Harp the Wigglytuff @wigglytuffitout@computerfairi.es

or all private is tempting because it means you get to do things behind closed doors with a deft hand, giving people time to cool off instead of forming an angry mob.

however, i've seen a lot of communities fall because this ends up reading to the average user as do-nothing moderation. jokes about users being like babies with no object permanence aside, it also means "one set of rule for friends, one for everyone else" is easy to do.

for example: all public is tempting for transparency, but it also means that you can create a culture of fear where rules are enforced by pressure from the community and users are anxious about when their turn on the chopping block will be.

you can negate this by not doing specific callouts - keeping things a bit more private, but general reminders, instead of naming and shaming people directly.

and the extremes can both end up really shitty.

yes, i know, this is very centrist of me. please stay your hand on the guillotines.

i think that both systems of extremes can work, IF you are aware of the pitfalls and work to actively negate them. and honestly most of the time on a practical level this means borrowing tactics from the other point of view and using a mixed system.

on the flip side, public means that users get to enjoy transparency and know that everyone gets the same deal, or see when mods might be compromised and challenge that. public means that you can generalize questions to reinforce the rules to the rest of the users as a "hey, reminder, we don't do that here". public means that trouble users won't be able to twist your words as easily if it's all out there to begin with.

moderation exists in this push and pull between two forces - private or public, concealed or open.

both strategies have advantages. private means people get to save face and will be better at cooperating. private means you can talk to the few troublemakers without an entire dogpile. private is a good way to be kind, and not lean on public embarrassment or societal enforcement.

2 is an interesting question that's been plaugeing people for a very long time. essentially, it's about management. yes i know capitalism is bad but go with me here for a second in these metaphors since this is kinda the sphere where such questions tend to come up and be discussed the most explicitly, in terms of sheer people wrangling. i promise to not get full HR department on you.

and when you consider its use as a harassment tactic - "there's the target! kill! kill!" - it makes it a lot more clear why people may be willing to let subtoots pass as "uncool behavior, but ok occasionally", while strongly coming down on the side of "no screenshot dunking allowed".

there's a lot more to be said about why subtoots are also bullshit - but like i said, i'm mindful i live in a glass house lol

subtooting, while also bad, at least gives a chance for the *behavior* to be discussed instead of the *person*. you can argue that it has more social utility there because with that distance, you can get people examining bad behaviors - and checking themselves for those bad behaviors, too.

again, in an ideal world there would be neither. but i'm not going to pretend i haven't subtooted also, lol.

and while both methods end up robbing the person targeted of agency to participate in the conversation, only screenshot dunking then explicitly, from the outset, identifies them as the persona non grata target.

this ends up being a straight-up harassment tactic, even when it was not intended to be such. good ideas can still end up falling into this pitfall by specifically holding up a single person as Bad (tm).

in short, it's additional information, and why that additional information is being included, and how that additional information has usually been used online.

screenshot dunking includes the username. it means that the point of bad behavior is not anonymized whatsoever.

usually this is done online with a specific purpose. the subtext is a call to action of harassment against a specific individual.

the first question is something that i think is often accepted innately as a matter of local mores, but is worth discussing explicitly from time to time.

in an ideal world there would be no subtoots OR screenshot dunking. that's something to certainly strive for, and an ideal that i also fail to achieve.

however the cultural begrudging acceptance of subtoots versus screenshot dunking is worth teasing apart and considering imho.

so as a random asshole that's just kinda seen this drift past, not really having a stake in this either way - but seeing some patterns repeated, same-day even (!) - i think that as the dust settles, it might be a good opportunity ponder shit. specifically, 2 questions:

1. what makes 'screenshot dunking' especially bad over subtoots?

2. what is effective moderation, and the push-pull of public vs. private actions?

i gotta admit, homestuck as a thing only for kiddos does baffle me slightly, mostly because the story format is a send-up of old text adventure games, which is a genre that has not been in the popular public imagination for a hot goddamn minute. a twelve year old doesn't know what zork is, lol. i *barely* do and i'm 30.

i mean, i still personally find homestuck odious, overgrown, and needing a machete taken to it for a ruthless edit to be readable, but i'm not sure why it's kiddie fodder.

-cerave and cetaphil are both wretched and awful things you shouldn't bother to put on your face.

-vegan cosmetics might not actually be a good ideal and i'd rather have crushed up bugs than "we can only say this is a pressed pigment bc it's not actually approved for use on eyes"

-hormonal birth control is going to be something looked at in 80 years as "i can't believe they'd be so stupid and inhumane"

ok have an old picture of hollydog and then goodnight, fediverse

(this is the "you had cookies and didn't give me any >:(" glare)

the whole occasional rancid fart thing i'm calling a draw, since i'm sure i dutch oven her plenty since she sleeps under the covers

my dog's one fault is that she loves me mostly because i have cookies

but i forgive her.

there are so many good dogs in okami top game

the only way it could be better is if you could pet the dogs but you are a dog so that is a pretty good reason why you can't pet them.

i do wish there was a "demand pets and belly rubs" command for just going up to human npcs and whining