1/ In my own indirect way, I've tried giving advice to Twitter migrants, especially journalists.
The rejoinder has been, "Stop addressing us as a monolith."
Yet some people who plan on running journalism instances are about to make very bad decisions that are bound to hurt themselves in the long run.
So I'm going to give direct advice right now.
2 / Work with the culture here, not against it. If someone demands a CW, just use it.
No, not every request for a CW should be entertained. But if it has to do with politics or violence or anything triggering, use a CW.
BTW, I speak as someone who's gotten in trouble in the past regarding this—and ultimately I've concluded CWs are not a big deal.
3 / Consider who's been maintaining the Fediverse while you all have been dominating Twitter for the past 5 years: folks who were previously chased off of Twitter.
You think they're thrilled that you're in their space while you call yourselves "refugees"?
Despite this, they're being welcome because they can see the bigger picture. But that doesn't mean they're giving up their culture just because you want to feel comfortable here.
4 / No one is obligated to be your audience, and they're certainly not obligated to federate with you either.
If there's any hint you're going to be a bad citizen, or host malicious people on your instances, the plug will be pulled on you fast.
6 / Don't be threatening others if you don't get your way. In fact, the moment you threaten instance operators, you're just confirming why they shouldn't federate with you.
And when I say "threaten", I especially mean lawsuits.
7 / If you're worried about your ability to moderate your instance, keep it small. In fact, better to run multiple instances with small communities than one big instance where you can't keep tabs on what's going on.
It just takes one bad apple to spoil the bunch.
8 / Yeah, you see an opportunity. You want to bring over a ton of folk from Twitter over here. But this won't work out if you fail to build trust.
If you can't even do CWs, you're kind of suspect.
@jdormansteele2 @albinanigans I don't believe that days on a platform are proportional to the validity of one's points. How many days until you are allowed to push back on a post that you felt was unnecessarily hostile toward yourself?
Established members of a group have more power than newcomers. They often tend to try to wield that power in subtle and not so subtle ways (hazing). That's partially what rubbed me the wrong way.
@escarpment
See, I found this thread blunt, no-nonsense, pretty frank... Stuff like that. Personally, I didn't parse it as hostile.
And to be blunt, it's not the thread's responsibility to keep a sugar-coated tone in case it might hurt someone's feelings.
True, that is how you feel and I won't argue that. But please look up "tone policing" and how it's typically Bad Form to do that.
@albinanigans Sure, I suppose I am tone policing. The post I was responding to was also policing the tone of others who had recently joined. Where is the line between tone of voice and the content? You could very calmly say something that is hostile and I would still feel threatened.
Finally, I'm getting mixed signals here. I thought this community holds the value that it *is* the poster's responsibility for protecting people's feelings. Thus the recommendation to put up Content Warnings.
Chris Trottier
Escarpment
a.Albi
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