Explicit rules should be added to server "Rules"

Most users don’t read the wiki, makes total sense for it to be in the mastodon rules. Gives clear reminder of a few of the more unique ones, cooperative promotion and de-escalation guidelines particularly, as well as confirmation of the usual rules + helps with reporting.

I've made an attempt at converting the rules in the wiki to 9 individual rules that can be added to the server settings:

1. No use of violence, threats of violence, or violent language directed against another person.

2. No harassment, defined as continuing to interact with or post about another person after having been asked to stop, including, but not limited to: unwelcome sexual attention; deliberate intimidation; stalking; and dogpiling.

3. No offensive, harmful, or abusive comments or insults, particularly in relation to diverse traits (as referenced in our values).

4. Always use content warnings (CWs) when sharing content that: is likely to be distressing or hurtful to others; should require consent to view; includes discussions or depictions of violence, sexually explicit material, and/or common PT triggers; includes flashing or rapidly changing images

5. No posting of Personally Identifiable Information about others (“doxing”).

6. No posting of sexual material that is without consent.

7. No posting of sexual material that depicts individuals appearing to be under age 18, including Loli.

8. No excessive, frequent promotions of a product or service (i.e., spam)

9. No material that promotes bigotry, including fascist, racist, misogynistic, homophobic, or transphobic content.

10. Respect norms as described in Social.Coop's Code of Conduct here: https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Code_of_conduct

@Jay Great idea, and thanks for doing this work. Could we just add a note at the bottom like "These rules are adapted from the full Social.coop code of conduct, available here: https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Code_of_conduct"

@Nathan Schneider I kinda wanna say…no?

These rules aren’t just a list in a text field; they are independent items added to a list of “Server Rules”. This list is what is used when reporting posts; when reporting a post, the user is asked to choose which rule is being violated, and this is presented as a radio button form.

If “These rules are adapated…” were added, it would have to be added as a rule itself; but this is not a rule, it’s just descriptive text.

Putting descriptive text, rather than rules, into the “Server Rules” is why this is a problem in the first place.

That text could still live in the “About” section on social.coop/about, which is just a rich text field.

@Jay

Would it work to add a final rule that's something like "Respect norms as described in Social.Coop's Code of Conduct here [add link to relavant page]"?

@Dynamic Yeah that could work I think. Thanks!

I don’t know who’s capable or responsible for changing these.

@Jay

You're welcome.

I wonder if @Nathan Schneider either is the person to talk to or knows who that person is...?

Dear @Jay and others.

Thank you very much for an astounding work. 👏👏👏

My obsessive compulsive designer needs to point out some ridiculously tiny points that may be phrased in an infinitesimally more consistent way, structurally speaking. Please just ignore this message if it doesn't help. 🙏

In some points we name some things assuming understanding (pt. 2, "stalking; and dogpiling"), and in other we define them and then use their names (pt. 5, "No posting... (“doxing”)"). Maybe we can use always the 2nd approach that is easier for folxs that are new to our space (a bit like me, for example). Also, I can see what to me appears as related points, interrupted by other themes (pts 1 and 3 about violence and abuse, with harassment in between them, or pt. 3 ending with a reference to "our values" that may be in the start or the end but not in the middle because they break the auto-contained scope).

So, this is the initial version:

1. No use of violence, threats of violence, or violent language directed against another person.

2. No harassment, defined as continuing to interact with or post about another person after having been asked to stop, including, but not limited to: unwelcome sexual attention; deliberate intimidation; stalking; and dogpiling.

3. No offensive, harmful, or abusive comments or insults, particularly in relation to diverse traits (as referenced in our values).

4. Always use content warnings (CWs) when sharing content that: is likely to be distressing or hurtful to others; should require consent to view; includes discussions or depictions of violence, sexually explicit material, and/or common PT triggers; includes flashing or rapidly changing images.

5. No posting of Personally Identifiable Information about others (“doxing”).

6. No posting of sexual material that is without consent.

7. No posting of sexual material that depicts individuals appearing to be under age 18, including Loli.

No excessive, frequent promotions of a product or service (i.e., spam).

8. No material that promotes bigotry, including fascist, racist, misogynistic, homophobic, or transphobic content.

I don't know if the order is changeable (if not, please ignore this post), but here goes a proposal with some tiny edits. This version:

• uses grouping,

• tries to use specific definitions in the end of each point (between parenthesis),

• growing severity escalation, and

• ends with the reference to our values (but could also start with that and it would change some things).

• Also, it tries to express all the points in the same way ("don't do this") so as to make it easier to mark which one broke some rule when reporting.

I'm sorry if I misunderstood some terms and/or defined them wrong. Please edit without mercy. :)

1. No posting excessive, frequent promotions of a product or service (i.e., spam).

2. No posting content that is likely to be distressing or hurtful to others without content warnings ("CWs"; that is, content that should require consent to view; includes discussions or depictions of violence, sexually explicit material, and/or common PT triggers, or flashing or rapidly changing images).

3. No posting of Personally Identifiable Information about others ("doxing").

4. No posting of sexual material that is without consent ("revenge porn").

5. No posting of sexual material that depicts individuals appearing to be under age 18, including underage drawn characters ("Loli").

6. No posting of material that promotes bigotry, including fascist, racist, misogynistic, homophobic, or transphobic content.

7. No use of violence, threats of violence, or violent language directed against another person.

8. No continued interaction with or post about another person after having been asked to stop, including, but not limited to: unwelcome sexual attention; deliberate intimidation, being it individual ("harassment" and/or "stalking") or grupal ("dogpiling");

9. No posting offensive, harmful, or abusive comments or insults, particularly in relation to diverse traits (as referenced in our values).

While pt. 8 seems a bit between two related ones (7 and 9), this is meant only as a starting discussion point.

I hope this can be useful. :)

Best regards...

I've no problem with these changes, it makes sense – other than the addition of the term 'revenge porn' as, while it's often used, it implies the victim did something to deserve 'revenge' (according to victims of it: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/why-are-we-still-calling-it-revenge-porn-victims-explain-change-in-the-laws-needed_uk_5d3594c2e4b020cd99465a99), so better 'non-consensual sexual content' or don't give a shortened name.

Dear @Nic

I totally agree with your point, and appreciate the subtle implication.

the addition of the term 'revenge porn' as, while it's often used, it implies the victim did something to deserve 'revenge'

Let's change it to whatever you all believe it's more appropriate. :)

Bear in mind please that English is not my native language so it's almost sure that issues like that will evade me at first. 😅

Thanks a lot... 🙏

I've wondered why the rules aren't there in mastodon! This would be a great update. Maybe the rewording of the rules themselves should be a separate initiative, and adding what you originally suggested for now is good enough.

I've updated my list here to include the "refer to our code of conduct" link suggested by @Dynamic.

I would love it if somebody who's responsible for changing these rules could chime in here about what steps need to be taken for this to happen (@Nathan Schneider?)

@Jay This is definitely not my domain—something to be addressed through the Community Working Group, which handles communication around moderation.

Thanks for doing all this work. It makes sense to use the server rules this way (the way they were intended to be used). One problem I see is that from a moderator standpoint, some of the CoC content -- the encouraged behavior/discouraged behavior, and the reporting guidelines -- is often more important than the specific rules. The server rules seem to put all the emphasis on rules, leaving out the more descriptive, process-oriented norms, expectations, and protocols. As a mod, I'd rather people read the CoC than the list of rules. At the same time, I realize people typically don't do that...

@Matt Noyes Thanks for the reply. The reason I think it's important to have the rules set up this way is for the reporting of posts. Of course there will be a broader CoC that takes precedence over the "Rules" section, which is why it should be linked from the About section and even in one of the rules themselves.

It's not about these Rules being the canonical reference for behavior on social dot coop, but about having a specific thing in the server that can populate the radio button list from which people have to choose when reporting a post.

Thanks Jay, I get that. I just looked at the existing radio button lists you see when reporting someone. Can we edit the initial list, too? Or just the server rules? Is there any way to insert a text field? If not, would it be possible to use the subject headings from the CoC, including encouraged behavior and discouraged behavior?

@Matt Noyes No, you can't edit the initial list, which contains:

• I don't like it

• It's spam

• It's illegal

• It violates server rules

• It's something else

Choosing "It violates server rules" will then take the user to the radio list with our server rules on it; currently two of them.

@Matt Noyes It looks like the radio button list is fixed in the Mastodon source code:

https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/blob/e93a75f1a11d6dfdcbd39dbdc22526c5508ad881/app/javascript/mastodon/features/report/category.jsx#L71-L77

The only bit of variability is whether to display the violation of server rules which keys off of whether server rules are defined.

I see Hometown have removed the Legal category:

https://github.com/hometown-fork/hometown/blob/hometown-dev/app/javascript/mastodon/features/report/category.js#L64-L76

@emi do @Sam Whited @Flancian @Matthew Cropp As current and former mods, what do you think about having the list that Jay put together in the server rules, so that when someone files a report they can click on a particular rule, or on the code of conduct as a whole?

This sounds reasonable to me; from the mods end of things I'm hopeful it would make people think about why they're reporting someone first instead of just quickly selecting a generic reason. We get a handful of reports that I think would have been better off as individual blocks because two users got in a spat or something, and maybe some harsh words were exchanged, but it's nothing that's so bad it would be a code of conduct violation. I could see having the stuff explicitly listed out making people change their mind about a report instead. It's not a huge problem or anything, but it does happen on occasion and this could potentially help, so sounds worth trying to me.

Anything?

I support this change.

I think stuff on Loomio often stalls out because most of us don't look at Loomio very often.

What's the etiquette - should we use pings on social.coop itself more to get input on threads like this? Or Loomio's email features?

Every couple weeks I update this thread, and mention it in Matrix, and it just sits here

@Jay Sorry to be unresponsive -- I find it hard to keep up with Matrix. I agree with Sam (see above). Can you repost the most recent version? We have a Community Working Group Ops Team meeting on 12/1 - is it okay to wait until then so we can have the approval of the ops team?

@Matt Noyes Thanks. Dec 1 would be fine. The rules I wrote are in this post: https://www.loomio.com/d/NVQsFHkU/explicit-rules-should-be-added-to-server-rules-/2

Thank you to whoever added these rules to the site! I was so happy to see them.