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Emelia 👸🏻

What should we call a group of fediverse servers working together in moderation & community practices?

I've been using Bloc in quotes, because I'm not sure if that's the right or most correct word for it.

#moderation #fediverse #TrustAndSafety

Anonymous poll

Poll

Bloc
13
0%
Alliance
12
0%
Coalition
21
0%
Union
7
0%
0 people voted.
Voting ended 11 January at 19:44.
18 comments
Emelia 👸🏻

The idea is that in the near future or even present day of the Fediverse, we'll see groups of servers, moderators, and communities working together to define the boundaries that they want & accept.

e.g., FediPact could be considered a "bloc" of server's who all agree not to federate with Meta, that'd be an example of such.

#moderation #fediverse #TrustAndSafety

Emelia 👸🏻

You could maybe also consider the Mastodon Server Covenant as being a "bloc" of servers

e.g., they could publish a federation "accept list" of all the servers that have agreed to it, and have a process for appeals or challenges, and then you could subscribe to that and only accept instances that agree with the covenant's terms.

#moderation #fediverse #TrustAndSafety

Emelia 👸🏻

For me, "coalition" felt a little weird because it implies to me a political power, where as I'd say "bloc" invokes trading power which is perhaps closer to what we're doing: trading Activity's between different ActivityPub servers. "union" could work too.

#moderation #fediverse #TrustAndSafety

Raccoon at TechHub :mastodon:

@thisismissem
I think running a server is political power: we are basically like the despots of little virtual nations of people. We make these sort of diplomatic decisions with each other, across boundaries, and while people can move between servers if they have an issue with how the one they're on is being governed, larger servers still have an advantage in that a block of or from us can cut smaller servers off from thousands of people.

We form coalitions, like FediPact, TBS, etc, when we have a larger goal that we want to achieve and a general methodology of how we want to achieve it. The biggest example might be FediBlock. Not everyone has to agree with those coalitions, not every coalition is going to be good, but I think that's a good word for it.

That said, I would really like for us to talk more between servers, as staff. I feel like that should be a bigger part of our culture, perhaps even built into the software itself.

@thisismissem
I think running a server is political power: we are basically like the despots of little virtual nations of people. We make these sort of diplomatic decisions with each other, across boundaries, and while people can move between servers if they have an issue with how the one they're on is being governed, larger servers still have an advantage in that a block of or from us can cut smaller servers off from thousands of people.

Fluffy Kitty Cat

@Raccoon @thisismissem agreed. it might also help admins talk things through with admins so people reach for the defederate button less often

Emelia 👸🏻

@Raccoon I'm trying to get moderation notes on reports federated! But it's unfortunately low on my work list atm due to other ongoing work.

FinchHaven

@thisismissem

This is why I picked "alliance"

Webster: "2: an association to further the common interests of the members

specifically : a confederation of nations by treaty"

versus coalition:

Webster: "2: a temporary alliance of distinct parties, persons, or states for joint action"

Dunno...

Alliance just has a better ring to it, I guess...

Daniël Franke 🏳️‍🌈

@thisismissem

(Mostly because I liked it when all those left wing action groups called themselves the league of something or the other)

Emelia 👸🏻

@ainmosni I think a league tends to be one social group? Not many social groups joinijg together?

E.g., local football league vs district football federation.

Daniël Franke 🏳️‍🌈

@thisismissem

Using your same example, you have international leagues of football as well. See the champion's league.

Cass M 🇨🇦 :mstdn:

@thisismissem I picked coalition then switched to alliance but coalition seems better if it's informal.

Joel Krampus Meador 🌰

@thisismissem Ring would please me more for the throwback and other uses it echoes. I like all the options you presented though, especially bloc and coalition

Liminal witch 🧙‍♀️ Sarah

@thisismissem group? May be those group will name themselves and in couple of years we'll have Alliance, Horde, Federation, Union, Hierarchy, Collective and Space.

Emelia 👸🏻

@xgebi oh, totally, I'm just looking for a good word to describe the general concept, as it's one I'm introducing in my FIRES paper.

Boris Mann

@thisismissem a co-op ;)

I don’t know that this needs to or should be labeled.

I totally understand that technically one might want to describe something.

But do we have labels for “working together” or other relationships, aka “it’s complicated” ;)

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