I saw this discussion brought up on a different thread and I though I’d get some more opinions on the matter.
The Beehaw community guidelines describe a place that’s meant to be safe, friendly and encourages people to discuss their ideas in good faith. For the most part I feel like this community lives up to that; users of this instance are generally thoughtful with their responses. However, I don’t feel like that level of quality extends to the users who post from other instances. Responses from those users are more likely to pendantic, overly argumentative, and unhelpful.
Now I may just be an elitist fuck so I’d like to hear your opinions on this. Does Beehaw benefit from federation? Do the community guidelines even matter if they don’t apply to many of the people who engage with this instance? Am I just looking for a reason to complain?
EDIT: This post isn’t a request for Beehaw to defederate btw. I just wanted to discuss the negatives of federation and what we can do to alleviate them :)
An increasing percentage of what I read is from federated instances. If Beehaw isolated itself I’d probably make an account elsewhere and hook into the fediverse from elsewhere, leaving Beehaw behind. Beehaw is great, but it’s not enough of a community by itself.
I agree, we are already defederated from big instance like LW. If beehaw isolates itself it would just be a forum with a few thousands more or less inactive people and would die.
i don’t think being a small forum is necessarily a bad thing. smaller places are easier to moderate, and they tend to be more chill. i’ve run another forum for about 10 years, and it’s still going strong with only a few hundred active users at any given time. we very rarely have issues with people upsetting the flow. we’ve always managed to recover when that does happen.
Responses from those users are more likely to pendantic, overly argumentative, and unhelpful.
I’ve noticed a small uptick in responses like that (which, admittedly, may just be confirmation bias).
I think it might be due to the large influx of reddit refugees (full disclosure: I’m one, too). It takes a while to get used to the fact that the “atmosphere” of fediverse instances is different. It takes time for people to realize that this isn’t a toxic environment that encourages assholes. They’ll just keep on being hyper-defensive, confrontational, and/or deliberate misinterpreters of things while they focus on irrelevant points. After all, that was the norm on reddit for years.
Good users grow out of that. Unfortunately, some users just don’t want to. We have to take the bad with the good, though. Defederating completely would make Beehaw much less interesting and fun. The community just isn’t big enough by itself.
TL;DR: Yes, Beehaw benefits from federation. Federation has its drawbacks, but they are massively outweighed by the advantages.
I think there is a very toxic trait that ex-Redditors need to shake off: every response to a comment DOES NOT need to be a rebuttal.
Agreeing is allowed, and I agree with you.
I think we still have two “shields” protecting our ways in Beehaw:
- the lack of downvotes. Perhaps people will downvote you from other instances. But you won’t see those, so you will not care. I find that this removes a lot of negativity on its own.
- when someone posts from another instance, you can see it in their name: so you can take what they say with a pinch of salt. “Oh, he is not from Beehaw; it is more normal for them to behave like that. No use to argue strongly against them”.
As long as we have those, and as long as the federated instances moderate harmful content, it is OK for me to remain federated with them.
Now I may just be an elitist fuck
Sounds about right.
Did this reply contribute anything meaningful to the discussion?
Is generalizing large amount of people, just because they signed to another instance a good contribution to anything?
This feels like a bad faith argument. OP correctly identifies that users from instances other than Beehaw tend to be more likely to engage in argumentative and pedantic commentary, which you prove in your interactions so far.
Elitist in his ivory instance over here. (Kidding). But a little offense with me and my Taylor Swift community over here, other instances aren’t bad by any means, and the more federation the more communities.
Nah I like what beehaw is doing, and defederation should always be the last line of defense. However the middle ground is good moderation and enforcement of the rules. Mods are overworked on beehaw, maybe it’s time for others to stand up and offer to take on some of the mantle.
I’m sure you Swifties are lovely people :')
I don’t think this is a moderation issue and I’ll give you an example to highlight why. Someone recently posted to the gaming community asking for advice on a something very basic but easily overlooked. The highest rated comments were basically mocking the poster. Not direct insults or anything ban-worthy but they were unhelpful. I don’t think that’s the type of engagement that people who signed up for this instance would like to see here.
