I have had a lot of hope for this site. It is one of several communist communities that I've been involved with online, which splintered from its main site and created a cloned version. Mostly the other example for this is bunkerchan.xyz, although they jumped twice, from 4 to 8 Chan and then to bunkerchan.
Anyways, without going too far into it, simply cloning a website and setting up your community in the replicated space will replicate the same dynamics. In chapo chat's case, this has clearly recently demonstrated itself in mod power tripping.
What we have done is create immaterial spaces which are communist in essence but not in form. These are still fundamentally hierarchical websites with the express purpose of controlling content and, originally, producing profit by drawing attention to advertisements.
There is probably not a way to replicate the form of reddit without creating an opportunity for people to take things to far with their mod powers and damage the community. Where there is an opportunity, individuals will take advantage of it, whether they do so consciously and intentionally or unconsciously and accidentally. Whether they are well or ill intentioned.
What is needed? An immaterial space, a website, which is communist in form but not explicitly in essence. You ( we? ) have created an officially socialist, operationally capitalist space. Sure, there are ways to make things run smoother, but I believe there is a structural issue at the heart. From the mod structure to the way posts and communities are created, before even getting into scoring and comments.
What would a website that is communist in form look like? I don't know, I've never seen one. But, when I think about building one I imagine a site that is:
- dynamically and democratically community moderated
- psuedononymous
- limited membership ( must be sent an invite link by a user to create an account. Think wechat)
- structured as a flowing series of 3 dimensional posts
Idk just some thought, I'll delete this in a couple days. Happy new years chapos.
i disagree that the mods are abusing their power. they're being firm, yes, but they're being very reasonable about handling appeals with users who actually ask for them in good faith. a ban here is not a final, reddit-style "you've been muted from messaging this community" it's the first step. the next step, if you think it was a wrongful ban, is to make a new account and appeal the ban.
for the record, if anyone isnt aware, it'll call me a mod because im currently a mod of /c/main but i have no power beyond that and have nothing to do with the recent banwave
I could literally not give less of a shit about the actual mods or their actions, real or imagined. I'm trying to make a larger point about how the literal technological structure of the space shapes the community itself. Replicating reddit will produce reddit problems.
What the hell is a 3 dimensional post? Agree with the idea of more user self moderation though.
I mean we have a voting system, it could be adapted to work as a collective moderation tool or something. Just have flagged posts voted on by the community. Having the 11k users dig through each other's post histories is a great way to root out bad apples.
If I had to guess I'd say that the post is like a mind map. It starts in the middle and then comment threads spread out in all directions.
The Site and Revolution :thinkin-lenin:
Genuinely think that you raise a lot of interesting questions here though
all website are posting dictatorships actually, we need to build communism by banning all the bad posters and then we can push the communism button
2 suggestions :
- Create very clear guidelines on acceptable and unacceptable contents. Consistency is important.
- I don't know how banning works but make it so that you need the consent of multiple mods for a ban to take affect, to prevent individual mod powertripping.
Can you describe some of your thoughts about this in relation to bunkerchan? It doesn't have the first three qualities that you list (excluding tripcodes, which no one uses) and the fourth quality is pretty vague. I went on there a decent amount about a year ago, and the form and moderation of it seemed pretty good to me, but I have heard that its moderation history is somewhat complicated.
They wouldn't carry with them the flaws of reddit, right? It'd carry the flaws of Chan-style image boards. This would, imo, include the inability to remove disruptive and bad-faith posters, to have any sort of privacy for discussion from the outside, to have a way of cataloging and recording good content. I could go on. It's not so much that the moderation is bad, necessarily, it's that they cannot ever really be good.
I see, those are good points. I think the difficulty in recording past content is a bit fun though, in that it turns into an esoteric system of sharing screencaps and reminiscing about old threads. But it makes it difficult for new people and it devalues making long effortposts if you know it'll get deleted eventually.
This is a good discussion worth having, for sure. There seems to be a lot of disconnects on what users/mods want this site to be, and how they want to see it grow. This is a good time for the discussion too, while we’re still small and implement changes and adapt swiftly and flexibly. There’s no right way to set up an online forum, of course. But it’s pretty damn clear that Reddit’s setup has its upsides, but might not be fundamentally compatible with the ethos of this site.