Seirdy

Seirdy, 3 hours ago to random

Here’s something that annoys me a bit when I reference a blocklist. I say this with the understanding that large instances’ block-reasons visible to non-members should serve as reference for non-members (other mods, prospective users, etc.):

Intentionally vague terms such as “bad vibes” make for a great reason to block on a user level, or even a small tight-knit instance. Without further elaboration, they make for terrible reasons to attach to moderation decisions for large more-open instances. Such vagueness seems like a rhetorical tool to launder a lack of block reason. Seeing “Vibes” used this often on something that’s supposed to give transparency has weird vibes tells me something about how we’ve normalized rhetorically deceptive language in moderation transparency. Just be honest and leave the reason blank instead of exposing the fact that you can’t actually name what’s wrong with an instance.

A lack of explanation is fine. It’s honest: it means “we aren’t making this reason public”. It still gives prospective users useful information about which instances they can expect to connect to. But providing the appearance of a reason is something else. If I don’t know why you blocked an instance with no block-reason, I can ask. Then I’ll know if I should act on it too. If the reason is “vibes” then it gives the impression that I’m supposed to just “know”, and that I shouldn’t ask for receipts since it should be self-evident. It might be self-evident (a brief scroll through e.g. Poast makes its block-worthiness obvious), so say that instead to make it clear.

“Vibes” isn’t the only intentionally-vague term I’m aware of, and I’m guilty of propagating some in the past.

Again, this doesn’t apply on small tight-knit instances whose users know what their mods meant. Do whatever your members want on those. “Vibes” is also fine if you elaborate with specific reasons.

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Oops, this got wordy. I think the length exaggerates how strongly I feel about this. TLDR: moderation transparency shouldn’t select vague terms to hide a lack of reasons. It invites more questions while also discouraging people from asking them. Be honest about your unwillingness to give a public reason by not providing one.

Seirdy, 13 hours ago to random

Hastur PR 949 mentioned meesee :gura_pleading:

I love being perceived by people working on things I’m interested in out of the blue. It gives me the fuzzy feelings.

Seirdy, 2 days ago to random

Certain search engines have reached out to me since I made my list of search engine indexes asking to be moved from the Bing-based engines section to the semi-independent engines section because they have their own indexes.

All returned zero organic link results for some time during the Bing outage.

Qwant has contacted others (not me) regarding claims of Bing-dependence whenever it became a hot topic, insisting that it mixes results from its own index with Bing (something usually against the Bing ToS unless you somehow manage to negotiate an exception, which rarely happens and has finer details covered by NDAs). Has anybody seen evidence of Qwant using its own index? It’s one of the engines whose organic results went completely dormant during the Bing outage.

agr, 2 days ago to searxng

While Bing is down, time to (re)visit @Seirdy excellent post:

**A look at search engines with their own indexes

https://seirdy.one/posts/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexes/

Including Mojeek (own index) and SearxNG a metasearch engine (list of public instances here: https://searx.space/)

#Bing #SearchEngines #Mojeek #SearxNG

Seirdy, 4 days ago to random

“Fads swept the youth of the Sprawl at the speed of light; entire subcultures could rise overnight, thrive for a dozen weeks, and then vanish utterly.”

Neuromancer on Harambe

Seirdy, 5 days ago to random

Please stop using service workers for your text-and-image websites without testing in secure browsing profiles, with privacy/security features designed to fuck up how service workers behave.

18+ schratze, 1 year ago to random

Why do conspiracy theory iceberg charts never talk about the really interesting stuff, such as:

-Hidden Hand
-tonewood isn't real
-Chernobyl antennas
-starlings are extraterrestrial spaceships
-UFOs are weather phenomenon (ball lightning)
-giant hogweed health benefits
-gravitational pull of pepsi
-Stuttgart black hole
-Sovereign Military Order of Malta recognition
-Wolfgang Holbein silencing
-lottery honeypot to catch time travelers
-Gorillaz not real
-Affeln (do not research)
-nightjar true identity