RickiTarr

RickiTarr, 9 hours ago to random

I have a big group chat with my a large amount of my real life friends, then smaller groups out of that group that have particular interests:

One is for the people who live locally to plan activities.

One is for art, but maybe the kind of art that not everyone would want to see.

One for BBQ and cocktails.

One where we talk about terrible home renovations and shit exes.

One specifically for handyman information and planning if someone moves or needs help with a project.

One where we seem to mostly talk about cute dogs, and often cheese.

Plus individual chats.

But now I'm wondering who has chats without me, do they have a secret chat where everyone talks about how I'm in everyone's business?!

RickiTarr, 11 hours ago to random

Saw this in the bathroom of the Queer Friendly Coffee House:

theropologist, 13 hours ago to random

:bc: Attention Beige Party-goers! :bc:

State of The Instance - May 2024

Let's Talk About Policy, Baby!

Yes, everyone's favorite topic: Moderation Policy! But a well-crafted policy can be a thing of beauty. The main idea is to do all the decision-making work ahead of time and document it in a clear and easy to understand way, so that when the time comes to make a moderation decision, you don't have to do any thinking in the moment when tensions and emotions might be running high, you can just apply the policy. As someone who recently had to write a semi-coherent policy at 3 AM while on vacation, I can get behind this idea.

The other benefit is transparency. If everyone is aware of the policy and can read it themselves, then moderation action becomes more predictable, both for the moderator and for the moderated. After a year and half of running this instance I can confidently assert that I still have no idea what I'm doing. I'm just another schmuck figuring it out as I go along. The best way that I can think of to mitigate this is to be as transparent as possible, so that you all are at least aware of WHAT I am doing and WHY, even if I am ultimately just winging it.

So, to that end I would like to start using these monthly updates to develop a written moderation policy covering all of the instance rules. I will explain how I interpret each rule as it relates to moderation policy and then invite your input so that we can craft a clear policy that makes sense to everyone.

My plan is to cover one rule a month, but before we start, we should think about what the heck it is we're doing here in the first place. What is the guiding principle that informs all rule making and moderation decisions? That's right, we're talking about that North Star of corporate gibberish: The Mission Statement

After thinking it over a bit, I think this sums up our mission:

To provide a safe and welcoming environment where people feel valued and respected, and are encouraged to be themselves.

The point I want to drive home here is that my approach to moderation is humanistic. I am more concerned with providing good outcomes for actual individuals than adhering to any specific principles or ideologies. This should not be confused with utilitarianism. The most good for the most people often results in terrible outcomes for the minority. As I've stated before, my other overarching principle is asking who has the power in a given situation, and who is in need of protection. When in doubt, always defer to protecting those in need of protection.

The second part, about encouraging people to be themselves, refers to identity. People should be respected and celebrated for who they ARE, but that doesn't mean we are obligated to accept everything they DO. In fact we might have some fairly heated arguments about what people do, which is why we need moderation policy in the first place.

OK, so now that we've got foundational principles down, let's move on to the first rule. It's a rule so basic that it's actually baked into the reporting interface, regardless of what the actual instance rules are. It is something so noxious to the functioning of the internet that developing strategies against it is a full-time discipline in the field of Computer Science. I am speaking of course, of the dreaded Spam.

Spam is one of those things that you think you can easily identify until you start looking into all of the various edge cases. OK, that's true of most abstract concepts, but even more so for spam. I had previously included an explicit instance rule prohibiting spam, but I have since removed it because I think it mostly caused confusion for people who were worried that they might be unintentionally end up violating the rule. One thing I am fairly certain about is that if you are a spammer, you know you're a spammer. If you are operating in good faith then it's very unlikely that you would accidentally run afoul of the anti-spam rule. However, for the sake of clarity, let's start by defining some things that are not spam:

• Posts about your personal project or business
• Fundraisers and mutual aid requests
• Posts promoting a particular cause or organization

These kinds of posts are not spam in and of themselves but they can become spam if they are sent in the form of unsolicited DMs, randomly @ people who have nothing to do with the content of the post, or if they are posted with such frequency that they disrupt the normal operation of the instance.

So here I think we are circling a pretty solid definition of spam:

Unsolicited and unwanted communication that impairs the legitimate functioning of a communications network

I think that's a pretty decent general rule, but what sort of behaviors would fall under that definition? Let's look at Mastodon's reporting interface. When you report something as spam, it gives three examples:

• malicious links
• fake engagement
• repetitive replies

I think malicious links is pretty clear cut. If you are posting links that are intended to deceive people and potentially send them to unsafe web sites, that is definitely against the rules.

Similarly, repetitive replies are pretty easy to recognize. If someone is posting the same reply to a bunch of different posts just to gain visibility without engaging with the original post at all, then that is pretty clearly spam.

That brings us to fake engagement, which is a little squishier. Fake engagement is not just a reply that you don't like. That might be a case for a personal block, but it's not a rule violation. My definition of fake engagement is posting a reply with the sole purpose of promoting a particular agenda, with no effort to actually engage with the discussion. This is still open to a lot of interpretation, so I will also say that fake engagement is a pattern of behavior. Posting one reply like this is not going to get you flagged for fake engagement, but if you are repetitively posting unwanted replies on many different posts, all pushing the same agenda without engaging in the discussion, then that could be considered fake engagement. It's also just rude and annoying.

So, bringing this all together, this is my definition of spam as it applies to moderation policy:

1. Repetitive unsolicited DMs
2. Randomly tagging users with an @ in posts that have nothing to do with them
3. Scam posts that are intended to deceive people and/or exploit them financially
4. Repetitive posts that disrupt the normal operation of the instance
5. Posting malicious links with the intent to deceive people or direct them to harmful websites
6. Hijacking the replies of a post solely to promote something unrelated to the post
7. Repeatedly replying to posts with the sole purpose of pushing a particular agenda and with no good faith effort to engage in the discussion

Just a reminder, there is no longer a dedicated anti-spam rule listed under the instance rules, but you can always select spam as an option in the Mastodon reporting interface.

OK, I think that's enough policy for one month. I invite you all to share your thoughts. This is what I came up with, but please let me know if I got something wrong or missed something that should be added. I want to put together a policy that we can all understand and agree on. My plan is to start going over the enumerated instance rules, one rule per month, starting next month. At the end of this process I will compile everything into a policy document and post a link to it in the about section of the site.

On to the numbers!

My billing cycle for Hetzner has gone back to normal, but the date that the invoice is generated has changed from the 1st of the month to the 15th, so you can expect these updates within a couple days after that. Despite the change of the billing date, the invoice still covers only the previous month, so for example all of the numbers I post in May will apply to April, and then the May numbers will be in my June update. Since I can't post these until the middle of the month, the numbers are going to reflect a point in time from the first of the month. Previously, when I was posting closer to the first of the month, I would include additional users and donations from the first few days of the current month in addition to the numbers from the previous month. Since it doesn't make sense to include an additional 15 days of the current month, all the numbers I report will apply only to the previous month.

New sign-ups:

In the month of April we gained 31 new party-goers, for a grand total of 411 big-time beige business-doers. Of those, 264 accounts have been active in the last month.

Welcome new party-goers! if you have any questions or concerns, please let me know.

Finances:

For the month of April we received $335.00 in donations. After PayPal fees, that comes out to $297.30. We had $1,579.67 left over from March, so our total available funds for paying the April hosting fees was $1,876.97.

The hosting fees for April break down as follows:

VPS Hosting: $98.88
Foreign Transaction Fee: $2.66
S3 Storage: $9.30
SMTP Relay: $15.00

Total: $125.84

After paying the hosting bills for April, we have $1,751.13 left in donation funds. That's enough to keep us running for over a year, so we are in good shape. Thank you to all who donated! If anyone would like to donate, here is the link:

https://ko-fi.com/drinky

It can also be found in my profile header and in the about section of the site.

And once again a big thanks to all you beautiful Beige Party-goers. You all are what makes this place great!

Beige-bless :bb:

A spreadsheet breaking down the donations for the month of April: Date Amount Fees Net 4/1/2024 $10.00 $1.34 $8.66 4/2/2024 $5.00 $0.91 $4.09 4/2/2024 $50.00 $4.74 $45.26 4/3/2024 $10.00 $1.34 $8.66 4/4/2024 $10.00 $0.84 $9.16 4/6/2024 $10.00 $1.34 $8.66 4/6/2024 $10.00 $1.49 $8.51 4/7/2024 $10.00 $0.84 $9.16 4/9/2024 $5.00 $0.91 $4.09 4/9/2024 $50.00 $2.24 $47.76 4/11/2024 $5.00 $0.64 $4.36 4/11/2024 $10.00 $0.99 $9.01 4/14/2024 $10.00 $1.34 $8.66 4/14/2024 $10.00 $1.49 $8.51 4/17/2024 $5.00 $0.91 $4.09 4/17/2024 $5.00 $0.91 $4.09 4/18/2024 $5.00 $0.74 $4.26 4/18/2024 $10.00 $0.84 $9.16 4/18/2024 $5.00 $0.66 $4.34 4/20/2024 $5.00 $0.91 $4.09 4/21/2024 $5.00 $0.91 $4.09 4/21/2024 $10.00 $1.34 $8.66 4/21/2024 $5.00 $0.91 $4.09 4/21/2024 $5.00 $0.99 $4.01 4/22/2024 $5.00 $0.91 $4.09 4/25/2024 $5.00 $0.91 $4.09 4/27/2024 $50.00 $4.74 $45.26 4/29/2024 $5.00 $0.91 $4.09 4/30/2024 $5.00 $0.66 $4.34 Total $335.00 $37.70 $297.30

RickiTarr, 20 hours ago to random

A Taco Salad is just one big nacho.

RickiTarr, 1 day ago to random

I don't know why, but these White Pharaoh memes crack me up.

RickiTarr, 1 day ago to random

Y'all I just made myself feel so old, hubs looked up top 100 music from 2001, 2011, 2021, and today and the amount of music I could recognize decreased by significantly. I recognized probably 70% of 2001 and decreasing as I went on. BUT I blame the internet, I can listen to exactly the kind of music I want with no dependence on the radio, but also I'm old!

yurnidiot, 1 day ago to random

can't tell me this isn't skilled labor 🥑💨

woman packing avocados in a box by tossing them from one hand to the other rapidly without looking at the catching hand