This is a community in the spirit of "Am I The Asshole" where people can post their own bans from lemmy or reddit or whatever and get some feedback from others whether the ban was justified or not.
Sometimes one just wants to be able to challenge the arguments some mod made and this could be the place for that.
All posts should follow this basic structure:
Expect to receive feedback about your posts, they might even be negative.
Make sure you follow this instance's code of conduct. In other words we won't allow bellyaching about being sanctioned for hate speech or bigotry.
YPTB matrix channel: For real-time discussions about bastards or to appeal mod actions in YPTB itself.
Some acronyms you might see.
Relevant comms
For a community that bills itself as
“General discussions about “science” itself
Be sure to also check out these other Fediverse science communities:”
And is full of news articles explaining science, having a biologist explain the science of sex biology is not a right fight for a general science community.
I'm just so exhausted. We can't seem to talk about gender or sex without the default thought process going "politics" or "troll". Trans existence is taboo.
EDIT: Salamander explained they were very busy and this is an honest mistake. I appreciate them and what they do and I do not think they did anything malicious whatsoever. They have apologized.
I do think my point still stands though: the topic of sex or transgender people seems to make knee-jerk reactions much more common and I wish that were not the case. It's also a really common trolling tactic to post malicious links to espouse really shitty views under the guise of "learning". I empathize with the very real fact that many posts about those topics are designed to skirt along that "just asking questions" line of trolling, so this kind of moderating is really hard to do right.
Put this on the Mander sidebar
Anything to do with a living being's rights become "political" because of who uses it as an answer to attempt to shut down discourse and shape it around their masked bigotry
Also, if you say trans rights are political in attempt to push it out the realm of acceptable discussion, that is an offensive action, expect people like me to treat it as an act of war because it is.
People who want to avoid talking about trans people or orientation because it's "political" are revealing where they really stand in regards to political alignment.
You are right, I did not make the right call on this one.
I have been neglecting the instance very aggressively due to being busy this summer. I was scanning through the report backlog and this post was reported for 'transphobia'. I skimmed through, clicked on a whitehouse link that said "RESTORING BIOLOGICAL TRUTH TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT" in big letters, and instead of doing more due-diligence I applied a rule that I rarely apply as the discriminant to process it quickly. The rule being, as you mentioned, that the 'Science' community is meant to be for discussing science itself. It is a meta-community.
In practice, I stopped enforcing this rule for the most part, which means that in this case it was an excuse I used to process the report quickly without needing to validate whether I personally think it is 'transphobia' or not.
Sorry
Some things:
I don't know you by reputation or anything about your personal beliefs which have been hinted at here. I am only judging you on this apology and reasonable explanation.
Well done, Salamander.
As the great 21st century philosopher, moralist, and tiger cub, Daniel Tiger, says: "It's okay to make mistakes. Try to fix them and learn from them too!"
I'm glad to hear it was a simple mistake.
If I could make a suggestion restoring the post, and banning users such as 'hoohoohoot@fedinsfw.app' who had commented, an account with prior history of multiple actual transphobic comments in their history, might be a good start to move forward.
Also if you don't mind, could you please DM me with the information for who made the 'transphobia' report? I've noticed some other issues with false reports on some of @TRAHR@quokk.au's posts and I would like to further keep an eye on what accounts are doing this to Quokk.au's users as it may be part of more targeted harassment.
Oh.
I checked the reports, and what I see is a sequence of 6 reports reporting hoohoohoot's comments. I do not have a vivid memory of the moment as I was just processing the back-log, but what must have happened is that In haste I interpreted this as 6 independent reports of the post, not noticing that the reports were of the comments, and so when I opened the post I was operating on what I mistakenly thought was a very high signal. I still did not want to claim 'transphobia' in my reason without verifying that, so, as I explained, I used the loophole as an excuse.
Usually, if this would really have been 6 independent reports of the same post, removing it would have been very likely the correct move. This contributed to why I was careless.
Here are 4 of them, I removed the names because these are not false reports:
That's fair, thanks for clearing that up :)
Yeah, I'm sorry. I usually try to not be this careless and it is very unlikely to happen again (at least this specific form of mistake. I am open to making new kinds of mistakes in the future).
Sorry
I'm glad it was a mistake and that you corrected it. Politics is a tricky subject and nebulously saying no politics isn't a good strategy because everything is political.Politics has an influence on everything in life both good and bad. So I think a better goal would be to target the political behaviors that hurt people. The ones that are anti-science by nature. Just my opinion.
I appreciate you responding to this and explaining what happened. Being busy is understandable, is adding mods with more time something you’re open to? I can’t volunteer my own time, but someone might be able to step up.
Yes, of course! Moderators are gold. I need to make a better effort at recruiting.
@Sal@mander.xyz Could we get an explanation on this. It seems unfair to have a good scientific article removed from the Science instance seemingly without good reason.
I think this probably covers the explanation: https://mander.xyz/comment/27596923
The goal when creating this instance was to a place to discuss about scientific discoveries, post pictures of nature, and have a set of communities for this while avoiding polarizing content. If someone wants to discuss politics they can click on ‘All’ and go right to it. The scope is explicitly anti-politics because I do not want to moderate a politically charged or polarizing environment, and I know that many people with interests like mine will also appreciate such a space existing because they see enough pictures of Donald Trump and polarizing discussions elsewhere.
it seems like @Sal@mander.xyz thinks trans people are too polarizing for his instance. his comments come across as a very "don't disturb the status quo" kind of liberal. or as I like to call them, a Nazi collaborator. because if you aren't fighting the fascists in some way, then you're actively helping them.
Agreed, by choosing to decide arbitrarily that trans people are political and shouldn't be discussed @Sal@mander.xyz is helping to further the fascist agenda against trans people. Lots of people don't know this but the number one way media alienates trans people isn't by making offensive jokes about us, or invalidating us directly, but by just erasing our existence.
That's what gamergate and not wanting queer people in video games and movies is about. They want us to stop existing in the minds of public people.
"Stop making it political!"
So is climate change political? What about vaccines or the shape of the earth?
yes yes and yes.
it's why trying to ban topics on the basis of being "political" is actually insane. we live in a world where the basic concepts of facts and shared reality are increasingly polarized and politicized. Science as a concept has become political.
The scope is explicitly anti-politics
real "i don't do politics, politics do you" energy here
I look forward to them applying this consistently and banning all biology articles that mention anything relating to sexual reproduction and development. No? Just trans people? Weeeeird... Huh...
Probably articles about gayness and sexual orientation in general as well. It seems like something he would also have a problem with for being "political".
Maybe I should do it. I should become the first person to make a truly unbiased, "no politics allowed" community. Posting is banned. It will just be a blank page. I look forward to their attentive and continuing viewership.
:l
Not a good look.
Patiently awaiting Sal's response.
Prepared to be disappointed.
I don't predict @Sal@mander.xyz responding to this unless he's willing to acknowledge it as a mistake. I think he knows that his position would make him very unpopular in the fediverse, where most places emphasize trans rights and visibility. It's especially disappointing because he chose to remove real science in favor of his own political bias.
i think it was removed because the comments got way too heated. shoild prabably have been locked instead. doesn't explain the given reason though.
Yeah that's not a good reason to remove posts. Really hope we get an explanation.
Yeah. Feels like the right move would be to lock the post and remove the offending comments, rather than remove the whole post. The post itself is perfectly in bounds for the community. I also hope there’s a good explanation, but I’m prepared to be let down.
Meh. If you're unable to properly moderate the comment section, you end up giving the bigots a platform, and vulnerable people are unsafe. That's how hate speech proliferates on the internet.
There's a good reason to lock certain topics, removing them less so, although it does stop bigots whining about not being able to share their stunning insights on those certain topics.
It's the whole reason places like beehaw or gay clubs exist.
If bad comments are enough to remove a post, then bad actors can remove any post by spamming it with bad comments.
In the right contexts it can be a good reason. In this case I can imagine reports on the comments were flying left and right, despite the article itself having no issues. That might have provoked a removal, habitually to avoid needing to go into the comments section with a surgical needle to remove the transphobia, bigotry, off-topic comments and flame-baiting.
The post seems to have been re-upped by someone else, no comments, so I think (and you don't have to agree with me for any of this) there's no issue with the article itself. I'll be charitable and put the removal modlog comment as reference to the contained comments getting way too political for the site, rather than the article.
I saw that get removed because I tried to comment. I'm befuddled about it, too.
I don't want to speak on behalf of Sal, but I would like to point out that I have seen a lot of posts on similar topics on Mander.xyz. I think it's worth waiting for Sal to comment on this before people get the pitchforks out.
I will also point out this from the sidebar of mander.xyz:
Please keep politics to a minimum. When science is the focus, intersection with politics may be tolerated as long as the discussion is constructive and science remains the focus. As a general rule, political content posted directly to the instance’s local communities is discouraged and may be removed. You can of course engage in political discussions in non-local communities.
This is something that I talked to Sal about before creating !publichealth@mander.xyz, and I was satisfied with the answer at the time. Everything intersects politics at some level, and those intersections are more prominent in some topics. Mander.xyz is an academic focussed instance, and it tries to carve out a space for constructive conversation the communities that are hosted on it. Sometimes it's not the topic that is the problem, but the quality of the specific article that is being posted.
Also, that particular community is supposed to be about 'General discussions about “science” itself', and if you look at the very old posts, they were meta discussions about the scientific method and scientific research. It seems to have taken a new life over the years though.
It's also possible that the comment section was the concern, and maybe it was easier to remove the post instead of carefully going through all the comments. I think Sal has earned a chance at speaking about this before the pitchforks.
Some people's definition of "politics" is bewildering nonsense. Reality is not a team sport. Things that conservatives screech about can still be simple and true and kind of important to be state plainly, firmly, and often. Politely censoring discussion of whatever they're loudly wrong about is not avoiding the problem - it's running interference on their behalf.
I am gonna need more context
OP had the article posted in another community. I also cross-posted it to several trans and intersex communities myself. You can read it here.
And that news source is entirely written by scientists with relevant experience. If that's not suitable for a science community that allows something other than scientific papers, I don't know what would be
Thanks, this doesn't make the mod in question look any better.
If this isn't resolved I will no longer post science articles on Mander.
Eewww nope what a creepy choice I don't like it at all, I hope this was a misunderstanding.
edit ok who wants to make a new science focused instance?
It's there now. Or maybe a different science instance?
as far as i can tell it's removed from !science@mander.xyz and remains present on !science@lemmy.ml
It's up, but from a different user. So the original takedown is still in effect