There's been discussion of federation with Lemmygrad. I think this is probably a good call. I just want to know how the anti-sectarian rule would be enforced. Like, it someone makes an anti-anarchist post on lemmygrad.ml and it shows up on hexbear.net, would the moderators hide the comment on our end but not on Lemmygrad? Would repeat offenders be banned from hexbear.net even though they made the comment on a different iteration?
Same for one of the bigger anarchist instances like lemmy.blahaj.zone which has good leftist and trans content but also has regular struggle sessions about "tankies." It seems like federation with then would be a boon for both sites, but moderating the left unity rule would be a nightmare.
Also, another thought: would downbears from other instances carry over here?
Ah I see. Well the way I see it is you should have to observe the rules of the federated-site (and comm) when participating in their comms, and they should do the same vice versa.
I would expect us to ban anyone that comes here and spews sectarianism. But I would not expect us to ban a Hexbear if the sectarian posting they do is not actually on Hexbear but instead in a lemmygrad comm.
This seems like good-practice for avoiding the site getting defederated too. If Hexbears go elsewhere and just break the rules of everywhere they go then the reputation will eventually be that Hexbear are a nuisance that do not care about the rules of any space they go into and that will result in defederation. This will take some time for Hexbear users to get used to though and I suspect there will be initial pains that look quite similar to major drama explosions that happened here for
except cross-federation.
There are also some problems in my opinion with Lemmy looking the same too much. Comms need banners and sidebar images so that users can FEEL that they are in a different space and adjust their behaviour accordingly. Right now if everything looks the same everywhere you go people's default behaviour will be whatever they have already gotten, but the default behaviour of a Hexbear isn't going to go down well in a lot of liberal spaces. If it actually felt like you were in a different space you would be more likely to adjust behaviour.
Yeah I need a big sign that tells me. LISTEN UP ere no fun allowed beyond this point. Keep your memes close to your body or they will take them.
Just a bit of personalisation would go a long way. The communities themselves should have the kind of personalisation that you'd see in forum software. The easy differentiation between spaces would then act as a prompt to users on what rulesets they should be observing, the same way it works on reddit.