Which mods/admins were being Power Tripping Bastards?
Rimu
What sanction did they impose (e.g. community ban, instance ban, removed comment)?
Kicking from all Matrix PieFed rooms
Explain why you think its unfair and how you would like the situation to be remedied.
Rimu has been manufacturing non-stop drama for weeks. He ignores multiple offers from multiple parties to de-escalate, and now he bans someone for trying to promote non-discriminatory language. He has also now cut off a PieFed admin from any and all support and ability to contribute to the software.
Oh and the real kicker ? Rimu did all this after his big grand post about how he is stepping back from drama and hiding away from users.
PTB, @rimu@piefed.social just loves to manufacture outrage for stupid reasons, or for no reason at all. That response and kicking @Quokka@quokk.au was straight out of left field.
the PTB continues
mia:
asks to remove insult to peoples intelligence from the function name for the hardcoded ‘low effort’ post filter
rimu:
‘i’ll have you know i am not transphobic, see i made a pronoun tag’
mia:
attempts to de-escalate and explain that this was not a personal criticism
kicked
Oh and the real kicker ? Rimu did all this after his big grand post about how he is stepping back from drama and hiding away from users.
when i read that post the subtext was always ‘i’m isolating myself from anyone critical, only interacting through alts and toadies going forward’
like say what you will about the lemmy devs they’ve received way more criticism, targeted harassment and smears over the years without needing to turn it into a big vendetta like this has been. for example i’ve said that i think nutomic should step back in the past because of his actions! while i wish he handled that situation better and
while i wish his apology for it was better,
at least since then he has left us alone and has largely stepped back from moderating things, rather than attempting to actively silence all dissent
Being a developer is difficult, because a lot of people pay attention to what you say. And any mistake can get a lot of visibility. Sometimes I wish that Lemmy was a company, with a community manager who takes care of these things. But anyway, it is how it is.
in your case as well it doesn’t help that there’s a subset of ideologically motivated people just waiting to jump on any comment to run a smear campaign on it.
for me actions speak louder than words and despite my initial disappointment following the dm leak, years have passed and i haven’t seen that turn into a pattern of behavior.
i will say i kind of prefer that lemmy isn’t a company, in part because frankly i trust a handful of communists to not just hand over user info and ip addresses to the alphabet boys more than i would any sort of company
Yeah, that is a weird jump in accusations. Like… completely non-sequitur. If some important context isn’t missing, this is weird behavior. possibly a sign of pathological issues.
so, yeah, unless something important is missing, PTB
Stamets wrote up an amazing summary of events so far if you can find it.
There’s a lot of previous drama Rimu has made that you can see across the few posts below this one and on the Fediverse comms. The latest thing was he shadowbanned quokk.au so their posts don’t show up in all or new users can find the instance to join.
He’s declared war on anarchists and all other leftists basically.
Edit: He has now provided his “justification” for the act
Mind you he hasn’t kicked anyone else on the same “side” as her.
Mind you he hasn’t kicked anyone else on the same “side” as her.
No one besides an “individual moderator” here on dbzer0 has made him upset enough to do so. I reckon that’ll will change soon enough.
man, why are devs, so often, just sources of bullshit
she has to deal with the consequences of her actions (which I hand out)
Can you link to any of these messages? I can’t seem to find these conversations back.
I think it comes from here: https://lem.lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/42555819/20454941 ?
thank you, gonna switch instance
You’re welcome.
deleted by creator
Well the reason is obvious after all
I don’t get it
“Obvious reasons” was all Rimu said to explain why he shadowbanned them.
I’m making fun of his lack of communication.
the more I see of Rimu’s behavior, the less inclined I am to believe he’s an adult.
There is a fork going, right? Could you link it?
Why is every maintainer of the threadiverse unhinged, like I switched to piefed partially because I disagreed with the politics of the Lemmy devs, and recently the piefed dev does weird stuff. Does making foss software really have that big of an effect on someone’s mental health?
The unfortunate truth is people who are enamored with programming find it so enticing because it’s a part of the universe that works exactly the way you tell it (for better or worse). Kind of like how kids who are traumatized build forts to hide in or something.
If code doesn’t do what you want there’s a way to fix it and make it behave. There seems to be a correlation where the best programmers can’t tolerate the unpredictability of other human beings or reality…
To be clear, yes I’m a programmer too, and yes I built forts as a kid so this is speaking from experience from talking to other IT/programmer people 😂 it’s a common theme I’ve noticed.
Because us developers, we are just a couple of nerds on the Internet. We didn’t study public relations or politics at university, and don’t know which spontaneous comment might generate a shitstorm. Unlike /u/spez we don’t have a PR team writing posts for us. And because there is no profit motive, Lemmy and Piefed don’t need to appeal to everyone like Reddit does. Consider it the price to pay for using a non-commercial platform.
It becomes tantalizing when you have your software running on others systems to see what you can get away with.
FOSS is notorious for egomaniacs. That’s why there’s so many forks and endless implementations of basically the same shit! Just with some new unpronounceable name that’ll often be abandoned in short order.
It’s because FOSS attracts libertarians and anarcho-NATOists (not exclusively). FOSS social media attracts liberals. Multiply all that by Reddit, well, you create my favorite bloodbowl ever. No offense you all probably mean well, on some level, but it’s just people following different forms of idealism suddenly losing their shackles to one part of Silicon Valley. Interested to see where it all… ends up? Maybe it won’t end up, it’s not impossible.
Jessie what the fuck are you talking about
Don’t get me started on Debs!
This is particularly hilarious God Complex behavior coming from the person that just recently tried to argue for essentially a Fediverse UN… 100% missing the entire point of federation, that there is no one single central authority.
Like this is lolcow behavior, just very plainly.
PTB
“look at me im an ally!” like no bro, you dont get to decide that yourself. because you didnt get a pat on the back for this, or an apology for your perceived wrongdoings you ban them, immediately after they try to peacefully deescalate the situation. crazy behavior.
Apparently, so long as someone isn’t openly anti-AI, it’s ok to use bigoted language towards them. This is, sadly, pretty standard fare for the typical liberal, who is perfectly happy to descend into homophobia or transphobia if it means they can use it to mock their their political opponents.
I can’t believe Rimu is antagonising friendly Quokka. What happened to him in the last few weeks?
When a lot of people criticised him and left the Piefed general group chat he responds so poorly.
I feel like Reddit Gold is a more respectable purchase than donating to CreampieFBI
This is probably one of the most terminally online things i’ve seen so far
For the curious, here’s that antiableist list
As for insults, be creative with your words and do so without being ableist.
So we should not say someone is stupid, rather, that they could not find their ass with both hands, could not fight their way out of a wet paper bag, could fall into a bucket of titties and come out sucking their thumb?
I’m not sure that that’s better.
within context
reply_insults_intelligence
Thanks for sharing, do you know why disabled is preferred over handicapped? As a non native speaker they carry the same meaning/connotation for me.
What language?
“Handicapped” connotates the person can never be reenabled or regain ability. It also undermines enabling tools. It’s often used as belittling language, instead enablement.English is also not my native language.
Ask a golfer.
Nice, thanks !
The list is recommending stubborn as an alternative to delusional, but I thought that meant someone born without limbs ? isn’t that super-duper-ableist ?
Wiktionary says “uncertain origin” but in doubt I would just abstain
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/stubborn
edit I think I confused stub with stump.
Stump means “what remains of a limb that was cut off”. My bad…Isn’t the idiom “hard-headed” more precise?
The etymology of stubborn still eludes us.
“Unwilling to budge” is also accurate.I’d rather use hard-headed, or something to do with a mule (as we say in french, mulehead)
Aside from the silly drama i dont care about, stupid is a bad word now? What the fuck.
“It’s now very common to hear people say, ‘I’m rather offended by that.’ As if that gives them certain rights. It’s actually nothing more… than a whine. ‘I find that offensive.’ It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. ‘I am offended by that.’ Well, so fucking what." - Stephen Fry
This whole thing is stupid. It’s one thing to be raised a sheltered person by overbearing parents, it’s another thing to be desperate to be sheltered. Some people need to put their adult pants on and learn that the world is not their safe space.
it’s been a bad word for a long time, mostly for children. many parents try to prohibit it because it really does come out as hateful more often than not
While that’s true, I doubt most Lemmy users are of the age that saying the word “stupid” gets you put on time-out.
I can think of a few users who would probably benefit from a timeout tbh.
This should not be as wtf moment.
It’s used to insult a persons intelligence and mental capabilities. You can say you don’t like something without attacking a physical attribute.
Yeah, this one feels like an overreach to me. Calling a person stupid is bad, fair, but that’s because the word is negative, and calling a person a negative word isn’t nice.
But in this case, “replies_are_stupid” has nothing to do with a person. They’re inanimate. So calling replies stupid is labelling replies negatively, but that’s fine because they’re inanimate. I’m not sure “loweffort” is better or even applicable. I guarantee someone will have a problem with “loweffort” in the future. Maybe “ill-advised” would be better in this context?
And before I get strawmanned by someone saying “would it be the same if they called it replies_are_gay” or something, I think that is different, because that’s implying gay is bad, which is the actual problem with that usage. It’s inaccurate to the problem, and only makes sense if gay people catch strays.
If you read “replies_are_stupid” and felt attacked, you need a better therapist, because “stupid” isn’t an identity you should feel for yourself or those you love.
But in this case, “replies_are_stupid” has nothing to do with a person.
I think its more historical. Stupid, idiot, and moron have been clinical / legal terms for people with intellectual disabilities, and are often seen as a continuation of that in common use.
That said - is it really important to defend “stupid” as a word choice? Does rewording it, maybe to “senseless” or “ignorant”, create some huge negative impact for a user? It seems like kind of a minimal effort solution that can accommodate users, so why make it a big deal?
That said - is it really important to defend “stupid” as a word choice? Does rewording it, maybe to “senseless” or “ignorant”, create some huge negative impact for a user? It seems like kind of a minimal effort solution that can accommodate users, so why make it a big deal?
I know I’m wandering through a nest of bees here, but this cuts both ways, I think. No, this particular word isn’t important, and changing it is fine. Any one word can be fine. But similarly why did this user show up asking it to be changed? Is it a huge negative impact to leave it for the majority of users either? It feels like someone pulled a dictionary of newly bad words off a blog and grepped through the source with the perceived mission of contributing to the healing of the world, as a most charitable assumption on their intentions.
I think no one is worried about any one word, or any one PR. The concern is that the goalposts seem to change from words that 95% of people agree are bad, to words 60% of people agree are bad, to words like this that maybe 1% of people feel are bad, and there’s a grey area here on what level of badness is bad enough for all of us to change to accomodate one or two people’s sensitivities, and to what level those people should be responsible for their own sensitivities.
This is a civilization and cultural level spectrum which has “change for your society” and “society bends to you without change” at its ends, and different people fall at different points on this spectrum, which will put that at different points on the “how bad does a word need to be for me to be a bad person for typing it in my own code” spectrum. And for me, I feel “stupid” is over my line and is a noisy change that might beget other more petty changes with no benefit to the vast majority, despite how simple it is. But you clearly feel more strongly, and I can tolerate that too.
All that having been said, I have no opinion or context about this particular user being banned from this particular chat, unrelated to the ethics of the PR.
But similarly why did this user show up asking it to be changed?
They were looking at the code and noticed it? I don’t think there is much more to it than that.
Does rewording it, maybe to “senseless” or “ignorant”, create some huge negative impact for a user?
As of now, I can’t see how. And if it did, it can be changed again. Its easy to revert as well. So why would an unlikely unknown factor in?
It feels like someone pulled a dictionary of newly bad words off a blog and grepped through the source with the perceived mission of contributing to the healing of the world, as a most charitable assumption on their intentions.
This one isn’t exactly new.
The concern is that the goalposts seem to change from words that 95% of people agree are bad, to words 60% of people agree are bad, to words like this that maybe 1% of people feel are bad, and there’s a grey area here on what level of badness is bad enough for all of us to change to accomodate one or two people’s sensitivities, and to what level those people should be responsible for their own sensitivities.
Think about a word that 95% of people agree is a really terrible word. How far back until that same word would have 60% consider it bad. How far back do you go before its a word used and considered completely acceptable and appropriate language to use? How were things for the people that word was applied to?
Just saying, maybe the percentage doesn’t matter too much. Maybe if its a change with only a net positive impact, then its not worth worrying about - now or some imaginary future where every adjective is banned. Maybe if just a few people are hurt by something, and the choice is between doing nothing (and them being hurt) and saying “no worries, send the change” and not hurting a few people, we can just… Not hurt them? Seems straightforward.
Again, I don’t understand why a “line needs to be drawn” based on some imaginary attack on the English language. What’s the threat here? That someone submits a change while saying the word “aardvark” is offensive? Just reject that pr and move on.
(Unless “aardvark” becomes some sort of racist slang or something, then, of course, accept it)
I think we agree more than we disagree, but are at different points on the spectrum. For example:
Again, I don’t understand why a “line needs to be drawn” based on some imaginary attack on the English language. What’s the threat here? That someone submits a change while saying the word “aardvark” is offensive? Just reject that pr and move on.
This isn’t meant as a “gotcha”, but in this paragraph about not drawing a line, you drew a line. You decided aardvark was obviously too far, and that that PR should be rejected. How you feel about aardvark is how most of us already feel about the word “stupid”.
But more broadly:
Maybe if just a few people are hurt by something, and the choice is between doing nothing (and them being hurt) and saying “no worries, send the change” and not hurting a few people, we can just… Not hurt them? Seems straightforward.
I think most people (in this community, on this thread) are not pro hurting people. What I feel is more like: if you are hurt by the word “stupid”, or self-identify as stupid, you should not. No one is using it as a slur against your people. There are slurs! They exist, it’s just that this isn’t one of them, in the way people mean it. And so I feel like, in this case, at this point in the spectrum, these people should heal themselves rather than change software / the culture / the world to suit their insecurities.
If course it’s a squishy grey area, but if I found the word aardvark offensive because some kids called me aardvark at school growing up or something and bullied me, that’s tragic, and it’s very real for hypothetical me, but that’s something I should work through in therapy, rather than something I should make the concern of everyone around me. In my opinion. And I feel like being triggered by the word “stupid” is in the same category, also in my opinion.
If anything, and I’m stepping in bees again, it feels kind of egocentric to see someone write “replies are stupid” in their own code, in response to presumably their opinion about a standard or spec or something, and to see they’ve written that and think “this is about me”.
Furthering the point, it seems rimu banned me for my participation in this thread, along with a few dozen others.
It seems rimu would like to be the ultimate poster child for this community.
This isn’t meant as a “gotcha”, but in this paragraph about not drawing a line, you drew a line. You decided aardvark was obviously too far, and that that PR should be rejected. How you feel about aardvark is how most of us already feel about the word “stupid”.
It was meant as a random word that there is no known issue around. One that there aren’t years worth of discussions about, one that if you search you aren’t going to get page after page of links discussing. Thats it.
I think most people (in this community, on this thread) are not pro hurting people.
I agree!
What I feel is more like: if you are hurt by the word “stupid”, or self-identify as stupid, you should not.
If someone is so impacted that they’d like to see a word not being used, I don’t think “But you shouldn’t feel that way” is helpful.
If course it’s a squishy grey area, but if I found the word aardvark offensive because some kids called me aardvark at school growing up or something and bullied me, that’s tragic, and it’s very real for hypothetical me, but that’s something I should work through in therapy, rather than something I should make the concern of everyone around me.
Completely individualized example, not broad usage, wouldn’t really apply. That said - I would hope that the people around that hypothetical person would absolutely avoid the word “aardvark” if it was triggering for that person. Wouldn’t you? Would you just say “aardvark” randomly to a person who was teased for years?
If anything, and I’m stepping in bees again, it feels kind of egocentric to see someone write “replies are stupid” in their own code, in response to presumably their opinion about a standard or spec or something, and to see they’ve written that and think “this is about me”.
Its a function used in the identification of low effort posts, absolutely nothing to do with self identification and everything to do with identifying the comments of others as, in this case, “stupid”. Its not about a spec or a standard. Its quite specifically and literally identifying user comments as “stupid”.
And let’s circle back to the main point here, which is pretty straightforward - is even discussing the idea of a word being offensive to some a reason to ban someone?
I would say quite obviously it isn’t, and yet it is what rimu did here.
I’m not going to remove an innocent insult from use just because a few people dislike being called that.
petty insults are not human rights violations. and I refuse to cater to a few individuals who are incapable of getting over that fact.
everyone thought “retarded” was fine too. Backlist, whitelist, master, are all making a gradual exit from the programmers vernacular. Software doesn’t have to be hostile
As an unfortunately pedantic person, it really bothers me that blacklist and whitelist get caught up in all this. Like, yeah, I can see why people think it’s related to skin colour, and I can see the argument that even if it wasn’t originally about skin colour, it leaves an impression of “white good, black bad” regardless of its original intentions. But fuck do I wish we didn’t call white people white and black people black. It’s not accurate, and would solve a whole bunch of these “colour-related phrases becoming racial” problems. We should just stop using colours to refer to people! But that ship has long sailed, and its harder to advocate in that direction, so I guess I’m fine with it. But I can dream 😛
Also “master” has other uses, like a Master Sculpter making a masterpiece, and more relatedly things like the “master tape” being the tape other tapes are copied from, a la “remastered”. But I concede it’s pretty hard to make that argument when DBs and BIOSes have “masters” versus “slaves” 😬😅
So absolutely zero technical reasons, right? The code change has absolutely no impact on the operation of the software.
Its purely your desire to use the word “stupid” that makes you against this change?
Edit: Which, btw, your ability to use the word “stupid” is not at all being prevented here. That reference could be changed to “unicorn_glasses” and function the same.
no. its that it’s an innocent insult. it truly is not that deep. nor does it need to be.
if you choose not to use it that is fine. but shaming others for that is just silly.
…or am I not allowed to use “silly” as well?
where do we draw the line?
if you choose not to use it that is fine. but shaming others for that is just silly.
Who is shaming?
“Don’t shame me!” seems an odd response to “Hey, changing this reference will make some people feel better, and has no functional impact”.
Whats the problem?
Just to mention, moron, imbecile, and idiot were used (as nouns) for the person as a clinical definition of intellectual disability, with stupid used as the adjective to describe. I would have to disagree that it doesn’t have roots beyond an “innocent insult”, but I personally don’t put it anywhere near the same category as the others, especially without context. Its use for stunned or astonished is now archaic, and personally I prefer foolish, but I also can’t see a reason to complain about a simple word change in code for a reference.
Are you worried “stupid” won’t be used as a word anymore?
Why do you feel a need to “draw a line”?
I’m not trying to make this into some discussion on word choice here, I’m more trying to point out why I think the response from rimu is ridiculous to me. It has the same energy to me as getting mad when someone offers to update a guide with gender-neutral language, and the response is angry blog posting and calling it “political”.
so fucking what. if you do or say one stupid thing that doesn’t make you stupid. if you constantly do or say stupid things you are probably stupid
it makes little sense to me as well. it seems like every few months or so, random innocent words get added to “no-no” lists.
Pretty sure “stupid” was always on that list
I’m not a close (or any kind of) follower of these dramas, but judging by the kind of unhinged “fans” PieFed seemed to attract, and the expressed reason(s) for that attraction, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if trying to appease them for months is taking a heavy toll.
Extremely bizarre behaviour.
“stupid” is problematic
no it isn’t
To me, this is an example of something that people blow out of proportion. Is the word stupid to describe someone’s post mean? Yes, a little. Could it be improved by renaming it low effort? Definitely. I see no reason why this would be controversial.
Does that mean the word stupid is bad in all contexts? No, probably not. If your friend is being stupid, there’s just being stupid.
I would agree, but for them to get triggered by someone saying it is also stupid. Feel like I would have said “feel free to submit a PR”
I would have said “feel free to submit a PR”
That was my thought.
From me elsewhere:
a change to code that would have some small positive benefit (for the people bothered by it) and no real negative other than, say, accepting a pr taking a few moments of time?
I honestly wouldn’t have even read the original request as anything other than “Hey I’m bringing this up before I make these super simple changes and a pr, cool?”
Which, to me, is just open source friendly chat and a way to say “If you were going to make a change here I won’t waste my time submitting on this” or “Maybe you’d want some more word options so I don’t waste anyone’s time”. The reaction is way different than what makes sense to me.
You have a very rational way of seeing it, and I would have done the same thing. Only thing I’d say for the original asker is to be a bit more direct, they dance around it a bit, but that’s a nitpik at most.
A story, I remember about 7 years ago I was asked to go through and rename every instance of “whitelist”/“blacklist” to “allowlist”/“denylist”. I stand by that searching through the codebase and having me do that everywhere was a waste of time, it took me about a full week of time just to do that change with DB migrations and frontend updates and everything in just my chunk of code, I can’t imagine how much time was spent company-wide. I found out it was actually pushed by the “People Department” as they called themselves then, and they did not care at all that it was in code only and not even visible to anyone. But I rolled my eyes and did it, it’s just one of those things. I do purposely choose allowlist/denylist when writing new code because I understand it, but I also stand by it was asanine and meaningless to waste time and have me do all of them at once. A better mandate would have been “If you see whitelist/blacklist, you should now change it to allowlist/blocklist as you come across it, with teammates holding that bar in PRs. No modifications should be done without also updating the naming”.
A better mandate would have been “If you see whitelist/blacklist, you should now change it to allowlist/blocklist as you come across it, with teammates holding that bar in PRs. No modifications should be done without also updating the naming”.
Yup! This is how I handled it, along with some other similar language changes in more industry specific language use cases. Only exceptions were user-facing dialogs. Surprise, surprise, everything that needed to be changed happened over the course of a few months anyway.
Yup, and probably a lot less engineering time too since those who came across each one knew the details of what they were working on, and what the implications of the change would be. Vs what I had to do which was learn about each one, make sure I wasn’t destroying something, making sure no one else depended on, repeat times like 30.
Plus I didn’t even have to justify the time involved either, since there was already a stakeholder for whatever changes needed to be made, it just went under the same hours as part of the required changes based on current standards.
Obviously community driven open source is a bit different (our code is open but still driven by business activity, so it didn’t really come up otherwise except in rare scenarios), no need to justify hours or anything, so its even easier.
Wait you got paid for that? How the fuck is it a waste of time then? Most of that time was wasted in exchange for a fraction of the value you produced
Oh of course, the entire engineering team was halted and it was mandated from the top. Everything stopped. Stupidest thing I’ve ever seen, I’ve never seen an HR department - sorry the “People Department” wield so much power. Completely stupid. They took no input on how we should do it properly.
Can you think of any words with a similar connotation that are problematic? What differentiates which are acceptable?
yeah i can think of a few, you thick dense cretinous moronic stupid idiot. but why be so coy? say what you mean
I’m not as impressed with you as you are. Cretonism has a specific meaning and is associated with a medical diagnosis, you ignoramus. The rest have a similar history, but I wouldn’t expect such a bufoon to know any of that. A clown with such mundane, unexciting insults should avoid engaging in contests of wit. Even if you’re not intentionally being a jerk to save yourself two minutes with a thesaurus (which is a book that gives you words similar in meaning to the one you look up), you’re basic. Lurk more.
fair play. i think i remember what i was getting at but easier to concede than explain
What do you expect from a communist like Chairman Rimu. He has already decided what is best for you and vibe coded it into being.
Communism is not the problem, dictatorship is.
It’s crazy how you see someone with a problematic take, see they’re a communist, and instead of complaining about the problematic take, you focus on the communism.
It’s a joke making fun of his hypocrisy. Rimu is notoriously anti-communist and anti-AI yet he used to post shit like this.
I see. But also, people change their minds
I read this as completely the opposite: Why has a self proclaimed Stalinist decided to ban antiableist language on his code, if not to continue oppressing the proles? @Grainne@lemmy.dbzer0.com is just showing us he’s still bigotted like his heroes.
In order to defeat bigotry, you have to learn the origins of where the bigotry comes from. And if it’s concern for centralization, then it’s justified concern to have in a supposed decentralized network.
Any ideology can be corrupted by wankers in charge.
