On the Lemmy.ml posting warning (piefed.social)

submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by cabbage@piefed.social to c/piefed_meta@piefed.social

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I noticed responding to posts in communities hosted at lemmy.ml gives the following warning:

This post is hosted on lemmy.ml which will ban you for saying anything negative about China, Russia or Putin. Tread carefully.

While I see where this is coming from and I agree with the general sentiment, I'm not sure it's a great idea to include such a message. I basically read it as an invitation to be off-topic and to derail conversations in order to annoy the admins. While it comes from a point of good intentions, it can be disheartening for the people running communities on Lemmy.ml to receive comments about Russia from users basically trying to get banned, in communities that has nothing to do with this issue.

It's unfortunate, but a lot of valuable older communities are still hosted on lemmy.ml, and I think PieFed users should be encouraged to be constructive and on-topic users there as they should be everywhere else.

An alternative suggestion: Maybe it could be useful to remind people which community they are posting in? Like, "This community is dedicated to renewable energy. Please keep this in mind when contributing to the discussion". Then again, that would be a mess to implement in a good way.

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[-] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 months ago

Tankie admins are a missing stair and people deserve to be warned.

It's an issue even in communities you wouldn't think of as political. Another reply mentions OpenStreetMap... which is illegal in China. The Chinese government mandates that people lie about the shape of the Earth. Many obvious responses to this absurdity would get you a boot in the ass for "orientalism." Oblique criticism of that moderation, in turn, will get you a boot in the ass under their rule against bigotry... as if polite feedback against abuse of authority is intolerable hatred. Because they're such fans of democracy, you see.

And they're big enough that many communities are hosted there by surprise. Linux stuff, piracy, webcomics, video games - whoops! Your opinion has been deemed wrongthink. The people's workers' family super happy fun time council is the bestest and most democratic one-party state everrr, so how dare you take issue with a foreign superpower dictating that men in video games cannot wear skirts.

Highlighting the instance is a great idea. I might do that in-browser, as a CSS hack. I appreciate that this reader calls out that information when it's especially relevant.

[-] AchtungDrempels@piefed.social 1 points 4 months ago

I agree that it feels misplaced for "innocent" communities like !openstreetmap@lemmy.ml .

[-] rimu@piefed.social 1 points 4 months ago

Ok, I've changed how this works, as discussed. Now only one lemmy.ml community has a warning.

Thanks to cabbage for starting this discussion to resolve it.

[-] rimu@piefed.social 0 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I agree this feature could do with a lot more finesse. Currently it is hardcoded to show on every lemmy.ml community, which is clumsy and over-powered. I'd like features that let the instance admin specify custom messages for any instance and any community.

How this feature is used is then up to the instance admin. They might choose not to have any messages.

With my instance admin hat on - I'd definitely keep this message on worldnews@lemmy.ml as that is the one which regularly caused bewildered posts by people wondering why they were banned. All other communities on that instance seem relatively benign and don't really need a warning.

I'll wait a few more hours to gather more feedback and then make a ticket for this.

[-] cabbage@piefed.social 1 points 4 months ago

Yeah, I absolutely agree lemmy.ml has no business hosting a large worldnews community without proper warning.

this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2024

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