good morning, Beehaw
this morning we have a survey for you, which will run for approximately three days. it contains three questions on site policy (plus an optional explanation field), and two questions about the site’s current vibe (plus another optional explanation field).
you can find the survey here.
some caveats to this survey
you likely have some priors for how this “should” work, and i would like you to leave those at the door. to be up front:
- this is not a referendum—it is more like a Wikipedia vote if anything. we’re looking for a consensus or a synthesis of the community’s opinions with the practical limitations we’re working with, not a first-past-the-post winner.
- this is not (currently) a democracy, and you should not expect public results from this. we talked this part over as an admin team and we don’t see much value in publicly releasing the results of a survey like this. if we do release the results publicly, we’ll be announcing that before it happens.
- the same caveats just mentioned will apply to any surveys like this into the foreseeable future. i’m sure everyone understands that in online spaces it is very easy to manipulate surveys like this; accordingly, it is not a great idea to take them at complete face value until you can audit votes. since we don’t have a foolproof, private system for doing that yet, these caveats are necessary to make any kind of vote involving site policy work.
(we do eventually want to create a foolproof enough private system, but this is way on the backburner and i’m guessing most of you prefer having an imperfect way to chime in on the site’s direction than none at all until this system is created)
this is not a democracy
Seriously, huge applause for this. Beehaw is already operating 10x more intelligently than most forums I frequent. Y’all clearly know how to deal with bad actors
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In the same way that I’m not in charge of the decisions when it comes to the tech side of things, I don’t want someone who knows nothing about a subject making decisions about that subject. I personally think it’s better to have someone trusted in charge and have strong transparency
This brings to mind an interesting parallel. One of the ideas behind American democracy was an informed electorate - not just a bunch of ignorant rubes casting impulsive, careless votes. (Ensuring the existence of an informed electorate is also one of the reasons the first amendment was adopted, but that’s another topic.)
Gaywallet, you are more informed than most of us, and you’ve demonstrated your qualifications. Even if this was a democracy, I’d trust you to vote on my behalf.
I would love if not only the government but also the voting population consisted mostly (or only?) of scientifically literate and capable people. But I guess that brings the problems of “At what point does someone count as scientifically literate?” and that the issues of the “scientifically illiterate” possibly are (or seem, in their eyes) ignored/downplayed.
As some dude-o, whose name I forgot, said:“Democracy is a horrible system. But it’s the best we got.” (probably botched that quote, too)
“Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”
It’s frequently attributed to Winston Churchill but it was a common phrase that was said plenty before he said it.
I think what you’re talking about is called a meritocracy.
Another good criticism about choosing a democratically elected president goes something like “anyone who wants that kind of power shouldn’t be allowed to have it.”
Because it is easy to just create a lot of fake accounts on an internet forum. That is how Russia and CCP trolls operates.
Well now, don’t insult the CCP’s intelligence… never forget the “definitively fully democratic” vote about Hong Kong, where they had a 99% support, and a single vote against.
There are many ways to subvert a democracy without the need for fake accounts.
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UW?
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Abbreviation for UWU or UwU
We’ll never find out.
Put simply, people are idiots
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I think that’s a nice thought, but somewhat naive I think. Even if everyone had perfect information, you’d still have people who couldn’t effectively analyze what they were presented with. Even if they could, they wouldn’t have the time to do so. People are also famously selfish and short sited. A republic is a pretty practical tool, although it also obviously has its issues.
Never be afraid of using the DEFED hammer on those that deserve it. You guys are doing a Fantastic job of keeping this HIVE balanced and free of garbage extremist instances like shit.just.works, Lemmygrad and The general obnixiousness of hexbears.
Thank you for you for giving us such a nice community. Keep up the good work.
I want to emphasize the “on those that deserve it” bit. That’s the part angry commenters will misinterpret or pretend to forget.
Anyway…
I have an account on kbin. It can be interesting to compare a thread when viewed here vs. being viewed there.
Usually, a thread viewed on kbin has more comments - but many of them are crude, stupid, and antagonistic. The same thread viewed on Beehaw has a much more readable comment section, because of thoughtful defederating.
Ideally, we wouldn’t have to defederate from anyone, but I don’t think we’re losing anything of value.
Somebody was ignorantly making fun of Beehaw recently. I responded that I only want civil, mature conversations instead of arguments with trolls. I like the idea of a well-moderated instance that has a general guideline of “be(e) nice”. I want mods to have the flexibility to do their jobs effectively.
“Value” - i feel you’ve hit the point perfectly.
People are possibly perceiving a value loss in defederation, when in reality, letting in (on average) low value comments/content/whatever dilutes the instance’s value.
Oh has sh.itjust.works started exibiting an extremist bias as a collective? Last time I was paying attention to them they were the sort of misguided centrist types whose instance was vulnerable to getting overrun with extremists. Sad to hear it happened, but not really all that surprised
Forums that fashion themselves as centrist are always prime targets for ring wing asshats, sadly.
People gotta learn every internet community that’s lasted long term has had strong moderation policies for a reason
Exactly. Don’t let people weaponize free speech against you!
Update: The survey provides this answer.
What’s wrong with sh.itjust.works? Good faith question, genuinely curious. I don’t know much about the instance and in taking a quick peek, I see a lot of poking the hexbear but nothing else immediately sticks out.Lemmygrad and hexbear I’m familiar with why they’re problematic.It’s not that these communities deserve it. It’s that the moderation tools tools across instances isn’t built out enough for it to be all done within lemmy
Even Hexbear defederated shit.just.works for being a bunch of right wing nazi shit.heads… so yeah they definitely deserved it.
Ah my comment was mainly in regards to lemmy world. I don’t know enough of shit.just.works I guess to judge it. I’ve seen a lot of name calling about instances and frankly I never see any proof. It’s just they said, they said. Lemmy is apparently developed by a bunch of tankies. So I have no clue what to truly make if this new social landscape where everyone is some extreme view. I’ve even seen beehaw being called names because they act quickly to defederate. It makes me miss Reddit where politically I didn’t care too much about who I was talking to as long as they didn’t mention Trump.
Hive :)
FYI to whoever flagged me forgetting to uncheck required for the last box: i fixed that, thank you for flagging it
Thanks for not using google.
Thanks for putting this together and taking the time and energy to get our feedback.
Wherever I find myself questioning the Beehaw restrictions, I browse All on lemmy.world. I can read All here with no real regrets. Anywhere else… Ehhhhhh
When I browse All on Beehaw I see a bunch of topics that I’m not even remotely interested in. I’m sure most of it is interesting to the members of those communities, but it’s definitely not how I use Lemmy.
When I go to my “Subscribed” tab on lemmy.world, it’s full of great content that isn’t available on Beehaw.
Perfectly valid way of doing it. I know a lot of people hate All on Lemmy or Reddit, and I get it. I just like to spend a portion of my time on All to see things that I would never learn about on my own.
I’ve been learning so much about Australia and NZ that I would never learn otherwise and I enjoy that. I’m in the US, so I’d never see local news from there if I stick to subscriptions. Do I want to learn all sorts of things about that? Not especially, but All lets me see what catches my eye. World just has a little too much to make it efficient, and the vibe in general is just more Reddit. Beehaw comes off more friendshipy to me, which also encourages me to participate in talking about things that I may not be as knowledgeable about.
But that’s just what I want for me, everyone else may want something else, but that’s why we have options.
pleased to report we crossed the 200 response threshold earlier; i suspect we’ll have a pretty good sample size relative to the overall community when all is said and done
Thanks for all the great work you guys are doing with this instance. This place feels nicer than Reddit.
Submitted. I think this is a great way to give feedback and ideas.
Thanks for doing this. Love this community.
Done!
I respect your policy above but you may run into declining response rate in the long term without some kind of feedback, as there will be a ‘what is the point’ feeling. I may be wrong of course (and hope I am!), just something I’ve seen at work. I completely get your reasoning though.
I want to see the results… not because of democracy, but because of curiosity about what others think.
If you want to prevent a scenario of “51% vs 49%” discussions, may I suggest publishing the results with rounded numbers, like “more than 20% think that [whatever]”. It would be informative enough as far as I’m concerned.
If you want to prevent a scenario of “51% vs 49%” discussions, may I suggest publishing the results with rounded numbers, like “more than 20% think that [whatever]”.
i think you’re unintentionally making a good case for why releasing results isn’t useful here in any form: if we have to take active steps to distort or fudge how the data is presented to prevent sectarianism or people feeling like they’re in a vast minority then it’s just easier (and more productive) for everyone if the data is kept with us.
Hm, maybe.
Personally, I wouldn’t mind finding out my views were “less than 10%” as long as it’s not a popularity contest/vote, it would actually interest me to find out why others might have a different opinion. My only concern would be data that could be construed as a divisive vote, instead of as a feeling to discuss.
On the other hand, I guess these topics have already been discussed, so maybe it would be redundant.
I did my part, and I like this kind of feedback. Keep doing a good job!
Answered! Thanks for taking the time to listen to our feedback!
Haven’t been around as much since school started back, but I filled the survey out regardless.
