OpenStars

joined 2 years ago
MODERATOR OF
[–] OpenStars@discuss.online 2 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Things like AskUSA or USAFinances could go pretty much anywhere. And even USpolitics does not have to be so problematic. But it sounds like you want a space more for international people to talk about international matters, not only in relation to the USA, though perhaps sparked by events happening in the USA, at least for today but for tomorrow perhaps it will happen elsewhere.

People discussing things in good faith can do so easily and anywhere, I generally find, but the problem with social media is that people who refuse to restrict themselves to good faith discussions will join as well. So basically you may be wanting 4chan, except without the toxicity - but that's not how that works, it would take enormous efforts to build something like that, which could be done but would be supremely difficult especially with the tools offered by Lemmy?

[–] OpenStars@discuss.online 31 points 8 months ago (1 children)

CGP Grey’s video offers both explanation and examples, and helps explain why Americans mostly don't know about the topic. i.e. it was used by people in the North to protect slaves running away, but also by people in the South doing lynch mob activities - either way, it reflects a breakdown of all of society and complete and utter lack of trust in the governing bodies, and a lifting up of personal preferences above the needs of society, to the point of even lying to a judge to accomplish the end goal.

i.e., totally setting aside right vs. wrong, there is a process by which things are most helpful to happen - e.g. voting, and in this case a trial by jury - and this topic completely bypasses that process. In short, it claims that the end justifies the means.

And that is a very dangerous topic indeed. As with the mod on LW, who gets to decide those ends - the Christian God? And who speaks in His place then, you?

[–] OpenStars@discuss.online -1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (11 children)

It's up to jgrim and lazyguru, I don't want to cause them any problems. Though this topic is arguably not "political" (at least in the sense of one side vs. another), just an extremely controversial one, and we also need to be careful bc of the slippery slope: like even if parts of it were considered okay, where is the line between that and when it all of a sudden is not? Lemmy.World was helpful in being very clear where that line should be.

If the admins want to lock this, I will absolutely support that call. Especially with the USA becoming more fascist in a few months time - we need to preserve this space to discuss things in more than we need to have a single discussion about any one topic in particular.

Edit: oh and I just re-read the part about "future crimes" - that seems very likely to get us in trouble, so I would say no, not at all in relation to future crimes. It's one thing to discuss a topic in theory, and quite another to bring federal attention down upon us to scrutinize everything happening here.

[–] OpenStars@discuss.online 3 points 8 months ago

I was a former Reddit refugee myself - were you? Or do you mean that anyone remaining even after the protests doesn't deserve to be here now?

It definitely would be better to leave the old ways behind, and make a better way forward here, if that's what you mean!:-)

[–] OpenStars@discuss.online 5 points 8 months ago

Let the Truthiness guide you: become your inner Raccoon.

The hard part is that no matter what you ask them, they will answer with some variety of food.

img

[–] OpenStars@discuss.online 3 points 8 months ago (8 children)

Damn, I just created !askusa@discuss.online ~2 hours ago, already filled it with 3 posts just to get it off the ground, and there are already more than twice as many downvotes as upvotes. I knew it would be brutal - b/c "Lemmy", ofc - but yeesh! 😰

I do hope that someone wants to help mod, and/or create content b/c I'm definitely not wanting to do this alone!

[–] OpenStars@discuss.online 3 points 8 months ago (5 children)

I don't think every instance has to have a "theme" that it remains exclusive to - although I agree with lazyguru that the existing theme already here is to have fun discussing things:-P - but isn't it enough that DO is welcoming to hosting communities that could meet the needs of the Fediverse as a whole?

Perhaps in addition to !AskUSA@discuss.online we'll add AskLatinAmerica@discuss.online or CasualUS@discuss.online (although I think the former already covers that role?) or GlobalSouth@discuss.online (there is already a !globalsouth@lemm.ee I see). It doesn't need to be exclusive, just welcoming, which it already is:-).

Especially since the role for the significantly more controversial !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world is already covered.

Moving forward, either in this or another post, I would love to hear your thoughts as to what else would make the Fediverse more welcoming to people wanting to migrate here from Reddit? There's only so much distancing we can do from the tankie instances, apparently, but other than that I think Lemmy is off to a great start?

[–] OpenStars@discuss.online 3 points 8 months ago

After today's defederation of discuss.online with hexbear.net, and the post Could Discuss.online become the go-to USA instance?, I created the !askusa@discuss.online community (anyone with an established Discuss.Online account and reputation want to help mod it?). The instance admins don't want such controversial material like USApolitics, but AskUSA as a nice, friendly community to have neat discussions in is perfectly compatible with the mission statement of my home instance!:-)

I modeled the community name after !AskUK@feddit.uk and made it a sister community, along with this one (any others that should be added?).

[–] OpenStars@discuss.online 2 points 8 months ago (2 children)

That would be AMAZING! Sadly, I doubt he will ever run - it is a maddening job, and he is arguably too humble. Also, his role is legit different, in pointing out to us the way that we should go and the problems faced in society, though he (like me) seems to have little clue how to actually fix them:-(. But damn, if he told me who to vote for... 😉

[–] OpenStars@discuss.online 3 points 8 months ago

If your chief goal is to get away from "tankies", then I would say Lemmy.cafe or dubvee.org (which uses the Tesseract alternative Lemmy UI), b/c they are the only ones in America (and then there's https://quokk.au/ in Australia being only the 3rd in the entire world iirc) that defederate from all of the big 3 tankie instances (lemmygrad.ml, hexbear.net, and lemmy.ml).

Note there is also PieFed, e.g. the flagship https://piefed.social/, which offers a number of features including the ability to as a non-admin user block all users from any instance of your choice. It also offers things like categories of communities, hashtag support, an embedded YouTube video playing, etc. Though its basic UI is crude and notifications are still wonky, so it's simultaneously more advanced than Lemmy in some ways while less so in others, and like Tesseract (or Lemmy for that matter:-D), not for everyone (although I do have an alt there and use it daily, so it is usable...mostly).

Though there are a lot of communities on lemmy.ml that some people like, e.g. !firefox@lemmy.ml. Do as you wish ofc.

Personally I have enjoyed Discuss.Online greatly over the past year, due to its fantastic admin support - i.e. superb uptime, quick updates, and especially extremely high reliability of the federation of posts & comments compared to other alts I have had in the same time-period. Its chief drawback - which almost caused me to quit Lemmy altogether early on - was that it federated with hexbear.net and that was getting too annoying to read those. But now that it has defederated from it, that is removed as a detraction.

Read the sidebar text at https://discuss.online/ and see if it might be a good fit for you?

[–] OpenStars@discuss.online 3 points 8 months ago

@admiralpatrick@discuss.online @ptz@dubvee.org would you be interested in helping to create + moderate an AskUSA community, perhaps on Discuss.Online? I ask b/c I value your judgement:-).

The goal would not be for it to be big & fancy so much as to help make Americans feel more welcomed onto this international space and have a place to ask questions related to the great US of A.

I've never modded anything on Lemmy before, so I am unfamiliar with these tools, though I did mod two small gaming communities on Reddit. I was never very good at it tho:-P.

[–] OpenStars@discuss.online 2 points 8 months ago

(1) it's basically a million times more apologetic than anything that I've ever seen coming from Lemmygrad.ml, lemmy.ml, or hexbear.net. e.g. here's an example where the mod says that he wants to kill the OP, then doubles down as to why he wants to shoot him, then finishes off with "I hope you die soon". Yes, I'm absolutely saying that this Lemmy.World mod is 100% better than that.

(2) It explains the reasoning why she did what she did, and what was coming next. Overall, if you don't like the way she mods, then don't post in her community? Be part of the change... At least she was clear in her approach, so that people can make informed decisions.

(3) But the part that is perhaps most relevant here is how it was delivered 3 days ago. The interim time was spent by the admins crafting an amendment to the ToS, but this mod herself offered her thoughts immediately after the event. The word here I believe is "responsive".

Here's a good (imho) specific example of one part of her apology: https://lemmy.world/comment/13830560.

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