✨ Nora Tindall  🪐

he was able to exploit the internal heuristics of the community, and in lieu of a strong guiding force, the community embraced those heuristics and re-oriented themselves around him and his fucked up opinions about moderation and what makes a good space.

what this means is that, while I did find the technical discussion on the site pretty good, I don't find it worthwhile to post there, because I'm interested in technology that affects humans, so half my posts are "politics" and thus attract low quality discussion and shunning.

for instance, in what is perhaps my most read blog post, i mention that "real name" policies can be harmful to transgender people, among other groups. that was, before i deleted my account, my most flagged post, despite being relatively uncontroversial otherwise.

anyway what i'm saying is: you have to set a bright line at the start that excludes people who are axiomatically unwilling to give a shit about anyone else in the community, or else that axiom will become deeply entrenched in the community ethos.

lines, https://llllllll.co/ , is a wonderful example of this. it is a community that grew entirely organically, but the people who run it a) are themselves wonderful people and b) are extremely clear that the community is meant to be a safe and welcoming space, and enforce that

this by no means limits the quality of technical, political, or artistic discussion that is had there; indeed, i learned more about DSP, music, and frankly life while browsing lines than i ever learned about FOSS, maths, or hardware on Lobsters.