How many of this comment do I need to respond to?

As many as it takes to get you to understand censorship is a worse means. UM can ‘evade’ all he wants but he can’t take away your unsubscribe and block buttons. Did you know they aren’t single use? Amazing!

Nah, this whole trend to censor anything and everything that isn’t exactly what you want to see is worse for the community.

I say leave him alone. I don’t have him blocked. I don’t ever see his content unless I actually do search to see what he’s been up to (spoiler: he was a far right nutbag all along the end). Even IF he is spamming articles, that behaviour can be modded by communities he isn’t modding for, and those he is modding for can be blocked. Hell if he pisses you off specifically you can block him yourself already! This isn’t a community needs to step in issue.

No, it doesn’t.

It’s definitely a weakness. There is an entire spectrum of personal beliefs, but wherever you are, if yours don’t align with the mods you get censored. Reality is every new users first week is finding out where they ‘belong’ and this both discourages new users, and creates detrimental echo chambers.

I don’t have a reddit account so I can’t verify, but IIRC it doesn’t ignore single return commands, and for certain Discord pushes the message immediately on hitting enter. This is closer to what most modern interfaces use, and what anyone using SMS is used to. Shift+enter allows the user to force a new line and 2x gives the paragraph break.

I’m not saying markdown isn’t a thing, but it isn’t used nearly as often (edit: as in Lemmy’s particular implementation) as being described and setting up Lemmy’s interface to require it feels clunky. My specific issue is the handling of 1 enter being ignored. Everything else makes sense because I too use markdown manually quite often.

While I am not old enough to have experience with typing in the 70s, in my decades of experience with text input methods I cannot ever recall one using this method of 1 carriage return being ignored. No forum, email or word processor (even WordPerfect for the c64) or Notepad uses this, so my guess is your experience is in some niche technical field which does not apply to what the general population expects.

Most UIs don’t even have a preview option, let alone need one, because they don’t require you to have a stick up your ass to ‘get’ using them.

The Lemmy UI is easy enough to use IMO. Where the problems show up are:

• Unreliable linking to other comments and posts. It is annoying to no end to receive a link to someone’s comment and be unceremoniously ripped out of your home server and put onto the federated one no longer logged in etc… This behaviour should somehow be prevented

• a quick reference to the text commands easily found somewhere (ie: sidebar)

• I’d prefer more theme and colour options

• Fix the text interface so it respects carriage return entries properly. If I want to start a new line directly under the current one (edit: AFI knew after 4+ months of use) there is

no way

to do

it.

Make it so a single carriage return is acknowledged and correctly starts a new line right underneath, or automatically forces a blank line between. This needing double entry is unintuitive and wrecks many new user’s first hundred post’s appearance.

Finally, the premise: Lemmy.world should be more welcoming is itself undesirable. That instance is already taking up an inordinate number of users so IMO every other instance (except the awful ones, we all know who they are) should be using a better UI, not L.W

If you say anything bad about linux, or star trek, or github, you get downvoted to hell

If not simply moderated out of the community because ‘fostering dialogue is an important goal’.

What are you looking at because the instance list shows lemmy.ml using a Beta version, and isn’t the only one.

Dozens are using 19.5 which appears to be the latest stable version. Consider a couple of recent stable versions caused a lot of headaches for users and admins I think waiting to see if a newer ‘stable’ version is actually stable, let alone volunteering to test experimental versions in situ is prudent.

Here’s some more reading for you.

It’s not a matter of ‘being upset with a moderator’s decision’. Moderators are overstepping their mandate and it is a problem. Say something rude? Banned? Fine. Obviously against the rules. Politely say anything a core clique in that community disagrees with, factual or not, and there’s a non-zero chance you get your comment deleted at best because a mod+ disagrees, and it happens way too often.

But how is that different from any other website?

In other places there are extrinsic factors that influence how moderation is done. Reddit for example is concerned first and foremost with ensuring it is a place Ad agencies are comfortable working with. Reddit would strip moderators of their roles specifically because they weren’t doing their job right, and upsetting the community or ad agencies. More to the point: they have a Code of Conduct that is standardized for the ENTIRE platform. (AFAICT the problem with the mods being so problematic here is likely due to this mass exodus of incompetent mods from Reddit, but that is a hypothesis that needs further testing and out of my ability to research.)

At best this whole problem is that the Mods can’t be bothered to actually investigate reports, likely due to inadequate mod tools. Someone reports misinformation, or a troll, or rudeness and the accused gets punished with zero thought as to the veracity of the claim. I do not think that is it though. There are a couple mods who have a MO of abusing mod powers after verbally abusing a user just to get the final word, at least that I am aware of or experienced first hand.

And finally, I find the argument to ‘join the cartel of corrupt Mods if you don’t like it’… counterproductive. I personally do not want full control of moderation. I want moderation to be regulated/standardized because Lemmy atm is very much like the Old West.

Really, I need citations for a post that already provides an example? Just pick a server and look at the modlogs keyword: misinfo. Here’s a salient example:

Luckily then they’re not the “arbiters of truth” for the platform…

That’s actually a part of the problem. The complete lack of responsibility or accountability for anyone on here. Like it or not all it takes is a handful of self-righteous admins to ruin it for the entire platform. What you tout as a Good is quite the opposite in the long run.

That’s besides the point. Censorships on Lemmy is rampant and borderline oppressive. Posting an inoffensive news article in a forum that automatically allows the community to evaluate a 3rd party’s criticism(s) of that agencies credibility should be more than sufficient.

These non-experts declaring themselves the arbiters of truth is an embarrassment for the platform and need to be dealt with before it gets abandoned.

I even agree that Cradle is shit, but to end any possibility of discussion, in flagrant opposition to Lemmy’s ENTIRE PURPOSE just creates empty echo chambers

The more I spend time on Lemmy, the more I think it is in a lot of trouble. There are many serious issues that need to be addressed and I don’t see how most of them can be.

Federation is touted as a Good, but has many drawbacks. Privacy (as listed in this post for example) for one, instead of algorithm curated/focused content federated servers each enforce (subconsciously or overtly) a theme, rampant user generation off multiple servers rendering moderation pointless, and so on.

Then there is the rampant issue of moderation abuse. It seems that the only reason to be a moderator is to not be annoyed at other people forcing their opinions on you. This reminder that admins/mods get yet another way to subject the users to their biases is the nail in the coffin IMO. “You vote this way? Banned because my feelings matter more”.

Privacy is important for a lot of people and that is impossible to get on Lemmy unless something drastically changes, but it doesn’t sound like this is will ever happen. The people that can see your data is not under your control at all and I think this fact alone will never allow Lemmy to grow to a place we can be happy with.

If admins can see data without limits, everyone should be able to. All 5 of us once that realization sinks in.

;tldr I don’t think even admins should see peoples data but that seems impossible so…

If you want to see racism just check the modlog. My favourite feature on Lemmy.