselore@lemmy.ca as the mod didn’t actually take any specific mod action. But other than that, from what I see it’s either CLM, or coward mod?
Seems harsh tbh, if Jordan was the only mod then it would be his sole decision but afaik that’s not the situation. There are six mods in that community and presumably they operate on a consensus basis with a decision like this. The bot was obviously implemented by the instance admin. So where’s the lie exactly?
Also people can block that bot if they don’t want to see it. Some people are just obsessed with it for some reason. It’d be interesting to know what percent of LW users have blocked it - that’d give a better idea of how unpopular it is or whether it’s a vocal minority issue. Any stats on that @MrKaplan@lemmy.world ?
There are six mods in that community and presumably they operate on a consensus basis with a decision like this.
I’ve been a part of and seen dysfunctional mod teams in the past. There’s no guarantee of consensus. There’s not even a guarantee of all six mods being aware that there’s a dispute - especially since Lemmy’s mod tools are not the greatest.
288 of local users that are also subscribed to !world@lemmy.world blocked the bot, which is about 1.2%.
when it comes to the topic of lying, it seems more like a misunderstanding from what i’ve heard after these comments were written.
I think that clarifies things for me. Clearly it’s a vocal minority, who can simply block the bot.
I don’t block the bot because people sometimes respond to it with things that are worth interacting with. Yet I hate the bot. The bot is overwhelmingly downvoted (which people who block it could not do) in just about every instance it pops up.
I decided to post it here in the context of the other threads linked at the end of the post.
This bot has been under heavy criticism for a few months now, but mods still impose it to the community.
Given the tiny percent of subscribed users who are bothered enough to actually block the bot, I don’t know if “heavy criticism” is really accurate here. Its more of a (very) vocal minority trying to push their minority view on the vast majority who either like it or don’t care. A 1.2% block rate is an amazingly good result for a bot I’d have thought.
Subscribed users doesn’t seem the best metric to use here compared to active users
That community has 1800 daily active users. If 288 of them block the bot, that’s 16%. Also, the 288 are local users, what about remote users?
.world has been acting sketchy lately
Only “lately?” They take down criticism of the US’ participation in genocide as “misinformation,” yet leave up hasbara. They perma-banned me from political memes for going against the liberal narrative for “misinformation and posturing” despite leaving up the Zionist lie that the Palestinian genocide is a 1000 year conflict. This is also when one of the moderators claimed they weren’t censoring anyone and were incredibly fair on a comment chain calling out their censorship, and refused to elaborate. They would not even tell me how I could edit my comments to comply with their rules.
I have seen people banned from lemmy.world for linking to the IHRA definition of antisemitism.
You might want to have a look at that thread: https://lemmy.ml/post/20225047
Yep, it’s 100% accurate. Even when I asked for clarification so I could abide by their rules, they permabanned me rather than answer.
The reason Lemmy.world censors anti-Democrat takes is because they are “true believers” in liberalism, real “end of history” types.
It’s difficult to understand the various relations between Lemmy instances without reading Marxist and Anarchist theory, because there are so many of both.
Wow, much drama.
It sounds like adding one sentence to the effect that the ratings are centered using the USA metric would go so very far. Like adding units to a temperature measurement - someone could argue that they prefer Celsius (or Kelvin or whatever) to Fahrenheit, but at least Fahrenheit is better than no unit designation at all.
But the admins and mods also seem so very, very tired of all the BS that they have to wade through, that they aren’t all that receptive anymore. I sympathize.
Part of the drama seems to be that buried underneath all the REEEEE responses, there are legitimate underlying worldview/POV issues, namely whether a bad implementation of a good idea is at all helpful vs. the purity argument that nothing that I don’t like can be allowed to exist.
And ultimately, while I did see one heartwarming exception (backed up with admin support by calling for such), the vast majority of people simply complain about wanting better-er-est service entirely for free. As opposed to making an alternative, e.g. a different news community on Lemmy, which would require actual effort put forth by people volunteering their time as mods. Which probably should be done anyway to avoid the monolithic mega-community structures that we all tried to get away from on Reddit - and has been done in at least two cases, though most people commenting seemed entirely unaware of that.
And then the justification issue on top of all of that messy background as well.
But the admins and mods also seem so very, very tired of all the BS that they have to wade through, that they aren’t all that receptive anymore. I sympathize.
There’s a long history of text discussion forums where a sizable number of the users get up in arms like this, and it usually precedes people abandoning the forum. It happened on Slashdot, then Digg, and recently on Reddit.
The people who post the stories and write the comments create the forum and make it continue. I’m not trying to discount the hard, unappreciated work that mods and administrators do. But there seems to be this common misperception that because they do that hard, unappreciated work, it’s okay for them to ignore the community when it speaks with a clear and cohesive voice that something is a problem. People have all kinds of options for where to spend their “typing on the internet” time, and it’s pretty easy to switch.
Maybe it’s because anyone who’s in that moderation role is accustomed to dealing with people whining about nonsense, and a lot of members of the community making a big deal about stuff that doesn’t matter, and so it’s sometimes hard for them to recognize a valid concern that’s widely shared by the community. I don’t know. Like I say, I’m not trying to say I don’t appreciate the unrewarding work of moderation. But “it’s not that important” cuts both ways. If you treat your forum and the way people want it to be as a bunch of distracting noise, they’re going decide you’re a waste of time and go on their way, and once that reputation as a shit pile is solidly established about a particular forum, it tends to be permanent.
What do you think now the block rate has been published in the comments? Should communities change their defaults to cater to the vocal 1.2% of subscribers who can (and have) easily blocked the bot anyway, or make the assumption that 98.8% of users either don’t care, or find it useful, and cater to them instead? A vocal minority like that can make a lot of noise, but it seems pretty clear they aren’t representative of the vast majority of users.
I like to get on the bus playing music on my phone at full volume. 3 people told me today that they want me to turn it off. There were 35 people on the bus, so clearly 91% of the people on the bus want to rock out with me.
Edit: A better analogy is that 3,500 people in the city have bus passes, and 18 people have been on a bus with me and told me to turn off my music or bought themselves headphones since I’ve been doing this every day, but the general flaw should be apparent.
Edit: @Blaze@feddit.org makes an excellent point. The better analogy is that 3,500 people in the city have bus passes, I’ve seen 35 people on the bus wearing noise-cancelling headphones at some point, and the number of people who’ve asked me to stop doing it is irrelevant to me.
Someone else pointed out that not blocking the bot allows people to still downvote it to show their constant unhappiness with it
