Apologies. I haven't been on the discord (I hate discord, I hate their privacy policy, I hate the format, etc) so maybe I'm lacking some important context. I also understand rules may not be finalized at this point, in which case please accept this as humble feedback.

I also apologize for the length of the post but I feel it is necessary to fully unpack things here.

I just read the code of conduct and am wondering what is going on with that as it seems very, very strict, more so than even subs like /r/communism on reddit were with regards to rudeness which is kind of strange for a place that took its namesake from and often had culture of the so-called "dirtbag left".

Not that I condone ableism or any other form of bigotry (those who use the r-word are not allies, should be called out at minimum IMO, and I am not a friend of stupidpol) but this policy would seem to prevent so much as yelling at another user as was EXTREMELY common on CTH on reddit.

I would say responses of "shut the fuck up liberal" have been a part of CTH culture yet according to code of conduct:

We will exclude you from interaction if you >>insult, demean<< or harass anyone.

This is very broad. Particularly the words insult and demean. Is calling someone an ableist term "st*pid" for example an example of an insult that warrants a ban by the mods? This would make the moderation practices again more extreme than almost any left sub, most of them had bots that just removed but didn't ban users for such words, which is understandable given the culture we live in is steeped in them and many people struggle to fully free themselves of using them and it is in my opinion counter-productive to growth to punish people for this. I would also worry such a broad rule could lead to selective enforcement which would allow mods to ban people for other petty reasons and use this broad rule as an excuse.

Is liberal an insult? Are people no longer allowed the liberal running joke or more serious accusation/insult towards other users (again another very long-time CTH tradition). What determines what the difference between an insult and a genuine appraisal/critique of a user's ideology or the ideology of their statement?

What about imperialist? I would certainly consider that an insult as it is a very bad thing to be, yet it also accurately describes the opinions of some people but some would consider that appraisal to be subjective in certain cases.

Of more interest to me though is this:

Remarks that violate the Chapo standards of conduct, including hateful, hurtful, oppressive, or exclusionary remarks, are not allowed. >>Cursing is allowed, but never targeting another user<< and never in a hateful manner.)

The bolded part. Would this mean if someone replied to someone else with "shut the fuck up liberal" a curse, directed at another user (and including an insult as per above rule) they would be subject to sanction? For that matter would a reply of "fuck you" also merit action? I ask because I've encountered enough bad faith people that it is very tempting to include such things in my replies at times (bad faith based upon very obvious cherry picking, misreading, distortion of statements, etc) and I have seen many people including mods of CTH on reddit say as much in the past.

One last thing, is factional conflict between users still allowed (I of course expect the mods to remain above it in official actions/bans/sanctions)? That is would it be against the rules to say make a post or comment that mocks Trots? Or soc-dems? Or any other tendency? Again this was not uncommon on the sub and it remained healthy despite this (and despite my often ire at the shit-posts directed at MLs).

I'm not trying to rules lawyer here or cause some sort of ordeal, maybe they were just written overly broad to cover edge cases but I just wanted some clarity so I and others don't go about acting as we did on CTH for its entire existence and get surprise actioned for it.

I also understand it is early on yet and maybe the rules are a rough draft so this is my feedback.

I will say rules that are overly strict to the point of policing tone can drive people away from anti-capitalist leftism and similar strict rules have caused splits in left groups so it worries me. I know one thing that bugged a lot of people on CTH and was a source of constant complaint were bans from mainstream reddit subs for the nebulous "incivility" of calling people out too strongly over something they rightly feel passionate about. Anyone who spent any time there can attest to the amount of people griping about bans over that particular rule, prioritizing civility fetishism over moral outrage over heinous actions/opinions/etc.

I feel instead of making rules against that, rules against reactionary politics and behavior as well as bigotry (misogyny, racism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, etc) are more useful while allowing passionate discussion that can get heated. I don't think the point should be to create this grey-colored safe space without the slightest chance of getting your feelings hurt, rather I think the point should be exclusion of bigotry against marginalized groups and the defense of those groups. And the exclusion of reactionary politics and the defense of anti-capitalist, "leftist" if you will politics. But maybe the people running this place feel otherwise in which case let me and anyone else reading this thread know as I'm sure there are others here who have not been on discord and are out of the loop.

Obviously I'm against reactionaries and bigotry (I really liked MTC's sidebar rules actually and thought they were quite inclusive of naming bad behaviors disallowed without being overly broad) but I'm also worried about overly censorious impulses in what are inherently political spaces that include political discussion of a heated nature.

I will admit to the fact I was not an infrequent user of strong language such as the above on reddit. However I avoided oppressive language and I invite anyone to go over my reddit history for the past two years (preferably using a deletion site because most of it was lost with CTH) and see how many even minor ableist terms there are (almost none). I would never consider my behavior as to have been overly abusive or oppressive, not to anyone who wasn't expressing reactionary tendencies, imperialist tendencies, etc that either need to be kept in check by banning such people (not the most ideal, they don't get a chance to learn) or by calling them out with strong language that conveys the moral outrage I and I think everyone should feel towards certain positively cruel positions or spouting of very harmful capitalist/imperialist propaganda.

  • darkcalling [comrade/them, she/her]
    hexagon
    ·
    4 years ago

    Agreed. With political discussion people get heated and quite frankly uh a lot of the best posters who took the time to make effort posts and contributed the most to the CTH community would probably be banned under this.

    • EcoSoco [he/him]
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      4 years ago

      You can have a political discussion without insulting people or demeaning them. I'm sure of that.

      • AndThatIsWhyIDrink [she/her]
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        4 years ago

        We can when we want to be but it shouldn't be forced at all times.

        Seriously this shouldn't even be difficult to understand. A huge factor in the success of the subreddit was that it was a space where people could be all the things that they weren't allowed to be in any other leftist spaces because of either obsession with optics or overzealous aims to be the purist leftists possible. If I can't tell some lib they deserve the wall what even is the point? I might as well stay in /r/socialism.

        • EcoSoco [he/him]
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          4 years ago

          You can call someone a lib, that's not a problem. Good-natured ribbing is encouraged and even expected.

          Insulting someone as a "fucking social fascist" because you disagree with them on the merits of theory is not.

          • AndThatIsWhyIDrink [she/her]
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            4 years ago

            Should aim to reflect that in the rules then as OP is demonstrably misunderstanding it. I agree with OP too, just "insults" isn't really what you care about.

            The way I see it, petty insults and bitching are going to happen and are fine. I myself will definitely sling petty useless childish insults from time to time. None of that matters and is always caused by people just being in a foul mood, having shit days, or personal grievances with the person they were having a disagreement with. What does matter on the other hand is consistent patterns of wrecking. What I don't have a good answer to is how to describe in text what the difference is between acceptable factional fighting between MLs/Anarchists vs unacceptable factional fighting, there is obviously nothing wrong with them fighting, but there is certainly a problem with bad-faith phrases like "red fascist" and anyone engaging in that kind of thing persistently is a problem. How to describe the difference however is obviously not easy even though an experienced community member can recognise the difference on general feeling.

            • EcoSoco [he/him]
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              4 years ago

              Anarchists and MLs can fight and dunk on each other all they want, but when it crosses the line into demeaning people for their beliefs and harassing them, that's where it ends.

              Again, this is all common sense.

          • femboi [they/them, she/her]
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            4 years ago

            I think that your point is valid if you believe the other person is a leftist arguing in good faith. If you think they are just trolling or just spamming the same 3 bullet points on China without actually discussing anything then IMO it’s perfectly justified to call them a filthy lib, fascist, etc

      • darkcalling [comrade/them, she/her]
        hexagon
        ·
        4 years ago

        I disagree that this kind of strong censorship is necessary and I would further inquire how these rules were arrived upon? Was a single user responsible for drafting them? Was there a committee? How much input was the community given? Was any kind of proper materialist analysis applied? What about meeting people where they are?

        Abusing someone for some trait of theirs or some non-political/non-ideological matter is an entirely different matter from attacking someone who voluntarily entered an inherently political space (this isn't "friendly Chet's kitty and cute puppies relaxation and destressing space" after all) and made political statements. You mention below insulting someone as a "fucking social fascist" is the objection to the word fucking? Or the phrase social fascist? If it's the latter you object to a (subjective) political characterization/appraisal of another that someone takes offense at. Can I ask would this extend to calling an ML a "Red fascist"? If so fair enough I suppose in excluding calling other left persons a fascist.

        I still seek clarity on whether calling someone an imperialist or "fucking imperialist" is against the rules. It is a political characterization of a subjective nature (although it has precise definitions for ML's, other tendencies might be prone to disagree), are all those banned or only specific ones?

        • EcoSoco [he/him]
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          4 years ago

          The Code of Conduct was implemented with feedback from other mods and devs. Again, with the nature of the team, we don't have the resources dedicated to it and had to start with the base Lemmy Code of Conduct, which is quite fair.

          Insults of any kind will be frowned upon, and the mod team knows the difference between "lol liberal" and "I hate you with all my heart you stupid imperialist pig"

          Imperialism is often used as a strawman in arguments. Critique of certain leftist figures and events is often pushed out by people who claim "imperialism" even when the critiques are made in good faith and keep in mind the values of being a socialist. I think there's a difference between critiquing Lenin's NEP plan and calling for Hong Kong to rise up in rebellion to stand against the "evil CCP." This is all common sense, really.

          • FiresideHats [none/use name]
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            4 years ago

            You keep saying it's common sense but if you've ever been a mod before you know that saying "Mods just will use their common sense, no worries" leads to chaos as people feel mods have favorites that they let slide and then pariahs they are strict with.

            And it's not even "common sense." I am very sympathetic to ML ideology, and if mods banned an anarchist for calling a ML a "fucking social fascist" I would be very surprised and disappointed by that. I agree with @darkcalling that insults about appearance or any bigotry is unacceptable, but fiery political debate is acceptable.

            Anyway, I get that the rules are copied and pasted for now, and they will get tweaked later, and everyone who built this has had a lot on their plate. I'm totally cool with that and not getting answers right this second. But it's kind of like "Be patient" -- "Oh, okay." -- "It's really just common sense anyway." -- "Oh...okay..."

            • EcoSoco [he/him]
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              4 years ago

              Insulting people in the name of "firey political debate" is liberalism.

              • FiresideHats [none/use name]
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                4 years ago

                Depends on the topic and the insult. These both are insults, but: "You're a stupid little virgin that will never experience love," in a China struggle sesh is bad.

                "You're a self-aggrandizing American who can't let go of your own constructed tragic hero story," in a debate about whether military guys can be critiqued for their choice to join the armed forces is okay.

                It's common sense imo.

              • 90u9y8gb9t86vytv97g [they/them]
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                4 years ago

                Dude shut the fuck up, look at how many people are downvoting.

                If you make this place even worse than r/CTH no one's going to come here

              • BreadPrices [he/him,comrade/them]
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                4 years ago

                Having a hot chud take on trans rights and then hiding behind civility is pretty much 90 percent of what I hate about Reddit. It's an extreme example but there will be people who spew garbage and we should be able to mock them relentlessly.

          • darkcalling [comrade/them, she/her]
            hexagon
            ·
            4 years ago

            TBH it was mostly used in the context of punching right. Communists punching at democratic socialists punching at social democrats, punching finally at the odd liberal who wandered in.

            That is to say I didn't really see ML's going at each other and calling each other liberals for having a different favorite work by Marx or a different nuanced opinion of a situation. Or for that matter Anarchists calling each other liberals over opinions on Bookchin.

            It was used to call out not just liberals as in the people, but liberalism as in the all infectious ideology that permeates all our lives, our schooling, and for most of us still some parts if not major parts of our thought processes. It's just that "shut up liberal" rolls off the tongue a lot more nicely, succinctly, and strongly than "that's liberalism".

            Honestly it was mostly used towards people who were being obtuse. It was fairly rare to see it used towards someone asking a question in good faith, like someone who said "wait, isn't Maduro a dictator, what's going on?" rarely received that response, people like that tended to get actual answers even if they were unhelpful, "no he's not, that's propaganda", that and downvotes sometimes. It was the person who came into a thread and said "Maduro is a dictator, wtf, fucking tankies!" as a statement, not a question who got downvoted and replied to with "shut the fuck up liberal". You'll notice the latter was coming in with a closed mind-set and spouting propaganda, the former came in with an open mind and simply stated the propaganda they'd been fed but opened it up to responses. 8 out of 10 tens with the latter discussion with them was fruitless in my experience, they'd tend to not be swayed in a single conversation if they were swayed at all. Lots of them were probably people who stopped by the sub then left after determining that they preferred the CIA propaganda circle jerk of the rest of reddit.

      • 420clownpeen [they/them,any]
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        4 years ago

        I think that ought to mostly hold true here where there's a lot of ideological shared ground, but one of the principle reasons Chapo (the podcast and arguably the sub) got popular was giving the middle finger to the notion that serious topics mandate strict (and ultimately performative) standards of civility.