I think mastodon and the fediverse could benefit from a more universal system of clearly classifying server communities by moderation activity and fediblock level. it’s ok for servers to have different priorities, but part of helping people pick the right one has to be helping people easily understand their differences at sign up. I know others have called for this, just add my name to the petition
@seachanger I would really love something like this. I’m realizing I may have to make a change- even though I personally have had no problems with my instance- but others have had problems with the person running my instance so we’re about to be defederated from- I’m not even sure how many instances (it’s not clear)
But how to choose a new one where things like that are less likely to happen?
@seachanger I agree. It doesn't have to be complicated. Just a set of symbols to reflect moderation practices.Was just recommending a similar thing today..yesterday? whenever Monday was.
@seachanger I think that having a star system would also only work if you go by the Roger Ebert system of judging them by how well they set out to do what they aim to do - as you said, different people have different needs, some people want an absolute safe space and other people want a more rough and tumble environment but obviously still want the dregs of the fediverse filtered out, so you'd have to rate them by how well they do each of those things
@seachanger Agreed. The way I settled where I am was by joining a bunch of servers around the same time and seeing what I liked the most after several months, but I’m an outlier in being someone prepared to do that - most people wouldn’t think or care to go through the effort and instead end up making their choice without knowing whether their server sucks or not.
Another idea could be servers/communities having some sort of review system visible to newcomers 🤔
@seachanger I would like to see full transparency of server moderation policies available for users to see. Since people have to pick a server as their gateway to the Fediverse, it's important to surface how the decisions of admins will affect their experience.
@seachanger@weyoun6 just having each server's "About" displayed on joinmastodon would be a massive (and as far as I can see, relatively easy to implement) step
@seachanger@weyoun6 I'm with you until user reviews. In my mind that's just gonna lead to vote manipulation. Also, people are gonna rate servers low is they disagree with political views of other members. A five star experience to me is not gonna be always a five star experience to me.
But I'm all for better mod tools and transparency.
Casual users might not know that each server “fediblocks” some other servers for safety. many of us use shared lists of bad servers to block that we manually upload.
What I’ve seen suggested (and what I believe mastodon is working on) is making these fediblock lists part of our moderation interface so we all use the same system.
Which tier we use plus how well we enforce our own rules could earn us a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ safety rating that could also be at least partially generated by user reviews
it’s ok for many of us to use a safety tier that has trade offs, as long as we consent to these trade offs at sign up. For example, I’m comfortable federating with mainstream media who are often problematic (NYT or BBC for example) and believe the benefits out weigh the costs. For me, the relative loss in safety is worth the trade off of being able to have a direct relationship with the news source. That kind of trade off should be named and listed in my server’s safety rating
@seachanger I agree that we need more transparent instance policies and moderation, but I disagree on a star rating system. New users would naturally gravitate to the five stars because obviously they want the best. But just because a server blocks more instances and is technically safer does not mean is better. If a new user joined an instance and then tried to follow BBC and could not they would likely get frustrated unless it was clearly laid out what the star rating means. In which case we should just lay out what the instance blocks in a clear format instead of trying to reduce it to a misleading star system.
@sv@seachanger When signing up for a server I would have found it extremely confusing and frustrating that a 5 star safety rating would indicate that NYT and BBC would've been blocked.
@seachanger@xorn@sv if only users of the server in question can contribute to the rating, that would discount the opinions of former users who left the server due to the moderation levels, right? It's kinda tricky
Add comment