Seems like doing that would solve most problems here.
Would completely cripple the ability of the site to act as a pipeline.
And almost none of its growth comes from "recommend to a friend" style of new user acquisition. Almost all of it comes from random memes being posted with watermarks or random links being posted with "go here for communist shit" descriptions.
Invite only would cripple the site and send it into perpetual decline as user churn would outstrip user growth.
Would completely cripple the ability of the site to act as a pipeline.
The pipeline also doesn't work so well when people can get banned for upvoting the wrong thing or phrasing something in a questionable way.
A pipeline inherently demands some degree of tolerance for deviation from ideological purity.
Yeah, no. That would be the case if the mods were absolute tyrants, but they've proven time and again that those kinds of bans are justified/are more than willing to lift bans to people banned by mistake. Also, I wouldn't consider banning transphobic content "ideological purity" at all, that just comes off as bad faith
The mods aren't tyrants. They're certainly doing their best under difficult circumstances, but an outsider coming in during a purge is not going to have a good impression of the place.
Lifting bans is good but most people who go out of their way to advocate for their accounts to be unbanned are already invested. I imagine the half way curious people who get banned just move on.
Maybe ideological purity is not the best phrasing. I meant that if you want this place to be a pipeline you can't expect everyone to have perfect takes on everything all the time.
Most people out there are still by-and-large ignorant about trans issues, and lots of things done out of ignorance can be transphobic.
an outsider coming in during a purge is not going to have a good impression of the place
What's the solution, though? Never get rid of reactionaries and wreckers? Try to do it slowly and quietly, even though part of the wrecking strategy is to whine about the oppression of getting your account banned (even though you can literally start up another one right away)?
There are a million reasons someone might check out a new place on the internet and nope out. We can't remove them all, and we shouldn't remove the ones that serve a legitimate purpose.
Wreckers can be easier to spot than others, because they're writing lots of weird comments and wrecking. But the real solution is to recruit lots of new users from places you know are good and have them drown out the bad stuff. This is the internet, you can't moderate stuff that can get posted like hundreds of times a second.
A newcomer won't go through that process. They'll just say "lol wtf" and leave. It's not just the bans though (or even mostly the bans) it's the entire vibe of the sub these last few weeks.
For this reason, a quarantine for new accounts would be a better solution IMO
Yeah, but chances are most people poking their heads in right now go "what the fuuuuuuuck is any of this" and close the window.
Constant, incessant, infighting doesn't really bode well for growth.
yeah sure, right now it may be like that. Once the wreckers are dealt with and things settle down again it'll be fine. There's struggle sessions all the time here and we still grew to 12k members. And its not like other websites don't have similar problems, we just have our arguments over content policy in the open.
Yep, if I'm not mistaken one of the reasons behind making this place was having it act as a left pipeline. If the site was to be made invite-only growth would basically stop, so it's not something that can be done on a whim
Tbh I don't think these two are exclusive. Why not have a limitation on daily posts or comments for new accounts, or something similar?
First without a doubt, don't get me wrong. Heck, I would rather see the community lock up and reactionaries purged if things get too bad than straight up nuking the site.
It's not much of a safe space if it has nobody in it. And servers cost money to operate.
What about invite only, but open signups on Fridays or something like that? Then new users can join if they browsed and liked it during the week AND it will make moderation efforts significantly easier. (Plus it would allow for the bulk of moderation to happen on the weekend when people have time to do that).
An account cooldown would be similar, but doesn't have the advantage of loading the heavy moderation work onto the weekend when people have more time.
A better solution imo would be to prevent interaction (upvote, comment, posts), partially or entirely, for a specific amount of time, like a week. Another similar solution would be to prevent or limit interaction unless the user makes a kind of "introduction" post on a dedicated community, this kind of filter works well for small spaces and probably not as well for this, so i'm more in favour of a default "cooldown" for new accounts.
Actually, new idea. What if we had some invite only or otherwise restricted communities alongside the open ones? Ones where maybe you can see what is posted there but you can't actually post there or comment or upbear. That way you can have some spaces be very safe but have the rest of the place be more accessible for newcomers.
A better solution imo would be to prevent interaction (upvote, comment, posts), partially or entirely, for a specific amount of time, like a week.
Actually I think that's the best idea.
Pretty sure it would do the opposite. The brigades are gonna get toned down eventually, but if the user base doesn't start growing again, there's gonna be a massive struggle session every time x leaves for whatever reason, it will get nasty, and then more people will say "fuck this shit I'm out too" and this will continue until there is 10 blokes here.
If an invite system is implemented, then it should be balanced with being more careful about banning long-time users.
This is unhelpful and reductive. Several users who got banned the night of Beatnik's drunken spree had their bans reversed. Besides, TC69 said in her recent post that she "started banning dissenters without much thought."
I'm not going to agitate over specific bans related to TC69's departure or transphobia in the next few days, because I'm a cis dude and that's really not what this site needs right now, but this really is more nuanced than "everyone who has gotten banned is a vile transphobe."
Just checked the modlog and someone was banned for being "anti-religion" what in the heck
Who care about bans? Seriously, that's the lamest shit in the world.
You can just create a new account literally the second after you're "banned." The way they're implemented here, bans are a small step above a mod telling you "cut that shit out." A better solution to endlessly relitigating bans would be to make all bans final, full stop, no appeal, no whining about it. Just create a new account.
You're not going to get anywhere in terms of left-wing organizing or provocation if you can't accept someone having an accidentally bad take on something or being less sensitive than is necessary. Wreckers and transphobes are different from ignorance or lack of interest (by the way, this is something that occurs in the physical world a lot too, we tend to care about our own oppression more than that of others). You should educate people, not berate them.
