Mastodon Rules: Characterizing Formal Rules on Popular Mastodon Instances (academic paper on moderation)

alex [they, il]@jlai.lu to Fediverse@lemmy.ml – 26 points –
dl.acm.org
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Interesting work, and an absolute fediverse way to look at a problem lol.

Also love the rule they pointed out that instance had of, don't do things that would make us write new rules.

I do wonder what insights can be drawn, from a skim it seems more about understanding how rules connect to each other, rather than build a broad rule base.

don’t do things that would make us write new rules.

This is basically a variant of the "don't try to game the rules / we will not make the rules over-specific" that is also expressed by several Lemmy instances.

I think this interpretation makes sense, as someone who fails to understand this is likely not going to be a good-faith actor, although edge-cases of people with very bad social skills do exist.

It also takes the fun out of mischievous rule breaking/bending if you are the sort that likes to push boundaries. It's an acknowledgement of the cat and mouse game and a meta ask to not play it here, implying the other player won't find it fun.

Again only works for good faith actors.

I say this as a guy who can't help but think of rules lawyering to see what could technically be done within them.