Governance resources
Overviews of relevant social media and their tools
MASTODON
AKKOMA
- Moderating the Fediverse with Akkoma: "Moderation is obviously an important part of running your own instance, but I’ve found a disappointing lack of information about the Akkoma(/Pleroma) moderation workflow; what content is available seems more focused on the soft skills of moderation (how to make decisions, how to respond to certain types of content, etc.), stuff that I am already very experienced with as a long-time moderator of several online communities. Given that lack of information, I figured I’d write a simple overview of the moderation tools available, covering things like how reports work, how to delete posts, how to ban remote users, and how to defederate an entire problem instance."
Tools, frontends, and other miscellanea
AKKOMA
- Mangane: Mangane is an alternative frontend for Pleroma, Akkoma and Mastodon with a focus on ease of use, readability and custom branding.
Write-ups and resources of interest
WRITE-UPS
Findings Report: Governance on Fediverse Microblogging Servers: "Above all, we wanted to understand more about what happens behind the curtain of Fediverse server operation, and distribute this knowledge widely to help other server teams level up together—and perhaps to uncover characteristics of server governance that might be meaningful to others trying to build sustainable alternatives to centralized commercial platforms, whether on the Fediverse or elsewhere."
Moderation: Guidelines for woof.group moderators: "This document lays out how woof.group understands the social structure of a Mastodon instance, why and how our moderation works, and how we handle routine events. [...] This document is for woof.group: a community with specific dynamics, norms, and relations with the broader fediverse. Different communities need different types of moderation. What makes sense for us may not make sense for you."
It's possible to talk about The Bad Space without being racist or anti-trans – but it's not as easy as it sounds: An overview of the tech.lgbt and Bad Space mess
On Blocking: "I think it’s a mistake to think of a block as a kind of relationship between two users. That’s impossible because the users don’t have a relationship after the block. Instead, blocking should be considered an agreement between a community member and the site itself. (I’m going to say “site” here but it could also be an app or the community leader or moderation team, etc.)"
Things I'm Worried About: "I'm seeing a lot of efforts to build post-cohost infrastructure more or less as fast as possibile, but I'm a bit weary of some possible outcomes from the ways people are going about things. I'm going to just write these out as Worries, because I don't mean these as criticisms of specific people, nor am I trying to prevent people from working on new infrastructures, I'm just writing out my worries for whatever New Spaces are next."
this is the insidious nature of the flag bomb/report bomb.: "the ways to defend against this kind of horseshit are, unfortunately, on the backs of platform builders to support. if you find yourself in the unenviable position of writing, maintaining or using software that does ticketing or support queues, or moderation queues, or rules for moderation, in a community oriented online presence with user-generated content and social features, these are my recommendations on what to do, with the 20+ years of continual experience I've had on the moderator's end."
RESOURCES
Mastodon Moderation Puzzles: "We’ll start with some “content moderation puzzles” based on real issues I’ve encountered either as a moderator or as a user. They are designed to highlight the natural tensions, competing goals and interests moderators may face."
Common Abuses on Mastodon: A Primer: "Mastodon has gained popularity as a decentralized alternative to X (formerly Twitter). But as its user base grows, so do opportunities for abuse, including the proliferation of child sexual abuse material (CSAM), terrorist and extremist activity, spam and harassment, and data privacy concerns."
A guide to potential liability pitfalls for people running a Mastodon instance: "I posted a thread on Twitter about potential legal liabilities for United States people who decide to run a Mastodon instance, and the response made it clear there's a lot of people who could use the extended background. So here is a guide to potential liability pitfalls for people who are running a Mastodon instance, and how to mitigate them. This is mostly US-specific, but I noted which things to think about are likely to apply worldwide. This is not legal advice and you should contact a lawyer licensed in your jurisdiction for the exact details of the liability you're exposed to and a detailed risk assessment."
How-tos
- Runyourown.social: "This document exists to lay out some general principles of running a small social network site that have worked for me. These principles are related to community building more than they are related to specific technologies."
Example texts
Tools
- Etherpad: Etherpad is a highly customizable open source online editor providing collaborative editing in really real-time. Etherpad allows you to edit documents collaboratively in real-time, much like a live multi-player editor that runs in your browser. Write articles, press releases, to-do lists, etc. together with your friends, fellow students or colleagues, all working on the same document at the same time.
Alyaza Birze · Wed 2 Oct 2024 10:06PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemic_Consensing
https://techwork.zone/