METAMod update June 24th: future of the sub

submitted by [deleted] from self.LGBDropTheT

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[–]reluctant_commenter 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

TLDR: I vote #5. I'll respond to NBF's comment below about #5 regarding specifics.

With your 5 proposed options in mind...

My understanding is that there were several core problems caused by troll accounts.

  • Harmful and disruptive comments - These included name-calling, bad-faith arguments, and attempts to sow division among particular different demographic groups (sex and sexual orientation subgroups). Harms caused: Wasting all our time, artificially increasing negativity, and providing an opportunity for TRAs to slander LGB people on other sites ("look, all those nasty LGB people are so mean and violent!").

  • Astroturfed voting - Violence-promoting, stereotyping, or otherwise insane comments were often highly upvoted. Harms caused: I don't know about you all, but seeing that type of thing sometimes decreased my trust in the community. Seeing how these comments are both 1) rare and 2) not upvoted, since we went private, I think this was a way bigger problem than I realized.

  • Silencing of LGB voices - I've known a few users over the couple years we've been here who told me they avoided posting or commenting because they didn't want to deal with these aggressive trolls. That is a real shame.

I would bet my life savings that there are at least 1-2 troll accounts in the sub even right now; the vetting process we have in place is not perfect. However, there are far fewer of them. And because there are fewer of them, it's easier for a single mod to manage their their disruptive comments. There's also a lower risk of astroturfing.

So with all that in mind...

My tentative vote is:

  • Keep this sub private, and keep it still in existence (or at least give me a chance to save some of the content here first!).

  • Move to another option offsite.

My inclination is that there is too much harm caused by having s/LGB and s/LGBDropTheT open to the public on this site. I hate the idea of us being private when there are other LGB people out there looking for us... but I'd rather preserve what we have that is genuine than be shouted over by TRAs. There are just too damn many of them. (Where do they even find the time? Are they all professional dog-walkers?)

I guess that is just your #5 option.