Alright, I have to ask. What exactly happened?
Shitty moderation, which is an issue with the startrek.website instance as a whole. RootBeerGuy provided the gist in a comment below, but the catalyst for the exodus was when the mod deleted a post about Sarah Silverman making out with Tuvok. I mean, it sounds lame, but Risa was supposed to be a shitpost community, with its sole rule being “there are no rules”. It was supposed to be a fun place. It happened a few too many times, so the top posters created the tenforward community here on lemmy.world.
A lot of people followed, and within 48 hours the activity on Risa dropped down to almost nothing. The handful of stuff that is being posted is cringy boomer humor.
Why? What happened to startrek.website?
It’s still there, I guess there was some drama over moderation policies, so a few of the big Risa guys made Ten Forward as an alternative.
This is now a very subjective opinion that I am not backing up in any way, so take it with a grain of salt:
Thats not just Risa, it is the whole instance and its moderation. Especially during the first months I had seen some really weird decisions in the startrek community on topics or comments that got deleted.
It is the reason I started making accounts on other instances because I dislike the complete non-transparency about that. Comments or topics asking about those deletions were gasp also deleted.
So whatever, glad people moved away. I am quite dissapointed that a whole instance based on one of the historically most inclusive sci fi shows turns out to be not so all embracing.
Edit: I should clarify, the events I refer to were nothing about anything lgtbq+ related. It was, in my opinion, harmless discussions or mild jokes about some posts. No terrible trolling or shitposting. And then when people asked about where that post went, those questions got deleted too. So it is nothing too scandalous and I would not think anyone needs to care greatly about it. But it showed to me that I disagree with moderation and it is probably wise for me not to have my main account on that instance.
I used to mod /c/Risa so I will back it up: this is exactly correct. There’s a disconnect at the very heart of their approach to moderation they refuse to acknowledge. On the one hand, they want their written rules to be simple and common sense: be civil, don’t be a bigot, don’t spam, etc. etc. But at the same time, many of them have strong and specific opinions about moderation and/or Star Trek and they moderate to that effect. If you ask them about a removal which has tripped one of these hidden rules, at best they’ll tell you it was covered under one of the generic rules like “no spam” or “stay on topic” and at worst they’ll just start insulting you.
For example, one of the mods there is a huge Discovery fan and so if you say anything bad about Discovery without taking the praise sandwich approach to delivering it, it’s gonna get removed and you might be banned. Anyone who tried to be critical of Discovery back on /r/StarTrek is likely familiar with this de facto policy. And of course, the mod who took over for me in /c/Risa is apparently not a fan of AI art or tabloid gossip and has banned these kinds of content, without changing my very simple declaration for the community: there are no real rules.
This exact kind of user revolt happened to them back on Reddit but between the fact that they were sitting on /r/startrek, the obvious place to have a Star Trek sub, and the fact that the most successful attempt at splintering was taken over by conservative dipshits almost immediately, /r/startrek continued to be the big main community on Reddit.
I’d love to see them develop an understanding of why hidden rules are bad for communities, but I don’t see it happening any time soon. Looks like it’s ales for everyone.
Thanks for all the insights, I was not aware how far back this goes.
Thank you for explaining, I was unaware of the situation. Having previously been an administrator for a large message board I know that the job can be difficult, but I have little regard for people who are unable to make an attempt at fair adjudication. Perhaps I should begin searching for a new home instance too.
For anyone who cares, this account gets repeated often, but is completely false. I was founder and top mod of r/StarTrek for a decade and we absolutely had no “hidden rules” under my tenure nor did they as far as I know after I quit (for unrelated reasons in protest of Reddit policies).
What was often complained about is some of our intentionally broader rules like “criticism must be constructive” and “be civil” that were crafted in an effort to discourage low-effort whining (often about Discovery in particular because any mildly-positive post was getting swarmed to death by “just my opinion” bros) and A Certain Type of Person really didn’t like feeling restricted by that, but we were always fully transparent about the reasoning behind our decisions and fully understood that our vision for what we wanted in a community meant we wouldn’t appeal to everyone.
Well, good to have a contrasting opinion.
I cannot say anything against that, just that what I wrote from my perspective now looks exactly like that, right now on startrek.website.
I don’t really care if it necessarily was or was not like that on reddit, in my experience it is exactly like that now on lemmy.
It is the reason I started making accounts on other instances because I dislike the complete non-transparency about that. Comments or topics asking about those deletions were gasp also deleted.
This is also what they did on reddit. Worse, when fans made a new sub to talk freely (including about their awful moderation), they complained to reddit and got that shut down too.
And thus we see the biggest advantage of the Fediverse; there are no central admins with “final say” about anything.
dude, i posted a picture of star trek shit in a shitsub and it got moderated for breaking the ‘no rules’
this has nothing to do with political talk and everything to do with one guy just bein that guy
I don’t blame you. That shit is a slippery slope and people who don’t have to or won’t explain their actions tend to get worse over time. Good on you for spotting that early and taking action.
honestly a huge fan of lemmy drama. where is my lemmy drama community
There’s !fediverselore@lemmy.ca and !lemmydrama@lemmy.world
I used to go to r/outoftheloop for this type of drama. Unfortunately, the only outoftheloop in the fediverse isn’t very active yet.
mod has silent rules in his shitposting sub. like literally, our shit isnt ‘on topic’, deleted. single mod, no recourse.
deleted
, for exampleThat’s sounds fair if that’s your level of shitposts…
cool story bro
I heard the people that are still subscribed to that instance tolerate bigotry. Or so I’ve heard.
Is this…the Grey Poupon guy? A whisper of a single fragment of a thought heard him speak in my brain, and he politely asked for mustard on his way to Ten Forward.
“Computer, mustard, Grey Poupon”
Yup!
Same here … now I have to find something to go with the mustard
Good memory!
