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[–]danuker 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I feel you.

Here's a clue: the pyramid of debate is not very enforced. It's very few mods against a sea of content.

I have thought of quitting Saidit and all other "mass" chat tools because of people who spread misinformation with the sole purpose of destroying your time - say, being hard to debunk, but of no consequence or applicability to the real world.

A saidittor pointed out these might be covert ops trying hard to undermine inconvenient organizations.

Still, there is the Friends tool. If you find a respectful or enjoyable person, friend them. If you find they waste your time or that their behavior changed (account sold, bait & switch, etc), unfriend them.

Then, instead of browsing the main site, browse the Friends edition.

I can get my kicks like this, and I still lurk for this reason. Hope you find it useful.

Also, magnora7 says you should report people who disrespect the pyramid - they definitely help. But I have seen not much consequence, when I reported lots of posts one day. So, that is why I use the "Friends" whitelist instead of the reporting blacklist.

[–]comments[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Wow, that content from friends feature is amazing, I had no idea about that. Thank you. I knew about the "friend" button but I didn't know it really did anything except adding people to a private list somewhere.

I think it would help to have more clarity about how the pyramid of debate should be used for moderation (by admins or mods) and more consistency about that. But it's not even just lack of enforcement of that -- the pyramid of debate seems like it's meant to get at truth in some specific contexts, not to create a "work" culture (to the extent we're "working" here to find truth) that isn't toxic. It doesn't address at all some of the harmful cultural patterns discussed in the "toxic workplace" article I linked.

I know people have problems with reddit subs that overmoderate, lots of us have been banned for stuff, but it always seemed ok to me if it was consistent and clear and fair and the same for everyone. But it seems like it pretty clearly isn't anymore on reddit, at least a lot of places I've been people are encouraged to be, well, abusive towards some groups, while similar content directed at other groups is removed and results in a ban. It's not that I mind heavy moderation in some contexts, although it can be a problem if legitimate viewpoints are being suppressed, my problem with reddit has been more the very clear lack of fairness.

I don't think I know of any platform online that's actually just trying to create a healthy, "respectful workplace" kind of atmosphere. The internet is notorious for just saying "have a thick skin get over it deal with it they can say what they want," which might be a healthy strategy but it's also minimization that doesn't acknowledge that those things are actually harmful (which is part of why it's such a relief to see that harm acknowledged in the wikipedia article). Why is it like this? Do people mostly usually just manage their own communities privately? Do people mostly just tolerate bad "working" conditions for online conversation? It's not just SaidIt, it seems like with political philosophies too, there are all these rules and rights and talk about it but the goal never seems to be actually creating a healthy environment, it's always something else it seems is the primary goal (like e.g. "free speech" rather than "healthy environment"). And yeah I know "this is harmful to the public good" can be used dishonestly like moderation at reddit has been. It just seems like a lot of these things aren't really aimed at making things a good environment, but at something else somehow. Why is it like that? Why are we having those sorts of conversations and discussions about how things should be and the things that are worrisome about how things are?

Feel free to reply or not as you like, I know this got a bit long and I don't want to make like I expect a reply to it, I just wanted to add more of my thinking about this here.

[–]danuker 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I guess different folks care about different aspects of a conversation.

Some people take offense when you correct their spelling, others embrace that.

To me, it is very vague what "toxic" means. The Wiki article you linked talks about counterproductive infighting - well, if you're trying to get to the truth, the pyramid is a stab at showing the way towards finding truth.

Ethics and professional conduct - how offensive is too offensive for a joke? do we all have to act like professionals? do we have to refrain from insults? am I not allowed to say person X's argument is dumb? How about person X being dumb themselves?

Even using the wrong gender offends some people. Others get offended from being asked to use a specific gender.

Many people have many definitions - some might be seeking emotional comfort, or politeness, or a specific form or tone.

I am afraid that, bar concrete examples of what bothers you, I can't find a community for you. But it might be that there are none that satisfy your definition of a "non-toxic" community.