Because maybe the current admins are all great people who will do right. But we don’t know if all future admins will be. And if we get a “rules lawyer” coming down on a complaint that some community is being horrifically racist as “Well, it isn’t against the rules…”
But also? The world is an increasingly shitty place. Twitter is run by a straight up white supremacist. Having this kind of verbiage goes a long way toward indicating if a place can even possibly be a “safe space” as it were.
But also: If the idea is that we should just trust the admins: Why have any rules at all?
Nothing here is written in stone. If shitty people take over, there’s absolutely nothing to stop them throwing out the rules as written, or just ignoring them.
But also: If the idea is that we should just trust the admins: Why have any rules at all?
All we have here is trust. These rules are more so the admins proclaiming their intended goals and actions. Again, there’s nothing to stop an instance admin from doing whatever they want. Could it be more verbose? Absolutely. But as for the claims that the new rules show any deviousness on the part of the current admins, or that having better written rules will inherently protect anyone? Those don’t really hold any merit, imo.
The difference is that if a TOS needs to be changed to support shitty behavior, it changes. That is often a canary in the coal mine as it were and people STILL cite google removing “Do no evil” and so forth. Same with the Unity debacle where a few people noticed things had been rewritten… and nobody listened until it became a massive kerfluffle.
Because yes. Admins can do (and see) whatever they want. Welcome to message boards. And I do think having a written TOS is a good step forward (even if this TOS is probably objectively bad for a lot of reasons). It provides a contract of sorts.
But also: I would very much say that NOT providing provisions for discrimination based on ethnicity/sexuality/gender/religion/whatever is a pretty big red flag almost to the level of “I don’t see color”. Because yes, it is not in and of itself support for bigotry (even if many will view it as such). It is an indication of not understanding the problems that others are facing and not realizing how important it is to call that out.
Like, there is a reason that “Wheaton’s Rule” is not actually something you can run a community on. And this has been demonstrated time and time again over the decades.
“Just trust me bro” is never a good model.
Because maybe the current admins are all great people who will do right. But we don’t know if all future admins will be. And if we get a “rules lawyer” coming down on a complaint that some community is being horrifically racist as “Well, it isn’t against the rules…”
But also? The world is an increasingly shitty place. Twitter is run by a straight up white supremacist. Having this kind of verbiage goes a long way toward indicating if a place can even possibly be a “safe space” as it were.
But also: If the idea is that we should just trust the admins: Why have any rules at all?
Nothing here is written in stone. If shitty people take over, there’s absolutely nothing to stop them throwing out the rules as written, or just ignoring them.
All we have here is trust. These rules are more so the admins proclaiming their intended goals and actions. Again, there’s nothing to stop an instance admin from doing whatever they want. Could it be more verbose? Absolutely. But as for the claims that the new rules show any deviousness on the part of the current admins, or that having better written rules will inherently protect anyone? Those don’t really hold any merit, imo.
The difference is that if a TOS needs to be changed to support shitty behavior, it changes. That is often a canary in the coal mine as it were and people STILL cite google removing “Do no evil” and so forth. Same with the Unity debacle where a few people noticed things had been rewritten… and nobody listened until it became a massive kerfluffle.
Because yes. Admins can do (and see) whatever they want. Welcome to message boards. And I do think having a written TOS is a good step forward (even if this TOS is probably objectively bad for a lot of reasons). It provides a contract of sorts.
But also: I would very much say that NOT providing provisions for discrimination based on ethnicity/sexuality/gender/religion/whatever is a pretty big red flag almost to the level of “I don’t see color”. Because yes, it is not in and of itself support for bigotry (even if many will view it as such). It is an indication of not understanding the problems that others are facing and not realizing how important it is to call that out.
Like, there is a reason that “Wheaton’s Rule” is not actually something you can run a community on. And this has been demonstrated time and time again over the decades.