The purpose of lemm.ee/c/conservative is to discuss conservative politics. That’s why the posts need to be from or about American right-wing, preferably in a neutral or positive light, and you can be as lefty as you want in the comments. The mods really do want the community to talk about conservatives, their values, and related things.
This isn’t r/conservative, r/TheDonald, and especially not r/Politics. It’s not Reddit at all. It’s Lemmy. Here, we’re supposed to beyond the totalitarian moderation of Reddit, not focused on profit, and wanting to create a community of real people. Ideally, we didn’t move from Reddit to recreate it elsewhere. We moved to Lemmy for something better.
The mods, Takeaway and I, view our role as very limited. We take the conservative approach. We don’t want to pulverize the community with the heavy-handed control that defined Reddit moderation. Nor do we want to create a safe space for conservative views, where they go unchallenged. We want posters to assume good faith, to earnestly argue with each other, seek points of agreement, and, probably most important, explore points of disagreement. This goes beyond mere civility: it’s about treating each other with dignity, understanding that we’re not all just a bunch of ideologues, and that we have reasons behind our beliefs worth understanding. As long as these discussion are earnest, even if a bit emotional, it’s all good.
So, it’s disappointing when the mods were greeted with 22 reports, most from the same thread. It was as if some of you were trying to get each other banned, the mods being merely an instrument of your will to silence. That is not our job. How can we be conservative in moderation while some of you bait each other into abusive language and then report the responses? Are we here to recreate Reddit?
Consider this a general warning to not do that again, a request to be better members of the community, and a chance to provide your input as to how we should proceed. We want you to talk about conservatives and conservativism. So, how can we help you do that while taking a conservative approach to moderation?
Signed,
Your /c/conservative mod team
From my experiences, both as a mod back on reddit, as well as a general user of platforms, while civility is by no means a bad thing to enforce, I do caution against letting it become the king of rules, so to speak. This is because it leads to a culture where “civil” bullshit and intentionally awful reasoning are allowed, while the users just looking for good discussion get banned for complaining about bad actors. The pinnacle of this on reddit was r/Abortiondebate, where basically every dishonest tactic in the book was allowed, and the moment someone gets fed up and calls it out directly for what it is, they’re considered “uncivil”. A similar thing happens in r/changemyview. You can be the most dishonest, scummy, fuck wad, but the moment someone points out that you’re full of shit, they’ve crossed the line.
All this is to say, civility is great, so long as it’s backed up with moderation that leaves the users feeling like moderation actually is a solid option for dealing with problem users.