196

Hey look, me again! Just like we need community rules, we also need moderator guidelines to set expectations for our behavior. As with community rules, we want everyone to weigh in on them since this is a community for all of us. Here's what we have, let us know what you think:

Moderator Guidelines

• Don't be mean to users. Be gentle or neutral.
• When in doubt about whether or not a user is problematic, send them a DM if you have the time and energy.
• Don't waste time debating/arguing with problematic users.
• Assume the best, but don't tolerate sealioning/just asking questions/concern trolling.
• Ask another mod to take over cases you struggle with, or when things get personal.
• Ask the other mods for advice when things get complicated.
• Don't perform too much moderation in the comments, except if you want a verdict to be public or to ask people to dial a convo down/stop. Single comment warnings are okay.
• Send users concise DMs about verdicts about them, such as bans etc, except in cases where it is clear we don't want them at all, such as obvious transphobes. No need to notify someone they haven't been banned of course.
• Some users are stupid and focus on pedantry and technicalities. If you struggle to deal with such users, send them to another mod.
• Explain to a user why their behavior is problematic and how it is distressing others rather than engage with whatever they are saying. Ask them to avoid this in the future and send them packing if they do not comply.
• First warn users, then temp ban them, then finally perma ban them when they break the rules or act inappropriately. Skip steps if necessary.
• Use neutral statements like "this statement can be considered transphobic" rather than "you are being transphobic".
• Remember you are a voluntary moderator. You don't get paid. Take a break when you need one. Perhaps ask another moderator to step in if necessary.

Hiiii everybody! We need rules to keep the place from going off the rails and your mod team would like you to give them a review and let us know what you think. We're going to implement them now as a temporary ruleset so I'll slap them into the sidebar shortly, then make amendments based on commentary. Here's what we've got:

Community Rules

• Be nice. Assume others have good intent (within reason).
• Block or ignore posts, comments, and users that irritate you in some way rather than engaging. Report if they are actually breaking community rules.
• Use content warnings and/or mark as NSFW when appropriate. Most posts with content warnings likely need to be marked NSFW.
• Most 196 posts are memes, shitposts, cute images, or even just recent things that happened, etc. There is no real theme, but try to avoid posts that are very inflammatory, offensive, very low quality, or very "off topic".
• Avoid AI generated content.
• Avoid corpoposting.
• Avoid misinformation.
• Avoid incomprehensible posts.
• No prejudice such as transphobia, racism, ableism, etc.
• No threats or personal attacks.
• No spam.
• No tankie, nazi, or any other authoritarian behavior.
• No genocide denial.

Everyone, we need to spruce the place up, so we wanted to reach out to you all for submissions for the icon and banner. Here's the idea: submit icons and banners (SFW please). I'll leave this stickied for 72 hours, then we'll pick the most popular of each by upvotes.

I couldn't find specs on icon dimensions, but it appears icons are square and tend to look best at least 256 x 256. Banners tend to be...rectangularish. Here are three banner examples: ( 1 ) ( 2 ) ( 3 )

As always, let me know if you have questions.

I'm kinda regretting not naming it oneninesix, but here we are. I guess I love letters.

~~To anyone wondering what's up, I did this on my phone while out in the "big city", so I'm still waiting to get home to do anything serious. I have a few ~~suckers~~ really nice people who volunteered for modding along with me. Anyone else who is interested, drop me a line. I'll be picking mods when I get home in a few hours. Sorry for the wait and I'll do my best to put out any fires in the meantime. I didn't think this would take off!~~

For those wondering, here's my take on moderating the place.

1. Moderation is to facilitate an experience for its users in line with the goals of the community and the instance. It's not to push a personal agenda, give you a bigger hammer in debates, set up a digital fiefdom, etc. You certainly can and should include your mod experience on your dating profile, though. Unilateral decisions are not cool except in a few situations, like if 100% of your userbase is usurped by literal Nazis.

2. 196 exists to be a place where you post something (often but not always something goofy) when you visit. I know not everyone does and that's fine - I still love you. These things can't be offensive or hurtful, though, especially not intentionally so. Unintentional vs intentional I believe is a HUGE distinction and needs to be considered when moderating.

3. ~~LBJ~~ LBZ exists as an inclusive, (relatively) judgment-free zone for gender-diverse folks. I intend for us to uphold that here. I say relatively judgment free because there will be people looking to start shit and mods and admins are going to have to judge their actions, but only their actions.

If you wanna be my modder, you gotta get with my bullet points...or argue persuasively why I should amend them (but that part doesn't fit the tune).The three big things I'm looking for otherwise are diverse viewpoints, if you can remain reasonably impartial, and if you can say you're sorry. The last is huge for me. As a mod, you're going to mess up. I used to mod on Reddit and I certainly did! I find it's important for maintaining the community's respect to be able to admit when you made a bad call and what you'll do to avoid it in the future.

@[email protected], pointers would be welcome as I think you do a great job.

Community feedback is encouraged and welcome, just be aware I'll be a little slow to respond for a bit.

PS: wow, I really DO love letters!

Edit: Corrected point three, damn autocorrect! Believe it or not, we're not an inclusive community in LBJ's corpse.

Update 20/1/25: We're replete with mods for now! Thank you all who reached out. I'll start pulling these stickies as they get irrelevant, I'm just a full disclosure kind of person so I want people to know what is/has been going on.