anecdote (in agreement) about keeping out fascists
@pathunstrom A couple of years ago, I was brought in as a moderator to help de-fascist a community that had practically turned into 4chan, in one of the most fundamentally-abuse-attracting and difficult-to-moderate categories of community (privacy/security-related).
The policy was set as "no fascists, no alt-right, nothing that looks like it" and people would either get banned immediately (if clearly intentionally abusive) or get a warning otherwise that they were expected to take seriously (doubling down would be grounds for a ban). Every ban was permanent but revocable if someone showed genuine reflection and commitment to do better - this sometimes took minutes, sometimes months or even longer, sometimes never.
Randos complained for months. "You just call everyone a nazi", "how do you define fascist then", "you're being unreasonable", "the alt right aren't fascists", and so on, and so forth. Without exception, the ones complaining about it the most were the ones who already had a track prior record of being an asshole in different ways. A lot of the bans were the result of brigading attempts from, well, fascists who objected to being pushed out, pretending to be 'new users' and mysteriously immediately knowing about previous bans that happened before they joined.
It took a while, but they eventually gave up. The result was a pleasant community to be in, unusually pleasant for a privacy/security community. I haven't been around there for quite a while now, but my understanding is that it's still a nice place to this day.
"No fascists allowed" works, even under the worst conditions, and the "no, seriously, this is not up for debate, the moderator decides" is a critical component of making it work.
easy to find something to brag about when the bigger websites run by the richer people are setting the bar so very very low in all other respects
of course my code is only half the magic, as i am hosted by netizen.club - operated by the same wonderful person who runs the mastodon instance that i use!
hey, unlike bluesky, my website functions, because I wrote it by hand with no "vibes" involved, and it does exactly one thing (displays information and unwarranted opinions)
Motivated by the renewed attention surrounding our 1990s Moon Child game on Bluesky, I did a search on my HDD, and found back some pencil-on-paper concept sketches I made for the game at the time. π
#TeamHoi #MoonChild #GameDev #gaming #RetroGaming #RetroComputing #retro #history #windows #CharacterDesign #design #artwork #2D #vector #illustration #illustrator #fantasy #picture #OriginalArt #art #designer #NoAI #HumanArt #ArtLovers #FineArt #painting #drawing #doodle #sketch #MastoArt #FediArt
suddenly having an actually fond memory of the old job, where cell service was literally only good enough to use if i was standing in a specific doorway leading to an emergency exit. used to call it the Magic Doorway and I'd constantly spot my coworkers standing in it to check their Facebooks. (Not that I cared as long as they kept the volume low, so I wouldn't get constantly blasted with the chorus of "A-B-C-D-E-F-U")
@Tijn When it's so much simpler to design to the "ubisoft approach" of "oh, your internet isn't any good? well it works fine for us, don't know what your problem is"
@Tijn Thinking about it again - when i used to work around a cleanroom, the cell service used to be spotty, and i was always wondering why twitter et al worked so poorly in that situation. i feel like it _should_ be possible, somehow, to engineer web apps that can gracefully handle themselves if the client loses connection to the internet, but hell if I can imagine how that'd work.
I am not sure why deleting a page break in AppleWorks for the #IIgs can reliably reproduce this error message.
But, I can say that I do love that I am presented with a second option.
("OTHER button" sadly does nothing. It would be even more entertaining if it did something.)
He/him. Puzzle-Adventure Hybrid with RPG Elements. Supports 3D Acceleration. He Is Essentially What He Believes. Just in case, π, LGBTQ+ π, DOS π, ππ©π.
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