Yikes. New Fosstodon moderation team is going *great*.

One mod has filtered out words like queer, racist, trans, and gender. Because that totally makes it easy to keep an eye on content that might affect marginalized members of the community. /s https://social.treehouse.systems/@YKantRachelRead/114621879782958297

A second mod wrote this whackadoodle piece during the recent meltdown: https://archive.is/vreBu

And a third mod is committed to rescuing people from “bad propaganda” in “militantly leftist places”. https://social.treehouse.systems/@YKantRachelRead/114621047572495288

Wow.

@adam Waiting for someone specific to reply if I say Fosstodon in 5… 4… 3… 2… 1…

@rail I’m honestly not at all interested in what she has to say. She’s already said plenty, but her actions are the only thing conveying anything at this point.

We don’t need any more lame excuses or trite dismissive sentiments (“sorry you don’t agree, hope y’all will still give us a chance ”).

You either want to run a community that cares for *all* of its members or you don’t. Merely saying that you do doesn’t actually get the job done. Nobody’s fooled by empty assurances. Put up or shut up.

@adam @rail ok, I don't think it's exactly "sealioning" if I respond directly to "put up or shut up."

So. You want actions. That's fair. What actions would you like to see? Please be specific; perhaps we can work something out.

@jimsalter @rail Your reply is *textbook* sealioning, and the fact that you had to think about it and add a disclaimer says a lot.

@adam @rail sigh.

Which do you want, Adam? Did you not just LITERALLY demand both "put up or shut up" and to "see action"? And now you're complaining about getting a response?

@jimsalter hi jim. i'll take the bait because i have time today.

1) it has been expressed multiple times to gina and the fosstodon community at-large what needs to happen to "fix" and "work things out." rehashing it in replies with a recently-promoted moderator is not the good look you think it is. tone down the sass if you're wanting to represent a community literally on the public relations ropes to anyone who's been called a slur.

2) the actual actionable action that needs to be enacted: moderators and admins of instances need to be aware of internet culture and online dog-whistles that allow for people with fascist, fascist-leaning, and fascist-sympathizing views to navigate through community spaces undetected by "normies" who don't care enough about marginalized groups to keep bad actors out in favor of having a higher member count.

3) in order for people to feel *safe* inside of your community, there needs to be an immediate disavowment of any/all bigotry by the mod team. this includes transphobia. there needs to be less "thanks for trusting me to be a mod!" posts by the new mod team (who have been trusted by no one but gina) and more "here's how i plan to moderate the space after watching how everything unfolded." and if the moderators haven't thought of that? they shouldn't be moderators.

4) community management is hard. there's a reason why a lot of people don't do it. it's hard because you have to not only say the things that you believe and value in your community but you also have to uphold them and action on them. that includes researching the people you promote in your community to become moderators.

@jimsalter i'll also take this opportunity to link to my blog post i wrote for others to learn the lessons that apparently have still not yet been learned by #fosstodon management:

https://library.xandra.cc/moderation/

if you have more questions, my post might answer them.