Proposed Anti-Oppression Policy

I think most of us agree that we need to clarify the moderators' mandate, because we want this system to be reasonably democratic, and we want to be able to combat oppression effectively. I want to propose a system which I think we might all be able to agree to. It consists of a list of strategies for combating oppression, and clarifies when they should be used, and by whom. My thinking is that it could be a mandate, and if a moderator repeatedly and flagrantly went outside it they could be de-modded.

I generally like QueerCoup's anti-oppression policy but I thought it might be useful to have more detail.

I'm putting this in the larger anarchism subreddit because I don't think it would really be democratic to decide this in metanarchism.

Ways to combat oppression

A. For non-moderators: if a user is arguing in favor of oppression (for instance if they are an anarcho-capitalist, or they are from r/mra) you could:

• write walls of text disproving their arguments
• mock them
• ignore them
• troll them
• downvote them

B. For moderators: if a user argues in favor of oppression you should use all the tactics available to non-moderators to deal with this, but as long as they aren't derailing or being racist/misogynist/etc. you should not use any of your moderator powers to stop them.

C. For non-moderators: if a user is engaging in derailment, you could:

• ignore them
• downvote them
• answer them but ignore their arguments and continue talking about the original topic
• politely ask them not to derail and link them to something explaining what derailment is; ask them to bring up their question somewhere else
• rudely ask them not to derail
• if they've done this repeatedly, alert a moderator, either by pressing "report" or messaging us (more on this later)
• it might be useful if someone not involved in the discussion acted as a vibes watcher and sent derailers private messages rather than allowing the conversation to be derailed

D. For moderators: if you see/are alerted to a user engaging in derailment, you could:

• send the user a private message firmly but politely asking them not to do that
• downvote them
• delete their message and leave a comment explaining that deletion. This should be used if they ignore your request or engage in this behavior frequently
• temporarily ban the user, send them a message explaining how they are to behave once the ban is lifted, and publicly explain the action. This should be used only if the first two tactics have been used and proven unsuccessful.

E. For non-moderators: if a user is being openly racist, misogynistic, transphobic, ableist, ageist, sizeist, or xenophobic (someone tell me if I've forgotten anything) use any and all tactics you can think of but no matter what you do you should also alert the moderators to this problem either by pressing "report" or sending a message.

F. For moderators: if someone alerts you to open racism/misogyny/etc. you could:

• temporarily ban the perpetrator, send them a message explaining how they are to behave once the ban is lifted, and publicly explain the action.
• permanently ban the perperator, send them a message and publicly explain the action. This should only be used if they have been frequently and egregiously oppressive.

Assuming we agree these tactics are appropriate, we can make this a formal mandate and there will be no need to have a vote every time one of these actions becomes necessary.

Keep in mind that bans are reversible and modship is revocable, so it should be possible to make sure that bans are not abused.

I am posting this for discussion, not a vote. This would be a good time to propose amendments to the policy.

Note: After ASDFsomethingsomething's suggestion, instead of making lots of selfposts, we'll have one selfpost (linked in the sidebar) where moderators can put explanations of all their bans.

Edit: I also want to point out that I think this policy will be genuinely democratic and work well only if we have a large number of moderators. Right now we have a medium number of moderators.

A final note: moderators should not use their banning or deleting abilities in arguments they participate in. Rather, if they see a problem they should alert another moderator to it. We have a medium number of moderators, and we're getting more, so this should not be too onerous.