One thing Voat may have done right.

Pinging @Christheguy because it is relevant to the post too.

I put together the current version of the TOS. At the moment, some of the things in the TOS are quite restrictive. There are the obvious things like a ban on child porn and whatnot, but some of the things listed there are not there because we wanted to ban it.

Gambling, for example, is prohibited. I have had to make posts on Voat about vulnerabilities in surveillance cameras and other things, because discussion about that sort of thing is not allowed here. The reason for this is our current hosting provider has a very strict set of rules regarding what their service can be used for. Hate speech, gambling and discussion about hacking are banned under the hosting provider's TOS, so it has to be in our TOS too whether we like it or not.

So far, the only content removed from Phuks has been spam. It was very very very clear that it was spam, and on one occasion there were about 40-50 spam posts made within an hour, all of which were removed. Nobody has been shadowbanned, all sitewide bans can be seen in the site log, which is on the sidebar on the frontpage. All mod bans can be seen in the sub logs. We do have some banned domains, all of which were domains being spammed. There is a page that contains the banned domains but I can't remember the url.

I would love to see a system wide rule here that states no mod can ban except for posted rules.

This would be a nice safeguard, but it is easily bypassed by adding new rules to the sidebar when you want to ban someone. There is also a problem from a moderating point of view too. I have banned people before for reasons that did not come under sub rules. The entire ban list on ModernPowers on Voat was probably banned for reasons that were not specified on the sidebar. However, in all cases, the players were behind the decisions because it was the best thing to do for the sub.

I would also like it if there was some guidelines that required mods to have community support for adding/changing rules.

I think this would work very well on Phuks as it is right now. There is no doubt that we would all be able to agree to rules on different subs without disagreements. This is pretty clear considering that basically none of our subs have rules, yet everyone is sticking to a certain standard when they post. The problem is, depending on the userbase, this can be a very bad thing. Let's say the quality of content on one of the subs you're moderating drops. In order to combat it, you want to add a rule, but you need to seek community approval first. Users do not agree to the rule change because it means they can't shitpost anymore. Unpopular decisions sometimes make subs better.

I think we should adopt the ModernPowers model for dealing with this stuff. Have a very basic guideline to start with, then deal with each problem as it arises. The userbase is small enough to figure our shit out gradually.

Pinging @Christheguy because it is relevant to the post too. I put together the current version of the TOS. At the moment, some of the things in the TOS are quite restrictive. There are the obvious things like a ban on child porn and whatnot, but some of the things listed there are not there because we wanted to ban it. Gambling, for example, is prohibited. I have had to make posts on Voat about vulnerabilities in surveillance cameras and other things, because discussion about that sort of thing is not allowed here. The reason for this is our current hosting provider has a very strict set of rules regarding what their service can be used for. Hate speech, gambling and discussion about hacking are banned under the hosting provider's TOS, so it has to be in our TOS too whether we like it or not. So far, the only content removed from Phuks has been spam. It was very very very clear that it was spam, and on one occasion there were about 40-50 spam posts made within an hour, all of which were removed. Nobody has been shadowbanned, all sitewide bans can be seen in the site log, which is on the sidebar on the frontpage. All mod bans can be seen in the sub logs. We do have some banned domains, all of which were domains being spammed. There is a page that contains the banned domains but I can't remember the url. >I would love to see a system wide rule here that states no mod can ban except for posted rules. This would be a nice safeguard, but it is easily bypassed by adding new rules to the sidebar when you want to ban someone. There is also a problem from a moderating point of view too. I have banned people before for reasons that did not come under sub rules. The entire ban list on ModernPowers on Voat was probably banned for reasons that were not specified on the sidebar. However, in all cases, the players were behind the decisions because it was the best thing to do for the sub. >I would also like it if there was some guidelines that required mods to have community support for adding/changing rules. I think this would work very well on Phuks as it is right now. There is no doubt that we would all be able to agree to rules on different subs without disagreements. This is pretty clear considering that basically none of our subs have rules, yet everyone is sticking to a certain standard when they post. The problem is, depending on the userbase, this can be a very bad thing. Let's say the quality of content on one of the subs you're moderating drops. In order to combat it, you want to add a rule, but you need to seek community approval first. Users do not agree to the rule change because it means they can't shitpost anymore. Unpopular decisions sometimes make subs better. I think we should adopt the ModernPowers model for dealing with this stuff. Have a very basic guideline to start with, then deal with each problem as it arises. The userbase is small enough to figure our shit out gradually.

[–] Christheguy [OP] 3 points (+3|-0)

I understand what you're saying about the TOS, and support banning illegal activity here. I think you guys are on the right track, and because of that choose to be a Phukker (is that what we're calling ourselves now?). Hopefully you can find a provider that balances cost with freedom, but I understand why we have the rules we have for now.

One concern I have is once we begin to get more people, we might attract the negative attitudes and actions that voat unfortunately did. So far though I think the general positivity and openness of the current users should be enough to keep this site "on the right track" so to speak.

[–] PMYA 4 points (+4|-0)

Edited

This is something that has come up before when we've talked about advertising to get more users. The unfortunate consequence of hosting a site with a basis built on free speech is it will attract toxicity. Reddit banned their hate subs to make the site more appealing to advertisers, but I would not be in the least bit surprised to find out that they also had the secondary motive of killing Voat. When the blackout happened, a mixed demographic of users moved to Voat. By banning the hate subs, they dumped all of the users they didn't want anyway onto Voat, and ensured that some of the blackout users who left would come back, due to the hate sub users making Voat shit.

It might be a blessing that we are temporarily restricted by our hosting provider. We have avoided that toxicity for the time being. That, and the fact that we basically cherry picked half of the current users, anyway.

[–] Arotaes 5 points (+5|-0)

Voat also became unmarketable and (currently) unsustainable IMHO. Again, find the happy medium.

[–] Christheguy [OP] 2 points (+2|-0)

I've never thought of it that way. I'm tempted to say Reddit wouldn't do something like that, but it really does make sense, even if it wasn't their primary goal.

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One thing Voat may have done right.

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/s/Whatever