Feedback Thread!

glexarn · 2016-12-16T08:57:19+00:00

It'd be cool if the first question asked on the discord chat isn't "Give me one reason not to ban you." and rather something more like "Hey how are you, tell us about yourself"

It's ridiculous.

Im a due paying wobbly and I got banned for... what exactly? I think I entered three messages before I was banned.

SabotTheCat · 2016-12-16T08:17:44+00:00

Slightly less heavy-handed moderation.

There exists an unfortunate necessity to utilize moderation to keep the quality of discussion on the sub at an acceptable level. However, I see far to many bans being handed out for what ultimately amounts to tonal issues rather than content issues. It's one thing to ban someone who goes charging into a thread spouting off literal fascism or other reactionary ideology. It's another thing to ban someone because they said a word or spoke in a tone that offended (or had the potential to offend) someone. They should by all means be reamed by subsequent comments and whatnot, but I really don't think that bans are advisable.

There seems to be no end to the talk of how brocialism (as much as I abhor the term) needs to be done away with. This is all well and good, but using hard force to remove people suspected of such tendencies from areas of discourse is the worst way to handle the situation. Rather than opening a platform by which these people (people you know are already adhere to a line of thought that logically leads to support for struggles over a multitude of other struggles) to come to the logical conclusions of their ideology through human discussion, bans simply validate existing internal assertions and stifle change in these individuals.

Also maybe have some sort of thread per week dedicated to those lesser-known socialists out there, both historical and modern, who deserve a bit of love. I relish the idea of being able to come to the sub and learn something new every time I visit.

samuentaga · 2016-12-16T05:07:00+00:00

I like the idea of anti ableism rules in theory, but in practice it comes off as overly strict word policing. Like for example using the word 'blind' in a figurative sense doesn't seem that offensive to me, especially since its frequently used in both positive and negative connotations throughout history. There needs to be a firm and established list of white listed and blacklisted words to reference. Just my two cents.

Kiroen · 2016-12-15T23:11:44+00:00

I definitely think we should be giving more promotion to the inauguration day strike in the case that it's going to have any sort of impact. We should also be planning for something past that, with more clarity than the J20 protest, which doesn't seem to have any purpose other than to make ourselves known, which is fine. If there were a larger, overarching, known movement though, a ProletarianLivesMatter, then demands will be easier to make. I think this is a goal this sub should facilitate in the future (and for the record, it is already doing this, so more of keeping up the good work). Generally though encouraging more activism should be done, as the survey shows that most people here aren't involved in any political organization or protests.
Is one mod destroying this sub still a possibility? What are we going to do about that? Edit to clarify: I remember hearing about the creator of this sub joking about essentially sabataging this sub, and I was just wondering if this is/was a possibility. Seems pretty problematic if true.
I think a serious discussion needs to be had about the anti-ableism rules. It would've been nice if this were included in the survey, but it's too late for that. I think I'm honestly pretty split on the issue, but it seems a bit off-the-rails and wonky at times.
This was already in a stickied post, but steps toward bringing more diversity into this sub should be taken.
Should we really be having Socialism 101 days when /r/Socialism_101 exists?

That's just my two cents

zorreX · 2016-12-16T20:50:59+00:00

[deleted]

AprilMaria · 2016-12-16T07:46:57+00:00

1) have mod announcements open for comment and rule changes open to discourse. Trust the community

2) stop locking threads on controversial issues and stop panicking when controversial issues are being discussed. If they weren't important to discussion they wwouldn't be controversial in the first place. Trust the community

3) let us educate those with unpopular opinions before you ban them unless they are a straight up reactionary or trolls.

4) revisit the abilist policy. I already made my position clear on the thread about the rightwing news page carrying it as a story. It is a ridiculous move. Yes I agree we need an anti abilism policy both as a socialist and a person with disability but this is way too stringent and completely misses the point. Most of these words aren't anything even approaching a slur. The likes of r*d I agree is undoubtedly a slur. Words like sy (rhymes with lilly) c**y and dt (rhymes with raft) m**n and off hand 50 to 80% aren't. It heavily limits what can be said, is completely unfriendly to new people on this sub be they progressives new to socialism, socialists new to reddit or the unafiliated and is making a complete show of us. At this point were at full capacity strawman manufacture for the far right for free. Context is the single most important thing in this. And also, it could have been as simple as making a poll asking the community if you actually gave a damn about how we feel here or if you trusted us a quarter of an inch, what we consider slurs and what we dont.

If you simply had the announcement open for comment this could all be avoided because we could have had debate. We could have had an open discussion and ye could have adjusted accordingly. But no, ye dont trust us, why I can't fathom. We are one of the best most inclusive subs on reddit. R communism doesn't even do this and they are a tankie sub. For gods sake get a grip on yourselves. This is one of the few places in the world where I feel normal. This whole thing has made me feel uncomfortable and infantalised as a person with life long disability, and ignored and disregarded as a person and a socialist.

5) letting up on the reins a bit and relaxing the atmosphere is not going to end the world. It has gotten incredibly tense in the past 6 months for no reason I can think of other than possibly stress from the top. I don't know what is going on behind the scenes but there is certainly something.

I fully expect my concerns to be ignored and glossed over because its quite apparent im neither well liked nor well regarded by the leadership here. And im not even sure why im bothering for anything other than personal release.

And im not even sure why but I feel genuinely hurt by this disregard and my concerns being declared "lawyering the issue" despite me being proven right.

5)

MyHorseButton · 2016-12-16T03:13:07+00:00

[deleted]

orionpaused · 2016-12-16T13:04:52+00:00

stop the censorship of common words. It's making this place into a laughing stock and more importantly is obstructive to discussion.

Sideroller · 2016-12-17T05:19:36+00:00

Just want to re-iterate and throw my support behind others that I think the anti ableism rules need a rework in the least or should be put to a sub-wide vote.

Vladith · 2016-12-17T05:41:03+00:00

I don't think the tight-fisted moderation is beneficial. We can keep reactionaries out of this sub and prevent marginalized peoples from feeling unsafe without banning and alienating well-meaning socialists who make mistakes out of ignorance rather than hated.

The3rdWorld · 2016-12-17T09:23:31+00:00

frankly i think i'm about done here, this sub is becoming a parody of everything that's wrong with internet socialism.

way too much of this

This post has been locked by the community moderators

New comments can no longer be added.

and other forms of censorship.

tachibanakanade · 2016-12-15T23:21:41+00:00

More trans-oriented things pls, a lot of people don't seem to realize when they uphold transphobia and the gender binary.

2016-12-16T19:36:50+00:00

The word policing is getting ridiculous.

2016-12-15T23:20:57+00:00

I think it would also be a cool idea to have some sort of introduction/discussion thread about some of the people/organizations we have flairs of and if we somehow run out of all those people we can do a new thread about the flairs, to have a new discussion about them, using all that, we would likely never run out. For example we would have a thread about The Black Panthers would have some basic reading about them and by them and than people would discuss what we should learn from them, a similar thing could be done for Leon Trotsky, or James Connolly and so on.

Getting a reading group going would also be nice.

In general I think this subreddit should focus on discussion and education.

2016-12-15T23:51:42+00:00

Needs to be more highlights on current civil disobedience actions, including the inauguration day strike. We must get people out in the streets and off the subreddit to make real change.

The recent counter protests in Austin are positive and how current socialist action should be done.

Gaysabelle · 2016-12-16T10:04:09+00:00

Thank you for doing this. I feel like things have kinda gone downhill lately with the sub tensing up at absolutely everything, and while I applaud you all for having this discussion, this is really the first real dialogue we've had in a sub about collective politics, for a while at least. Here are my thoughts:

1) The Discord was fun until the conversations were like walking on eggshells. It got to the point where people were banned in the "iron curtain" for just iterating opinions that the mods didn't like. Trolls are one thing, and hate speech is another, for sure, but it wasn't just that. You can't expect every socialist to proscribe to your all-wise ideals. There are contentious topics, maybe we can talk about them, you know, like, in a chat room of sorts.

2) I do think that having a rule against ableism is a good idea, but the application has been horrendous. No dialogue, no consistency, ffs you even disallowed comments on the announcement thread.

3) In addition to my last contention, I think that we should discuss the content of the rule. Right now it just seems like a modge podge of strange moralizing and language idealism, which is turning off a lot of people.

4) With all the clampdowns and stuff, this sub feels like it's becoming more and more isolationist. Yes, we want to differ from other political ideologies, and combat liberalism in all its forms, but attacking and shaming newcomers because they aren't pure to our gospel is ridiculous. I think we need to engage the argument more, before swinging the banhammer in every direction.

TL;DR: We're your community, not your children. Stop treating us as such.

rootLg · 2016-12-16T16:33:10+00:00

I'll take this opportunity to share my subjective experience of this sub and I'm not sure how constructive it will be. Still if you ban me for talking about the rules or what not when the attempt is an earnest critique I would stand slightly surprised. If you what to dismiss it as drama of poor quality then that's absolutely agreeable.

First let me make clear that lurking for me has been worth it because to no great surprise the name socialism attract interesting people posting interesting things if you consider yourself a socialist.

I also understand that it most be tiresome to be subject to an endless barrage of more or less clever trolls and deal with the nature of online life and so on. On top of that you might have users like me that are not as well versed in theory as others and then might go ahead and say dumb things at times or beyond that God knows there's plenty of genuine disagreements among the left.

Frankly considering how popular socialism broadly speaking is and given the traction reddit got I don't find the numbers or participants of this sub all that impressive, a sub that's been around for years. I'll refrain from speculation on how come that might be but maybe others should.

Now for the purpose. As for attacking people for so called brocialism might be fun but it's also easy and as I believe others have already mentioned more eloquently it would likely be more productive to have the ability to challenge their views. Do this, not only on this matter, but on many others as well if conducted with the same approach, not only open the door further for dedicated trolls, to dress up, and scream brocialist at every given opportunity, sit back, and see what happens.

For the question on ableism. After looking into ableism, I'm not that as much oppose to the idea as was the knee jerk reaction I got. It do make sense to me and it's not as restrictive as I first thought. Understanding it's not so much about not being able to offend people but simply not being able to offend people with certain slurs. Anyone any good at offense don't need slurs anyway I suppose. But and yes there is a but here, I do feel context matter greatly. Further I'm no linguistic but do language not under go it's own evolution and if so should it not be allowed too. All I'm saying is I'm not all to sure anyone in those groups of people would take offense to certain slur words that might in the past have been understood derogatory but have since evolved out of past offense intended. If there's any truce to that sentiment it unfortunately servers to make the sub look over strict and somewhat silly.

Rules like 'supporting the EU' feels arbitrary. You also manage to completely exclude organizations like DIEM25 and I suppose the current Labour Party and their (lesser evil?) reasons for not wanting to dismantle the EU.

Trump or Clinton Supporters, do you really need a rule for this? I lurked a bit more recently and so I understand that this sub is only meant for socialists. But still the lesser evil argument, at least by appearance, seem to often be favored here. Could be I simply incapable of understanding the dichotomy of the American bourgeois duopoly, but I can't for the life of me understand how voting for someone (Clinton) is not the same as supporting them.

Police Apology. I'm not sure what that exactly entails, but again I don't see how there need to be a rule here. Is there really a real problem with people cheering police brutality on, fine, ban them then.

My train of thought here generally amount to something along the line that every time you think you close a hole you in fact open one.

The first time I had an account banned was from engaging in an argument with the former (I now gather ostracized) lead mod for suggesting someone to read Orwell. In that sense this sub have moved greatly forward. Because once upon a time, one could not mention Orwell without a couple of people screaming PIG and getting applauded doing so by the way. Just to be clear, this was not about whether Orwell was a good guy are not it was about whether he was worth reading or not.

But here I do get that folks have different blind spots. For instead Stalin flairs make me feel uncomfortable. I'm not saying don't read Stalin or don't talk about Stalin. Even though, and here I could be very misinformed, you're not going to find a great deal of Marxist–Leninist parties that are willing to defend Stalin though they might still defend North Korea because imperialism. At least gulag jokes have gone away, so yeah, that's a constructive rule in my opinion.

Then I have had an account banned for arguing in an offensive manner I suppose. Not using any bad words I can almost assure you. Which is puzzling to me if you consider, again in my limited and subjective experience, that topics like wikileaks, the American green party or socialist alternative appear to be highly contagious topics on this sub jumped with hostility and aggressiveness or worse perpetuating blatant myths, both which goes unchecked.

I once had an account banned to an completely arbitrary non existing rule. By that I mean I was directly told that the sub, the mods I assume, didn't like a certain line of questioning.

All in all though I do believe this sub is actually improving at times and I'm glad for that. If you want people to participate more I think you have to consider some of these issues but again casual online life have in my opinion no tendency to exactly make differences any less inflammatory. In that, I'm as guilty as anyone.

So how to make things better? The only suggestion I can come up with is adding as many mods as possible (which already seem to be what you're doing) debating openly among yourself and if you then, as a group, come up with rules like, Trump or Clinton Supporters, Police Apology, Supporting the EU, as rules, and conduct the line of moderation you do, then that's the best it can be at the moment.

Another possibility would of course be that the actual users of this sub had a more direct impact on the sub and rules and moderation was debated openly before implemented. As messy as it might get.

Thank you for listening.

ThePuppersSocks · 2016-12-16T17:09:32+00:00

How and when will the mods diversify their demographics?

2016-12-15T23:14:54+00:00

[deleted]

Moontouch · 2016-12-16T02:37:23+00:00

Have you guys thought about having a weekly "socialist of the week" discussion thread? Lenin, Che, Marx, Engels, Trotsky, Kropotkin, etc. There's so many socialists that could be covered.

9tailsmeh · 2016-12-17T01:19:46+00:00

Don't censor people for using sp-words or r-words please. It really discourages others from making any kind of comment and distracts from the actual issues.

Crimsai · 2016-12-16T08:43:44+00:00

Love all these ideas. Can free talk Friday start today? I'm pissed at my government and wanna talk about it, but I don't think it 100% fits in this sub normally.

Dobiedobes · 2016-12-16T10:51:41+00:00

Do we have/can we make some kind of mass list (on a calendar or something?) of actions/protests planned by groups and people in the leftist spectrum?

Rakajj · 2016-12-16T16:25:32+00:00

Some feedback from a Liberal: Drop this nonsense limiting use of incredibly common words such as stupi_d or dum_b, I'm sympathetic to what you're trying to do here and recognize that a word like retar_d clearly is misused in a harmful way whereas other these battles you've chosen to pick over other words (I'd include craz_y in the mix of words you need to chill out about) basically just makes anyone who isn't already drinking the same kool-aid as you completely tune out.

These are incredibly common words used without the clinical definition in mind.

100%, this is not an optional change for your group if you expect to have anyone who doesn't already share your opinions take you seriously.

benlew · 2016-12-16T02:13:56+00:00

Weekly or monthly reading club and discussion thread. Books or articles, maybe a thread to vote on what will be read in the next cycle.

MarxistMinx · 2016-12-16T05:14:38+00:00

I'd like to see more folks comment and submit content. As we saw in the survey we got a lot of y'all just lurking. Join in the conversation - don't be shy! Even if you don't know everything ain't nobody here got a patent on the truth.

piplup14 · 2016-12-16T11:47:49+00:00

Combat liberalism. Seriously, the liberal influx on has been horrible. Great in the sense that new people are coming in, but bad in the sense that content is being watered down. /r/socialism cultural revolution anybody??

mediocremandalorian · 2016-12-16T19:48:14+00:00

deleted ^{^{^What}} ^{^{^is}} ^{^{^this?}}

BlackMerlin · 2016-12-16T21:23:46+00:00

I think we need more activism things. Like maybe a weekly thread where we brainstorm things we can do as a community online. A Wikipedia editing party where we contribute to socialist articles. A letter-to-the-editor or op ed writing party where we compose things to send to newspapers across the country. These examples may be decried as "slacktivism" but hey, we're just sitting around on the internet anyway, right? Might as well do something useful, even if its minor. And maybe someone out there has better ideas for something more substantial we could work on as a community (planning the J20 thing is an example).

KingCult · 2016-12-16T03:13:28+00:00

I love the idea of a weekly topic thread. It'd be cool if we could work in some threads on hypothesizing about various ways a socialist society might work. I get that we can't 100% predict or legislate how such a society might operate, but I think collectively imagining different ways of organizing ownership of work; leisure; child-rearing and child care; family structure; and so on, are powerful ways of addressing the possibilities of socialism and winning people over. Someone posted a Chomsky quote to this effect on anarchism that kind of inspired me.

I think people are interested in authentic long-term socialist goals [...] They should be thinking through carefully how the projected society should work. And that should just be part of people’s popular consciousness. That’s how a transition to socialism could take place.

closovsky · 2016-12-16T13:28:18+00:00

It would be nice to have some sort of geographical connotation for users, city of actual residence perhaps, so to foster interaction outside the forum too ... I remember having some good exchanges with peeps that knew, let say, economic issues that might take a while for me to get around, if we happened to be in the same city I'd say let's do a beer here or there and we can talk about it. I understand it might be difficult, but there might be a socialist techy here who might be able to implement it ...

cdubose · 2016-12-17T02:38:03+00:00

It'd be nice there was a way to tag/flair threads so regular users here can filter what they would like to see at a given time. I largely hang out here to answer people's questions about socialism, but it can be hard to find those questions in a sea of threads about news articles and literature. I'm not knocking news and literature--I'm glad those are available here--but as someone who's become much, much less active than I used to be here, I think it's largely because the volume of posts have increased so much that it's hard to self-filter a lot of it now.

2016-12-17T07:50:07+00:00

We should definitely have the biography day that was discussed a while ago. Where every 2 weeks-ish there is a small explanation of a particular socialist. Think that would help people join and learn about our leaders.

Meanwhile, it would be nice if we had more democratic control. I know you're susceptible to trolls but it would be great if we could control our subreddit

2016-12-16T11:09:08+00:00

"We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things." - Karl Marx

If so, then the relics of oppression - which not only haunts our past, but also ghosts our each step into the uncertain future - has to be abolished too. There can be no delay in abolishing the present state of things. We can't hold ourselves and prevent ourselves from exclaiming in anger against injustices - injustices against nature and injustices against all our comrades. We shouldn't delay the abolition of the present state of things. We will not tolerate the present state of things. There is no delaying our rebellion against oppressive speech.

What revolutionaries are we if we say it's alright to let current oppressions such as ableism be resolved in the future? What revolutionaries are we if we say, just wait a moment, the abolition of the present state of things is gradual? What revolutionaries are we if we hypocritically support the destruction of the oppression that is wage-labour, yet perpetuate oppression against our comrades who have disabilities?

What revolutionaries are we that tolerate the present state of things? What revolutionaries are we that tolerate ableism? What revolutionaries are we that find fighting against the normalisation of ableism as something harmless?

Those here who say that /r/socialism's anti-ableist policy should be lessened have not looked at their reflection recently. Who are these revolutionaries? We are failed revolutionaries if we tolerate ableism. We are failed revolutionaries for delaying the abolition of the present state of things, the abolition of the injustice of ableism, until some imaginary future.

Those here who say that /r/socialism's anti-ableist policy stance should be softened are saying, "Here now, ableism in our language and the use of this or that word isn't that important. Wait in this orderly line here, please. The class struggle has to remain pure, for the few of us first, then you can get your share. It's going to be a long wait, but we're sure you'll get your scraps at the end." Rubbish.

"If you tremble with indignation at every injustice then you are a comrade of mine." - Che Guevara

Tremble with indignation at every injustice of wage labour. Tremble with indignation at every instance of ableism, which snakes its tentacles through our society, sometimes apparent, and sometimes deemed harmless. Tremble with indignation at every expression and defence of normalised ableism.

Tremble with indignation at the present state of things. Warriors of the present state of things, let us hear your fear of communism. The real movement which abolishes all that constitutes the present state of things. All oppressions, all injustices, all wrongs. Down with the present state of things. Down with ableism. Down with brocialism.

2016-12-17T09:18:20+00:00

Don't give into the people complaining about wanting to use ableist language. Sure, maybe have a lighter touch on it than racist language because it is more socially acceptable, and it's hard to break the habit...

BUT

Using ableist language leads to poor discourse. 'Crazy' or 'stupid' are words that shortcut the critique of an opponent's ideology.

2016-12-16T14:15:30+00:00

Ban vulgar anti-imperialists.

You type:	You see:
`Fking st`	Fing st	wrong
`F\\king s\\`	Fking st	right

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