/r/GenderDialogues

Photograph via snooOG

This is a place to have difficult conversations about gender and the modern state of gender roles, gender movements, and equality without it devolving into insults or arguments that can be "won". The sub belongs to the community, and the moderators are here to serve the community. To enforce the servant leadership model on the moderators, the moderators are elected by the community every month.

This is a place to have difficult conversations about gender and the modern state of gender roles, gender movements, and equality without it devolving into insults or arguments that can be "won". The sub belongs to the community, and the moderators are here to serve the community. To enforce the servant leadership model on the moderators, the moderators are elected by the community every month.

Courtesy

  • The goal of discussions is personal growth, not “educating the opposition”. We engage in dialog to better understand people different than us, and refine our own positions to better address reality.
  • Come to the conversation with honesty and sincerity
  • Compare your values to your conversational partner’s values, and your practice with your conversational partner’s practice.
  • Treat your conversational partner as an individual, not a representative of a larger group. Avoid generalizing larger groups -- acknowledge the diversity of opinion and action within them.
  • Come to each conversation without hard and fast assumptions about where the points of disagreement will be.
  • Dialog can only come from meetings of equals. We come to learn from each other.
  • Dialog can only occur with trust. Strive to earn and deserve that trust from one another.
  • Dialog can only occur when everyone is at least minimally self-critical of both themselves and their ideological positions.

Content

  • No link submissions. You are encouraged to put a link in a text submission if you take the time to write something to prime the discussion you would like to see ensue.

Engagement

  • No personal attacks.

Enforcement

  • The mods can issue warnings, suspend for a number of days, or outright ban- provided that they provide a detailed explanation of the action in their moderation history. Outright bans require their own post.

  • Mods can reverse the decisions of other mods.

  • On the first of every month, a 1-week election process will be conducted to elect 3 new mods.

  • Please use /r/GenderDialoguesMeta/ for suggestions about the rules of this sub, or to appeal any decisions you feel were unfair by the mods. Those banned from this sub will not be banned from meta.

/r/GenderDialogues

7 Subscribers

2

Voting Pt. 4: Moderator Term Length

Our desire was to implement relatively short, fixed duration terms for moderators. This serves the dual purposes of (1) preventing mod “burn-out,” and (2) allowing members of the sub to have frequent input into the leadership of the sub, through voting. There is nothing preventing any moderator from being elected to multiple “terms” if they wish to run again.

We have suggested a possible implementation already in the sub side-bar, with a one-month term length for mods, who are all either replaced or re-elected in a monthly election.

Another possible implementation might be staggered three-month term lengths, such that one of the three mods is either replaced or re-elected in a monthly election.

Note: Anything decided here should not apply to the first election, which as stated in the main sub will run in the beginning of March.

11 Comments
2021/02/21
15:29 UTC

2

Not-voting, but pt. 3: Possible Mod Rules

We want to keep the bureaucracy of administration down, but there may be some broad protections that we could enshrine into the sub.

A reasonable one might be the guaranteed protection of terms used commonly within a group present here. In a case study presented to us, the terms "Toxic Masculinity" and "Hypoagency" were identified as being a concern. I wanted to present this for discussion, but I don't think that the two terms presented really capture the issue well. If this is a sub where unpopular opinions and views can be discussed, the same protections for speech that you would like extended to your own in-group must be extended to groups that you find distasteful.

Nobody needs to protect uncontroversial terms, because those are already safe. When you talk about protecting terms and don't intend to privilege any group over any other group, then you are likely to run into protection of terms that you would see as hate speech. Someone might want "Toxic Masculinity" protected, then feel extreme anger when a gender critical feminist shows up and wants to protect terms in use in that community that emphasize the femininity of cis-women but challenge the femininity of trans-women.

You can't have a dialog sub built to favor the views of one group over another, and any protections one group requests must be extended everyone. So if we want to consider a rule like this, I encourage you to consider not just how it protects you, but the people you find most distasteful.

5 Comments
2021/02/21
15:27 UTC

2

Voting Pt. 2: Casting votes

1. Who should be allowed to vote?

I think a restriction on having made a contribution to the sub in the last month is a fair requirement for being eligible to vote

2. Who is allowed to run?

I think the requirement for voting should also be a fair constraint on who can run.

3. How will the users throw their name in the ring to run for mod?

A thread dedicated to the topic on the main sub

4. How will a user vote?

This will likely change over time as the sub grows, but a rank-order ballot submitted either by private message to a special account, or by internet form seems appropriate.

4 Comments
2021/02/21
15:24 UTC

2

Voting Pt. 1: Vote resolution algorithm

Some background reading:

  1. Single, Transferrable, Votes(STV)
  2. Condorcet Losers

We are leaning towards a ranked voting system with a single transferrable vote, where 1/4 of the candidates are eliminated through condorcet loss.

It's a complicated voting system that will require software to calculate the results, but it is as good as we could come up with to minimize tyranny of the majority.

There is no such thing as a fair voting system that lets one group have a disproportionate say in the election The Condorcet loser system lets a strongly opinionated minority veto a candidate, but a strongly opinionated majority will override that, and a weakly opinionated minority won't do anything special

It's got a strong ability to get rid of extremists, but an STV-only system would work fine 99% of the time too

7 Comments
2021/02/21
15:23 UTC

2

Voting Pt. 0: Concerns and Case Studies

We were concerned with trying to satisfy the following set of objectives:

1. Treat voters as individuals rather than ideological labels as political parties.

This is because we think that it is essential for the sub to reinforce the differences between individuals and minimize ideological loyalty and collective action because we think that this behavior entrenches bias and shuts down openness to considering ideas on their own merit. We don't want the sub to be full of just "feminists" "mras" and "egalitarians", but a wider spectrum of individuals who may differ from each other or agree with each other on a wide range of propositions. The broad descriptors of "feminist" and "mra" contain a multitude of possible beliefs, and sometimes an individual feminist and an individual mra will agree with each other, while disagreeing with others matching their ideological descriptor.

I also feel that the ideological characteristics are over-emphasized, whereas other characteristics (like an individual's sex) is underemphasized. People have a natural inclination to be more concerned by issues that affect them, and as a result, there is likely to be a material difference in what women contribute and men contribute, and I am personally more concerned with the relative concentrations of men/women/nb on this sub than I am with the relative concentration of mras/feminists.

Finally, I strongly caution against just thinking of MRAs and Feminists. You may see groups from TRP show up. You may see TERFs show up. You may see "race realists" show up. Reddit has a lot of different people, and a lot of different opinions, many of which are guaranteed to offend some portion of the audience here.

2. Minimize as much as possible tyrannies of majorities.

This is going to be hard with any democratic process, but we did read extensively into voting systems designed to address this risk, and we cover that in Pt. 1, the vote resolution algorithm.

3. Minimize reliance on custom technology.

I have seen other subs struggle with custom code as an essential part of their infrastructure, and wanted to minimize this as much as possible. Eventually I abandoned this objective because I thought that minimizing tyranny of the majority was more important. Voting resolution will probably require custom code, but we'll share it on github at least.

4. Accommodate everybody.

No viewpoint should be no-platformed. This should be a place where arguments are met with arguments, not with appeals to the authorities to remove the offending argument.

----

Case Study 1: It's safe to say that a majority of the voters will at least seem like MRAs to the feminists on this sub. They may not identify as MRAs, but the distinction between MRA and egalitarian primarily interested in men's issues strikes many feminists as trivial.

The concern is that there may be an extremist candidate that is acceptable to the MRAs on this sub, but would be a deal breaker to feminists. In this case study, the candidate would do something extreme like use their new mod power to remove any mention of feminist terms of art like toxic masculinity (putting aside for a moment that I would challenge this as a legitimate term of art, I will at least acknowledge that it is a primary descriptor used in feminist discourse), or MRA terms like hypoagency.

We have tried to address this by selecting a vote resolution algorithm that gives a strongly opionated minority a decent veto power. Additionally we propose some basic limitations that we might agree on to constrain mods. In this case, requiring the allowal of phrases that might be argued to be terms of art. Be mindful that such protections will be extended to everyone, and that you should evaluate such rules imagining how they will apply to the least sympathetic groups and terms that you can imagine.

3 Comments
2021/02/21
15:18 UTC

1

proposed sidebar re-structuring, for rule clarity

I would like to propose restructuring the "Courtesy" and "Engagement" sections of the sub sidebar, for clarity. The changes I made are:

  1. Remove third bullet point under "Courtesy," which I think is not clear
  2. Re-name "Courtesy" section to "Good Faith Participation Guidelines"
  3. Create "Rules" section, with two rules:
    1. Move "No personal attacks" to this section, and make it "No personal attacks or insults"
    2. Add "Participate in good faith," referring to the Good Faith Participation Guidelines

The "Enforcement" section would remain the same, indicating the discretion that mods have. We can discuss that in another thread if necessary.

CURRENT SIDEBAR

COURTESY

  • The goal of discussions is personal growth, not “educating the opposition”. We engage in dialog to better understand people different than us, and refine our own positions to better address reality.
  • Come to the conversation with honesty and sincerity
  • Compare your values to your conversational partner’s values, and your practice with your conversational partner’s practice.
  • Treat your conversational partner as an individual, not a representative of a larger group. Avoid generalizing larger groups -- acknowledge the diversity of opinion and action within them.
  • Come to each conversation without hard and fast assumptions about where the points of disagreement will be.
  • Dialog can only come from meetings of equals. We come to learn from each other.
  • Dialog can only occur with trust. Strive to earn and deserve that trust from one another.
  • Dialog can only occur when everyone is at least minimally self-critical of both themselves and their ideological positions.

Engagement

  • No personal attacks.

PROPOSED NEW SIDEBAR

Rules

  • No personal attacks or insults
  • Participate in good faith, as described in the Good Faith Participation Guidelines

Good Faith Participation Guidelines

  • The goal of discussions is personal growth, not “educating the opposition”. We engage in dialog to better understand people different than us, and refine our own positions to better address reality.
  • Come to the conversation with honesty and sincerity
  • Treat your conversational partner as an individual, not a representative of a larger group. Avoid generalizing larger groups -- acknowledge the diversity of opinion and action within them.
  • Come to each conversation without hard and fast assumptions about where the points of disagreement will be.
  • Dialog can only come from meetings of equals. We come to learn from each other.
  • Dialog can only occur with trust. Strive to earn and deserve that trust from one another.
  • Dialog can only occur when everyone is at least minimally self-critical of both themselves and their ideological positions.
2 Comments
2021/02/07
20:14 UTC

2

Proposed rule change -- generalizations

I would like to propose the following rule change:

Remove "No generalizations" from the "Engagement" section, and modify the 4th rule under "Courtesy" to read "Treat your conversational partner as an individual, not a representative of a larger group. Avoid generalizing larger groups -- acknowledge the diversity of opinion and action within them."

I think this change clarifies the motivation for "no generalizations" a bit, and benefits from attaching it to the bit about treating your conversational partner as an individual.

Edit: I also deliberately chose the word "Avoid" there. I think this is something that trips up a lot of people and probably warrants some discretion in modding.

FOLLOWUP: THIS CHANGE HAS BEEN IMPLEMENTED

2 Comments
2021/02/03
21:30 UTC

1

Should we restrict new/very low karma accounts?

Someone suggested restricting participation from new accounts, and it seemed a solid suggestion to me. While I am strongly in favor of keeping the sub OPEN rather than invite-only, there is a certain level of fuckery that we would protect ourselves marginally from by filtering out new and low karma accounts. What say you?

8 Comments
2021/02/03
19:46 UTC

4

How should we moderate?

The sub is structured in such a way that it will be very common for a month to begin with the selection of three people who may have never moderated before.

There is an inclination to have intra-mod discussions occur in modmail, but i think that we want to keep that to a minimum if transparency is the goal, so I'm starting a discussion here that I hope might eventually coalesce into some kind of how-to document for new mods.

For the time being- let me outline how I think moderation should be done.

  1. Review the queue.
  2. If there is something pending, do what you think is best.
  3. If that involves removing a post, COPY the text of that post to a text editor before deleting it, and include which user made it.
  4. Make an entry in your thread with the text removed, and explain why
  5. Link to that entry in the original thread where the deletion occurred.

Then there is the issue of banning. Is this something that should be done as a consensus action? Or is it an action that should be taken immediately? My inclination is to lean against relying on consensus because it is slow, and when things go wrong they go wrong fast. I also dont really want group think in the moderators. But I thought it was a question I would leave open to the community.

I expect that if I ban someone, the justification will be that, in my opinion, they were a poison pill that was dragging the quality of conversation down and inciting bad behavior from users that were usually quite civil. There are people that can stay on the inside of rules, but still be deleterious to the conversation, and who seem to have that as their purpose for participating. Historically, I have been torn over decisions like that because it seemed beyond my remit as a moderator, and yet when I revisit those calls, I feel like I made the right choice. That's why I opted for short moderation terms and elections. So that moderators would feel free to make hard decisions and let the community judge them.

19 Comments
2021/02/02
17:29 UTC

2

In the name of transparency...

A post I made on /r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates in response to a plug about the sub.

0 Comments
2021/02/02
15:59 UTC

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