For a community that bills itself as
“General discussions about “science” itself
Be sure to also check out these other Fediverse science communities:”
And is full of news articles explaining science, having a biologist explain the science of sex biology is not a right fight for a general science community.
You are right, I did not make the right call on this one.
I have been neglecting the instance very aggressively due to being busy this summer. I was scanning through the report backlog and this post was reported for ‘transphobia’. I skimmed through, clicked on a whitehouse link that said “RESTORING BIOLOGICAL TRUTH TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT” in big letters, and instead of doing more due-diligence I applied a rule that I rarely apply as the discriminant to process it quickly. The rule being, as you mentioned, that the ‘Science’ community is meant to be for discussing science itself. It is a meta-community.
In practice, I stopped enforcing this rule for the most part, which means that in this case it was an excuse I used to process the report quickly without needing to validate whether I personally think it is ‘transphobia’ or not.
Sorry
Some things:
- I make mistakes, if you send me message I will usually correct it or at least explain my reasons.
- When I get reports such as ‘transphobia’ or ‘racism’, I automatically bias heavily my decision towards the reporter because I can easily miss something in my personal analysis.
- Very often the explanation between ‘why was A removed and B allowed to stay’ is that A was reported and B was not.
- My stated intention is to minimize politics and polarizing content, but this has proven difficult to achieve in practice
I’m glad to hear it was a simple mistake.
If I could make a suggestion restoring the post, and banning users such as ‘hoohoohoot@fedinsfw.app’ who had commented, an account with prior history of multiple actual transphobic comments in their history, might be a good start to move forward.
Also if you don’t mind, could you please DM me with the information for who made the ‘transphobia’ report? I’ve noticed some other issues with false reports on some of @TRAHR@quokk.au’s posts and I would like to further keep an eye on what accounts are doing this to Quokk.au’s users as it may be part of more targeted harassment.
Oh.
I checked the reports, and what I see is a sequence of 6 reports reporting hoohoohoot’s comments. I do not have a vivid memory of the moment as I was just processing the back-log, but what must have happened is that In haste I interpreted this as 6 independent reports of the post, not noticing that the reports were of the comments, and so when I opened the post I was operating on what I mistakenly thought was a very high signal. I still did not want to claim ‘transphobia’ in my reason without verifying that, so, as I explained, I used the loophole as an excuse.
Usually, if this would really have been 6 independent reports of the same post, removing it would have been very likely the correct move. This contributed to why I was careless.
Here are 4 of them, I removed the names because these are not false reports:
That’s fair, thanks for clearing that up :)
Yeah, I’m sorry. I usually try to not be this careless and it is very unlikely to happen again (at least this specific form of mistake. I am open to making new kinds of mistakes in the future).
I don’t know you by reputation or anything about your personal beliefs which have been hinted at here. I am only judging you on this apology and reasonable explanation.
Well done, Salamander.
As the great 21st century philosopher, moralist, and tiger cub, Daniel Tiger, says: “It’s okay to make mistakes. Try to fix them and learn from them too!”
I’m glad it was a mistake and that you corrected it. Politics is a tricky subject and nebulously saying no politics isn’t a good strategy because everything is political.Politics has an influence on everything in life both good and bad. So I think a better goal would be to target the political behaviors that hurt people. The ones that are anti-science by nature. Just my opinion.
I just encountered the type of example that I often struggle with, and so that is a good opportunity to describe my train of thought.
If you open the !academia@mander.xyz community right now, this is what you will see:
Post #1 has ‘Trump’ in the title, which is causing Trump to be featured at the top of Mander’s front page. Posts 2 and 3 are about a highly polarizing subject that has become politicized, and the fifth post is about the pentagon cutting federal funding - which is also highly political.
These are true:
- These posts are political
- These posts are highly relevant to an ‘academia’ community
- I have not been good at creating guidelines for the community, as the sidebar is empty
So, the options that come to my mind are:
- Accept politics in general whenever relevant
- If no one reports, then no one minds, so just let it go. If someone reports, remove it
- Create some general rule that if ‘White House’ or ‘Trump’ is in a title, remove it. This at least keeps posts with ‘Trump’ in the title off Mander’s local page, which is a common source of annoyance for me, and I suspect for others as well.
- Remove the Academia community because it is a spot where politics infiltrate. I do not like this solution because politics infiltrates on many valuable topics, not only one.
- Define a set of guidelines that creates a perfect filter and make the effort to implement it fairly. This is difficult both at the design stage and the implementation.
- Apply a very strong politics filter and if I can even smell a political angle, remove it. This approach likely invites pushback, which I cannot reply to with more ‘that’s the rule, have a nice day’ unless I want to spend all my energy discussing. I have considered this because I think that, even if unpopular, there is a minority with whom this concept would resonate and so they would appreciate having that space.
There are many more options that I did not list. I just wanted to give you a concrete example of my reasoning.
I want topic communities to remain useful even when their subject intersects politics, but I also want Mander to be a space where political discourse does not continuously colonize unrelated interests. I don’t know how to draw a boundary that is both predictable and enforceable.
Politics is a tricky subject and nebulously saying no politics isn’t a good strategy because everything is political.
For that reason, attempting to create a formal ‘politics’ filter is likely to be counter-productive. In general, I apply common sense, which is largely subjective by definition. The way I balance this is that I always err in the side of not removing things. Just want to emphasize that the reason used to mistakenly remove this post was not related to the general politics rule. I mistakenly thought that the post was reported by multiple people.
So I think a better goal would be to target the political behaviors that hurt people
My logic for setting the scope as I did is the following:
- The internet is flooded with posts about politics, and especially so with US-centered politics (and I am not from nor live in the US)
- Politics and topics that have become polarized by politics tend to be difficult to moderate
So, because my instance’s focus is science and nature, I decided to make one of my instance’s value propositions: If you choose this instance your Local feed will not have politics in it. Note, that, one has access to ‘All’ and one can also access the instance’s communities from other instances. So, in my view, an instance that offers such a value proposition is a healthy component of the ecosystem - and easier for me to moderate.
I do agree that trying to come up with some better writing and guidelines that transmit the core idea while making it fairly enforceable would be good. I have said a few times in the past that I would do this, but I still don’t really know how. So I keep reading what people suggest. Thank you!
Sorry
I appreciate you responding to this and explaining what happened. Being busy is understandable, is adding mods with more time something you’re open to? I can’t volunteer my own time, but someone might be able to step up.
Yes, of course! Moderators are gold. I need to make a better effort at recruiting.
[Removing my comment because it appears to be an innocent mistake]
I’m just so exhausted. We can’t seem to talk about gender or sex without the default thought process going “politics” or “troll”. Trans existence is taboo.
EDIT: Salamander explained they were very busy and this is an honest mistake. I appreciate them and what they do and I do not think they did anything malicious whatsoever. They have apologized.
I do think my point still stands though: the topic of sex or transgender people seems to make knee-jerk reactions much more common and I wish that were not the case. It’s also a really common trolling tactic to post malicious links to espouse really shitty views under the guise of “learning”. I empathize with the very real fact that many posts about those topics are designed to skirt along that “just asking questions” line of trolling, so this kind of moderating is really hard to do right.
Put this on the Mander sidebar
People who want to avoid talking about trans people or orientation because it’s “political” are revealing where they really stand in regards to political alignment.
Anything to do with a living being’s rights become “political” because of who uses it as an answer to attempt to shut down discourse and shape it around their masked bigotry
Also, if you say trans rights are political in attempt to push it out the realm of acceptable discussion, that is an offensive action, expect people like me to treat it as an act of war because it is.
:l
Not a good look.
Patiently awaiting Sal’s response.
Prepared to be disappointed.I don’t predict @Sal@mander.xyz responding to this unless he’s willing to acknowledge it as a mistake. I think he knows that his position would make him very unpopular in the fediverse, where most places emphasize trans rights and visibility. It’s especially disappointing because he chose to remove real science in favor of his own political bias.
It’s especially disappointing because he chose to remove real science in favor of his own political bias.
That was not why I removed it. I removed it because I thought that many users reported it as racist/transphobic. If that many people report it as racist/transphobic, that is usually enough for me. The problem is that it was a comment to the post what was being reported, not the post itself, but I was processing the reports quickly and I made that mistake.
That said, since you brought up my political bias, I don’t mind stating my actual views openly.
Here are some biases that come to mind:
- I weigh a local community’s interests much more heavily than a business interest
- anti-nationalism bias
- biased towards policies that aim to reduce global inequality and minimize environmental damage, even when they come at the expense of the local population
- biased towards immigration policies that provide mobility
- anti war, anti violence
- pro privacy
- pro drug legalization
When it comes to gender identity: To me, it is common sense that everyone deserves respect, medical professionals should be the ones deciding, based on the best available evidence, what care is appropriate for their patients, and people should be able to make their own informed choices. I want everyone to live their best possible life and if someone identifies in some way, then accepting that and treating them how they want to be treated takes minimal effort and is basic respect. So, I can appreciate that it is an important political issue, but it is just so frustrating that it is an issue at all. Political discussions around gender identity often start from assumptions that I reject, and so I don’t see the point of engaging the discussion at that level. If you want to know my bias on that, it is: don’t use politics to regulate how medical professionals can help people, and respect everyone. I’m sorry to people who care deeply about sports, world records, and gendered bathrooms, but to me those are secondary issues. Basic human dignity comes first. The edge cases, legal loopholes, medical malpractice or abuse, and sports regulations can be dealt with after that. What I often notice is that science gets pulled into debates that already rest on assumptions I reject.
An example that comes to mind is reading, many years ago, that gay penguins show that being gay is natural, and that this somehow supports the argument for gay marriage. I never liked that reasoning, and I find that having a back-and-forth about whether being gay is natural or not is counter-productive. This type of argument implicitly accepts an appeal to nature, which I reject.
So, the way I see it, what looks like a purely scientific disagreement is often not resolvable by science alone, because the actual disagreement lives underneath that, in different values and basic philosophical assumptions. It is extremely difficult to moderate a polarized discussion when science is used as if it could settle arguments that actually go much deeper, into values and what people think is right or wrong.
This is how I see it.
@Sal@mander.xyz Could we get an explanation on this. It seems unfair to have a good scientific article removed from the Science instance seemingly without good reason.
I think this probably covers the explanation: https://mander.xyz/comment/27596923
The goal when creating this instance was to a place to discuss about scientific discoveries, post pictures of nature, and have a set of communities for this while avoiding polarizing content. If someone wants to discuss politics they can click on ‘All’ and go right to it. The scope is explicitly anti-politics because I do not want to moderate a politically charged or polarizing environment, and I know that many people with interests like mine will also appreciate such a space existing because they see enough pictures of Donald Trump and polarizing discussions elsewhere.
it seems like @Sal@mander.xyz thinks trans people are too polarizing for his instance. his comments come across as a very “don’t disturb the status quo” kind of liberal. or as I like to call them, a Nazi collaborator. because if you aren’t fighting the fascists in some way, then you’re actively helping them.
Agreed, by choosing to decide arbitrarily that trans people are political and shouldn’t be discussed @Sal@mander.xyz is helping to further the fascist agenda against trans people. Lots of people don’t know this but the number one way media alienates trans people isn’t by making offensive jokes about us, or invalidating us directly, but by just erasing our existence.
That’s what gamergate and not wanting queer people in video games and movies is about. They want us to stop existing in the minds of public people.
@derHolz@sh.itjust.works You have an interesting account, not at all suspicious in any way…
So is climate change political? What about vaccines or the shape of the earth?
yes yes and yes.
it’s why trying to ban topics on the basis of being “political” is actually insane. we live in a world where the basic concepts of facts and shared reality are increasingly polarized and politicized. Science as a concept has become political.
Climate change should not be political. But it unfortunately is.
“Stop making it political!”
- People with the worst politics that don’t want to be outed.
The scope is explicitly anti-politics
real “i don’t do politics, politics do you” energy here
I look forward to them applying this consistently and banning all biology articles that mention anything relating to sexual reproduction and development. No? Just trans people? Weeeeird… Huh…
Probably articles about gayness and sexual orientation in general as well. It seems like something he would also have a problem with for being “political”.
If I disagree with it or don’t like it, it’s political.
Maybe I should do it. I should become the first person to make a truly unbiased, “no politics allowed” community. Posting is banned. It will just be a blank page. I look forward to their attentive and continuing viewership.
You could actually do this as a bit because I believe that Lemmy lets you create a community where only the mod(s) can create new posts. You could take this bit pretty far if you wanted to.
If this isn’t resolved I will no longer post science articles on Mander.
Eewww nope what a creepy choice I don’t like it at all, I hope this was a misunderstanding.
edit ok who wants to make a new science focused instance?
I don’t want to speak on behalf of Sal, but I would like to point out that I have seen a lot of posts on similar topics on Mander.xyz. I think it’s worth waiting for Sal to comment on this before people get the pitchforks out.
I will also point out this from the sidebar of mander.xyz:
Please keep politics to a minimum. When science is the focus, intersection with politics may be tolerated as long as the discussion is constructive and science remains the focus. As a general rule, political content posted directly to the instance’s local communities is discouraged and may be removed. You can of course engage in political discussions in non-local communities.
This is something that I talked to Sal about before creating !publichealth@mander.xyz, and I was satisfied with the answer at the time. Everything intersects politics at some level, and those intersections are more prominent in some topics. Mander.xyz is an academic focussed instance, and it tries to carve out a space for constructive conversation the communities that are hosted on it. Sometimes it’s not the topic that is the problem, but the quality of the specific article that is being posted.
Also, that particular community is supposed to be about ‘General discussions about “science” itself’, and if you look at the very old posts, they were meta discussions about the scientific method and scientific research. It seems to have taken a new life over the years though.
It’s also possible that the comment section was the concern, and maybe it was easier to remove the post instead of carefully going through all the comments. I think Sal has earned a chance at speaking about this before the pitchforks.
Some people’s definition of “politics” is bewildering nonsense. Reality is not a team sport. Things that conservatives screech about can still be simple and true and kind of important to be state plainly, firmly, and often. Politely censoring discussion of whatever they’re loudly wrong about is not avoiding the problem - it’s running interference on their behalf.
i think it was removed because the comments got way too heated. shoild prabably have been locked instead. doesn’t explain the given reason though.
Yeah that’s not a good reason to remove posts. Really hope we get an explanation.
Yeah. Feels like the right move would be to lock the post and remove the offending comments, rather than remove the whole post. The post itself is perfectly in bounds for the community. I also hope there’s a good explanation, but I’m prepared to be let down.
Meh. If you’re unable to properly moderate the comment section, you end up giving the bigots a platform, and vulnerable people are unsafe. That’s how hate speech proliferates on the internet.
There’s a good reason to lock certain topics, removing them less so, although it does stop bigots whining about not being able to share their stunning insights on those certain topics.
It’s the whole reason places like beehaw or gay clubs exist.
If bad comments are enough to remove a post, then bad actors can remove any post by spamming it with bad comments.
Yep. Which is why I said above the mod was overreacting and should simply have locked down comments if it was getting bad and/or they felt unable to deal with the comment section.
In the right contexts it can be a good reason. In this case I can imagine reports on the comments were flying left and right, despite the article itself having no issues. That might have provoked a removal, habitually to avoid needing to go into the comments section with a surgical needle to remove the transphobia, bigotry, off-topic comments and flame-baiting.
The post seems to have been re-upped by someone else, no comments, so I think (and you don’t have to agree with me for any of this) there’s no issue with the article itself. I’ll be charitable and put the removal modlog comment as reference to the contained comments getting way too political for the site, rather than the article.
deleted by creator
I saw that get removed because I tried to comment. I’m befuddled about it, too.
I am gonna need more context
OP had the article posted in another community. I also cross-posted it to several trans and intersex communities myself. You can read it here.
And that news source is entirely written by scientists with relevant experience. If that’s not suitable for a science community that allows something other than scientific papers, I don’t know what would be
Thanks, this doesn’t make the mod in question look any better.
It’s there now. Or maybe a different science instance?
as far as i can tell it’s removed from !science@mander.xyz and remains present on !science@lemmy.ml
Damn, stupid, commie, tankies censoring everything!! This is why we need to kick them off the fediverse!
rereads comment
oh
Well my point still stands!
It’s up, but from a different user. So the original takedown is still in effect
Ah, ok. I was confused and thought it was still up.
My main account used to be on mander, and politics is kinda a general but subtle problem on mander. (I eventually decided not to have a “main” account at all after I realized how much creepy surveillance is on the internet – little to do with mander’s politics.)
Sal tries to prevent the political circus from taking over the instance, but there’s a tension because the political circus is increasingly escaping containment and actually effecting people’s lives. While I’m not exactly sure what Sal was thinking with this particular incident, I think it’s hard to disagree that LGBT has become a part of the political circus and culture war.
Like, let’s just lay it out at a very high level: LGBT people, like everyone, are weird. Unlike most other weirdness they’re organized and vocal about their weirdness because of a long history of very real persecution. The LGBT community works very hard to “build allies” (make disliking their weirdness socially taboo) because that protects them from further persecution. This is wise in a sense: It’s a peaceful mechanism of self defense. The issue is as polarization increases people can become confused about which side is the aggressor – even if they know overall the LGBT were persecuted, they may view that has historical, or they may think the response is disproportionate, or some other similar view. This frustrates a lot of LGBT people who have personally experienced these persecutions because they know it’s not over, LGBT won’t be a non-issue anytime in the foreseeable future, and are rather fond of their communities. That said, I think the LGBT community knows it’s become a political element. Debatable whether they’re political pawns being used to seize power or a political faction in their own right.
I can’t tell you whether Sal made the right call or not. I don’t know where people should draw the line for apart of politics or not apart of politics, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to want to step away from the political circus. Further, dbzer0 certainly doesn’t have much room to criticize other instances who choose to moderate their communities, even if you don’t fully agree on where to draw the line.
I’d advocate giving @Sal@mander.xyz some grace with these judgements. They’re hard to make, and if nothing else @TRAHR@quokk.au is very clearly a very political account who probably shouldn’t be posting on mander in the first place.
I am not a “political account”, I am a trans person trying to raise awareness of the challenges and few successes we are having in being able to exist.
Just as a I post news which can often be political, I also post movies, science, sports, and other content as I find it.
People no longer understand the difference between humanity and politics
Well, if you don’t see how that aspect of yourself could be seen as political, I can see why you don’t think you’re political, but you’re clearly very passionate about a topic that most other people recognize as somewhat political. There’s nothing wrong with that in itself, but I think you can see a conflict like this was fairly likely if you’re regularly posting indiscriminately with no little knowledge of the instances or communities you’re posting in. It’s not the end of the world nor is it an attack on you or your passions. You’ll either learn to self moderate or choose different communities.
Now, if you don’t mind I’m gonna step away from this conversation before an over eager mod/admin bans my ass.
I posted a highly scientific article written by a scientist in a science community.
Let us hope they do, maybe you will learn to self moderate in the future.
Whelp. Idk how to respond in a way that doesn’t provoke more conflict over things I don’t think we should be fighting over.
So I’m disengaging.
The two genders, political and straight. Brilliant illustration of how that translates to bias.
I apologize if it came across that way, but that wasn’t my intent.
While I’m not exactly sure what Sal was thinking with this particular incident, I think it’s hard to disagree that LGBT has become a part of the political circus and culture war.
of course its part of the culture war and you obviously dont know what you talking about if you think it makes talking about it negative at all unless you are on one of the spectrums advocating against it. also not elaborating on why to label it part of “political circus”?
The LGBT community works very hard to “build allies” (make disliking their weirdness socially taboo) because that protects them from further persecution. This is wise in a sense: It’s a peaceful mechanism of self defense. The issue is as polarization increases people can become confused about which side is the aggressor
current status quo in most places trans are being targeted, whats confusing about who is the aggressor part? its more taboo to say you are pro-trans rights in most places than not
the LGBT community knows it’s become a political element
due to politicians dangling over in their front how they will control over and what they should a have a right of, its not something it “became” you make it sound like its something recent which you clearly would be ignoring past history
I can’t tell you whether Sal made the right call or not.
which is why other people are asking for an official statement coming from Sal, but your whole comment goes around trying to defend what happened based on your definition of “political circus” not established within your comment other than throwing it over at the whole LGBT movement or just trying to avoid using the word trans while being shy to say you think its fair for a minority not affecting others lives other than misinformation being spewed on of them and hateful targetting
Debatable whether they’re political pawns being used to seize power or a political faction in their own right
mask slipping off? its fine if you admit you didnt notice the bias you are holding and try to learn from it but breaking down your comment makes it clear your intention whether on purpose or not
if nothing else @TRAHR@quokk.au is very clearly a very political account who probably shouldn’t be posting on mander in the first place
ends with calling out the person who is reporting possible power trip for clarity and to see whats going on as in the wrong here simply for being trans, a lot of labels to throw at trans people and not use the word a single time and end your comment with targetting one and labeling them political just for being themselves, the article posted in question was written by actual scientisfs and gone through using the scientific method, it seems perfectly fit for the community it was posted on
Man, this response sucks. I put so much effort into trying to politely explain why this situation arose while making it clear that I’m cool with LGBT people, and I still get this demonization for not mindlessly siding with one side. Yeah, I did call out the person who posted in violation of a communities rules & guidelines then came running to dbzer0 to stir up drama – that’s wildly inappropriate behavior.
Whatever, y’all can stay apart of your tribe and blind yourself to any other. I don’t think it’s wise, but you’re clearly not gonna listen to me.
If I look on Science@mander.xyz it’s still there, but that might be me. This being said.
BPR. The whole gender debate has become toxic.
Most plausible scenario is that it’s not a reflection on what you posted but that the mod didn’t want to deal with the comment section, and removed it for that reason.
Or they didn’t read the article and assumed it was ‘it’s just science’ transphobia, because there are so many of them even on here. Probably should have taken a breath and read the article, which is still up on !science@lemmy.ml and is genuinely interesting.
Or they didn’t want to set a precedent of allowing one article on gender/sex, only for a hundred transphobes to start whining that their ‘scientific’ articles weren’t allowed.
I mean, maybe they should have locked it, but there’s a plausible reason they didn’t want to deal with that shit and shut it down fast.
