Several users have brought to the moderation team’s attention that there is increasing toxicity within our community. During discussion, the mod team has agreed that there is a noticeable increase in toxicity Lemmy-wide, so it might not be limited to our community only.
We would like to maintain the !autism@lemmy.world community as respectful, inclusive of controversial perspectives, and encouraging of discussions. Furthermore, we aim to avoid silencing (deleting posts/comments) users unless they flagrantly violate our rules, while reserving user bans for repeat offenders (we all have bad days) and flagrant abuse.
Importantly, as autistic people and allies (NTs and other NDs alike), we go through enough difficulties as it is. We don’t need to be going through it here either. Let’s keep this our healthy space.
The Mod Team’s Perspective
We don’t want to silence users outside of clearly violating the rules, and we would prefer to avoid banning users for one or two minor offenses because we all have bad days, but we also don’t want to put up with toxicity either. Rather, we want a community that’s respectful, understanding, inclusive, and open. Lastly, as mods, we don’t see ourselves as controllers of the truth or authoritarians, whether benevolent or not, nor do we have the power to control topics of discussions or what is right within the autistic community as a whole. We are merely users trusted by the community with the power to remove posts, comments, and users per the established rules which are always up for discussion, and we use that power to build the community for all of us in !autism@lemmy.world. We are in your service.
Some Suggestions
We argue that the best way to have civil discussions is to focus on the topic and use respectful language, especially when other users may have significant attachment to a topic. Additionally, it substantially helps if you can provide a source with valid evidence to support your argument. However, attacking a user rarely if ever helps get your point across.
We also understand that each of us can only control our own behaviors, and that it is likely you will be personally attacked on Lemmy. It’s part of being on social media. A wise woman once told me that the best way to win a game with a toxic person is to not play at all. If some bully throws the toxicity ball at you, put the ball down and walk away. If you would like to respond to demonstrate dignity, you can respectfully say that you are choosing to not participate. On the other hand, if you are being harassed or see any violation of our rules, then let the mods know through a report, and the mods will deal with it for you so you can continue enjoying the community knowing it has your back.
This brings up the next suggestion. The use of the up and down vote buttons would work best if they were used to vote on contribution to the thread, not whether you agree with a post/comment or not. If I argue for the use of [whatever] because I think it’s the best, but someone comes up with a good point that I don’t agree with, I can still up-vote it because I think it’s a good contribution to the topic and want to increase its visibility. In this case, my vote isn’t a sponsorship or surrender. It’s an appreciation for the discussion. At the same time, if someone starts with some toxic garbage, just downvote it and move on. Do not engage. At best, the user will drop it and maybe learn from it or leave. At worst, they get more toxic and eventually violate a rule, which will be reported to and addressed by the mods.
How Can You Help?
This post is the quick initial attempt at remedying the issue that has recently been brought to light. While we continue to brainstorm ideas, we would love to hear from you. What can the mods and community do to help maintain the healthy space we have all built?
PS - There are some topics sensitive to our community that the mod team has been asked to have a stance on. We are not ignoring them. While we haven’t discussed the topics yet, we will be in discussion over them to best decide how to address them. Once ready, we will make a post on them. In the meantime, we would like our community to address its daily functioning.
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Yell yell woke angry! (JK)
In all seriousness, thank you for keeping your ear to the ground and reacting to the changing climate of Lemmy as a platform. Even though I only lurk in this community, I just wanted to express my support for keeping the space and its visitors safe®.
It also made me realize that perhaps (in other communities) I only bothered to participate in conversations when I disagree - so ten more points to admins for making this one retrospect a bit.
I agree with the comment from the Lemmy mods for voicing their concerns and making the community of is lurkers aware.
To that point I haven’t really noticed, but I don’t closely follow alp that is going on. Plus doesn’t surprise me with more ppl, more toxins may arrive.
Keep fighting the good fight Lemmy mods
✊
You’re welcome! It’s encouraging to receive such good feedback from the community 😊
I appreciate thia direct communication. One of my biggest fears is to see moderators act too quickly. I’m envious of how well-written discord server’s rules and policies are. Warnings, strikes, and clear rules. Policies about apologizing for and revoking worst behaviors. Usually pretty hard to get banned if you aren’t asking for it.
Take it easy out there, mods!
You’re welcome! We definitely try to have a compassionate approach to interventions because (1) don’t want to take away anyone’s voice, and (2) we know that as autistic people, we can sometimes make social mistakes.
I am unfamiliar with Discord rules. Could you provide an example of the rules you are referring to?
One of my biggest fears is to see moderators act too quickly
That’s an important point right here - one that is commonly overlooked. We all have shitty days every now and then, sometimes the tone of a comment / post is completely accidentally way harsher than you intended it to be, sometimes you can lose yourself in the heat of an argument if its about a topic that happens to be a sore spot for one of the participants. It happens. And if a mod then comes swooping in to immediatly kick you out of the conversation and tell you off for having a bad day, it won’t get better.
I sure had days like these where I let frustration get the better of me, but once I cool down a bit and realize that I’ve been too harsh, I always come back to apologize and explain to the other person that it wasn’t their fault. And I’ve been on the “other side” of such conversations as well, and every time it happens I truly appreciate the other person reaching out to me. Now, if mods act “too quickly” and/or too harsh, that scenario is oftentimes no longer possible. If one of the people involved in the argument is kicked out of the community, silenced, banned or whatever, there is no apology, and people might hold grudges.
Of course there are times where you absolutely need to act quickly and harshly (violent threats, racist slurs etc.) but it is also important for a mod to know when NOT to act immediatly, or when to intervene in a “soft” way (like asking people why they’re being cranky today - sometimes that’s all it needs to snap out of a funk you didn’t know you were in).
… and I get that this isn’t always easy for a mod. You may stumble upon a discussion that’s slowly deteriorating and think “oh dang, I’m responsible for making this right - I have to DO something!” and then do something that might not have been necessary. Sometimes, it is completely okay and even preferable if the mods just keep an eye on a discussion without immediatly intervening.
Thanks for this!
More specifically, I found your comments on downvotes interesting. All together I think I have come believe downvotes are not a good idea as they promote a self centred and toxic perspective on how this place works that can then seed a generally toxic culture. If moderators need to start talking about how the downvote should be used and how it’s qualitatively different from the upvote, then it’s clearly a faulty design.
It would be interesting if communities could themselves decide whether to have downvotes. More broadly, I’m sure there are a number of adjustments that could be made.
You’re very welcome! Also, thank you for your perspective and input. We’ll look into the design of the system and if there are any tweaks we could make as mods. Before we do make any major systemic changes though, we’ll poll the community.
I’m very new here and somewhat insecure, so I am happy to see the work put in to make this a safe space for vulnerable people to find community. Thank you for all your hard work!
You’re very welcome! Please let us know if you have any suggestions on how can help reduce the insecurity you are feeling.
I havn’t been here long but it’s been entirely pleasant so far. The mods must be doing a great job.
Though I’m occasionally oblivious to negatively. I do sense this place is safer then some other lemmy channels.
To be honest, we have barely intervened. The community itself is great. If the mods deserve any praise, it’s for establishing a culture that is conducive to our healthy community, so thank you for that! 😊
Main suggestion from me, would be to do highlight the guidelines. Like people don’t seem to find the useful sidebar links, they may not know or even less adopt the community guidelines. E.g. a rotational weekly post featuring a different subset of the rules or guidelines every week, with some fleshed out explanation and a few examples.
Having examples helps people behave, helps us keep each other in line, and makes the mods’ actions easier to defend if comments need removing.
Thank you! We’ve been posting a link from our helpful resources list daily. Do you think that’s been helpful at bringing awareness to them?
Not OP, but for me it’s been very helpful!
I think so, based on 15 years experience from Reddit back when that was a thing, it seemed to help there too. In this case, I already read the sidebar first, so can’t comment empirically. :)
Appreciate the time and work you guys (the mods) put in to make the community a safe, inclusive and fair place to communicate with other like minded individuals. As well get support when needed.
Hopefully the suggested changes minimise the toxicity within the community.
You’re welcome, and we’re happy that our guiding values are noticed. 😁
Very well written. If people just take one thing from what you wrote, it should be how to deal with people who try to attack you online.
Some people view arguing online as entertainment, to see if they can outwit you and make you look dumb. Just stop engaging with those people. I frequently just stop responding to dumb people. Its fine.
Thank you, and yes! If it’s someone that made an honest mistake or didn’t have an environment in which to learn to argue respectfully, then they get the opportunity to learn by experiencing which approaches help and which don’t. If it’s someone starting problems for entertainment, then they’ll get bored and leave or try too hard and get banned. Win-win
I forgot to understand what I read after the title because it made me think of soad toxicity in our city, in our ciiiiii-ity New, what do you own the world? How do you own disorder, disorder Now, somewhere between the sacred silence, sacred silence and sleep Somewhere between the sacred silence and sleep Disorder, disorder, disorder
When I read your comment, I understood why my brain started playing that song.
Jesus! Is this an autistic trait? I’m undiagnosed, but it happens with me so so often
I don’t know I’m an ADHD kid haha
Ah, ok, thanks!
@kapx132@lemmy.world System of a Down!!
I highly appreciate the effort you took making this post. I believe it will help a great deal making it easier for this community to thrive. Thank you very much! :)
You’re very welcome! 😊
One thing I’ve started to notice in here is a ND person will make some joke based on typical Autistic dry humor (overly literal or pragmatic, etc.) or just putting a light-hearted spin on the situation, and some NT will swoop in to attack that person for “gatekeeping” or “mocking”, not realizing this was an ND attempting some inside humor directed at fellow NDs.
Feels bad finally finding a community where we can safely share our traumas and quirks and insights, and then “allies” feel the need to attack and berate us when we’re just Autistic and just socializing in our weird way.
Please be nice and don’t shame our odd humor. We’re struggling already as-is.
For example, a light-hearted ND joke here, immediately attacked by someone who doesn’t realize this community is exactly where that kind of humor is very common: https://communick.news/comment/316930
I’ve seen something similar to this happen. There was a meme posted in which kids were holding hands and running at the screen, there were syringes photoshopped above them with skulls and crossbones, and the caption said, “AUTISM SOFTWARE UPDATES!” To me, this was clearly satirical, poking fun at the ridiculous persistent conspiracy belief that vaccines cause autism and potentially all the ridiculous implications from that idea. However, it was reported by two users, and since it violated rule #8 (Do not link autism to vaccines), I removed the post. I can understand why users wouldn’t want that posted in this community given its purpose and rules.
Still, I thought of ways to still create a space in which we could have opportunity for humor like that, and best I came up with was to create another community specifically for memes related to autism, but moderating that sounds like a serious pain since there would be the potential for trolls to abuse the platform, a lot of ambiguous/vague posts that would take thorough consideration, and users getting upset if they disagreed with the mod action, so I decided it’s not something I’m willing to take on. If someone does make one, let me know so I can subscribe!
I’d like to see more people acting like belonging to a real community. That is, mutual support/defense when we see a need, or jumping into an argument if we see there might be a misunderstanding we can help to clear. Real bad actors may be rare but the general misunderstanding is a frequent companion. Especially when something is upsetting, the feeling of being left alone with it can potentially draw energy for days to come.
An educating excerpt from an article i’m just reading:
There is an important distinction between arguing to “win” and dialogue to learn from each other. For nurturing the mutual trust needed for de-powered collaboration at human scale, it is helpful to distinguish five basic categories of beliefs:
- Beliefs based on scientific theories backed by empirical evidence that we are intimately familiar with. Only a small minority of our beliefs fall into this category.
- Beliefs based on scientific theories backed by empirical evidence that we are not intimately familiar with. If we are educated, a sizeable minority of our beliefs fall into this category.
- Beliefs based on personal experiences and observations. For those who identify as Autistic, a significant number of beliefs held fall into this category.
- Beliefs that represent explicit social agreements between specific people regarding communication and collaboration. For those who identify as Autistic, a significant number of beliefs held fall into this category, especially agreements with family, friends, and colleagues.
- Beliefs based on what we have been encouraged to believe by parents, teachers, and friends, … and politicians and advertisers, etc. For those who do not identify as Autistic, the majority of beliefs held fall into this category.
All categories of beliefs are associated with some level of uncertainty regarding the validity and applicability to a specific context at hand. When people argue to “win”, they mostly rely on beliefs in category 5 (opinions). Such arguments are about dominance, they are not open and honest dialogues.
(Healing from Autistic Trauma by Jorn Bettin)
… So, next time someone tells us that all “opinions” ought to be valued the same … ;-)I’d like to see more people acting like belonging to a real community. That is, mutual support/defense when we see a need, or jumping into an argument if we see there might be a misunderstanding we can help to clear.
Me too! I’m hoping users start making posts asking for help. However, our chat has been engaging in social support, especially the “helpful support/venting” one. If you haven’t joined, I suggest that you check out the sidebar and give it a try. The people in there are ausome 😋
Also, thanks for sharing that article!
Hey, I just want to add my voice to the praise here! This is by far the community where I feel more comfortable interacting in both lemmy and reddit (in the ~five years that i had used it). For instance, this topic for discussion is already a lovely example of how to handle an issue in an open and inclusive way. Thank you for your hard work!
I’m glad you feel comfortable here, and thank you for the praise! We aim to have an aunarchistic ideal of how to help build and contribute to a community. Our moderating principles are based on compassion, mutual aid, transparency, and power limited to the rules with the community as a check on that power. This approach comes from autistic strengths described in this blog. It’s what we are, and we try to apply those strengths to encourage a safe and healthy home that many of us have never had, providing an opportunity for us to feel comfortable, humbly proud, connect, make honest mistakes, and ultimately grow as individuals and a community.
