So there are a few topics that came up lately that I think would be nice to discuss with members of this community.
Basically this is part of writing a Code of Conduct for our instance and I think we need to talk about some specific type of posts:
Doomers
Naturally the themes discussed in our communities are attracting a lot of climate doomer comments and I would say we also have a significant number of "recovering doomers" here as community members.
Earlier this week I considered closing the /c/collapse community on SRLPNK, because it is not actively moderated and attracts a lot of these types, even though ex_06 (who asked me to have their account re-activated, but not as an admin) originally intended it to be more of a psychological self-help group for people trying to get to terms with the likely loss of many things that defined their life so far.
While the typical doomer could probably need some psychological support, they are usually still in a stage of grief that makes them lash out and not engage in a constructive exchange how to make the best of the current difficult situation we sadly find ourselves in.
Mostly I have been doing temporary bans for such doomers to cool down and not spread their doom and gloom endlessly in our communities, but I think we need to come up with a common idea how to deal with this better.
Discussing civil disobedience
aka Direct Action or the other man's "Eco Terrorist" (yeah right...).
Obviously this is a topic many climate activists find themselves more and more confronted with and you might already be involved with a group engaged in such actions of civil disobedience. And lets not forget about the punk in Solarpunk either :)
However, obviously this is a public web-site and thus easily monitored by law-enforcement and other people that might be interested in reporting such discussions to the local authorities. Thus to protect this service and also our users from themselves we can't really allow planning discussions with specific targets or generally calls for action against specific persons to happen here out in the open (or in the semi-public direct messages).
Obviously, we can never condone violence against persons, but aside from that please be careful with discussing climate activism on the clear-web and rather use fully end to end encrypted means with people you can trust!
However this has obviously a large grey area and people might have stronger views on what should and should not be discussed here.
Absolute Vegans
Vegans are obviously welcome on SLRPNK and I think we can all agree that strongly reducing the consumption of animal products is a worthy goal.
However, there are some very opinionated (online) Vegans / animal rights activists that (intentionally or not) are indistinguishable from trolls and generally very toxic to deal with. Please don't feel personally attacked by this, but I think we need to come up with something regarding this in our code of conduct.
So these were the three topics I had in my mind lately, but feel free to discuss others as well.
I am looking forward to your thoughts on this!
I've only been here for a month, and I haven't posted a tremendous amount in the Slrpnk.net communities, but I've been actively reading a lot of the stuff posted here.
First, I just want to say that this community is, in my opinion, superb. I've found myself in total agreement with @poVoq@slrpnk.net's decisions and thought process regarding the direction this instance is going. It seems to have resulted in a vibe and an atmosphere that I find compelling, to the point that I feel this one of the nicest little corners of the internet I've seen in quite some time.
Regarding Doomers:
I think I would qualify as a 'recovering' or 'recovered' doomer, having previously been a prepper and then transitioning to a somewhat all-hope-is-lost mentality regarding the climate and the future in general. Having been in that world, I can safely say that worldview is simply harmful to the mind, and seems to entice a certain type of toxicity. In general, a lot of the people involved in those circles seem to actually wish for a collapse to occur, as it would result in an end to their current predicaments (Crippling debt, lack of meaning, an end to the rat race, etc).
While in some ways understandable, it does unfortunately result in the behavior you described. With not only a tendency toward complete apathy, but also the active discouragement of others attempting to make things better as well, resulting in a spiral of depression and angst for many.
(at least, that's what I saw of r/collapse on reddit, I haven't investigated the collapse community here).
I'm not entirely sure how that community should be handled. I can't say I'd miss them it if that community was removed, and I like the idea of replacing it with a more hopeful version, like the crumbles (as someone else mentioned) or maybe AvoidCollapse instead, which could focus more on exactly that, collapse situations and what we can do to avoid it as best we can with the means available (Though I guesss that's kinda the point of Solarpunk to begin with).
I would be more against completely removing the community if the situation really was hopeless, but after days and weeks and months of research into this area, I think practically there is much that can be done to mitigate a significant amount of the coming problems the world will face. Ultimately, I do feel that giving a space for a despairing doomerist viewpoint would, IMHO, only diminish genuinely useful efforts to make the world better.
Regarding Discussing civil disobedience:
Fully agree with your assessment here, lemmy just isn't an appropriate place for such things, and this community should not go beyond recommending safe/legal ways to resist the system. I don't think allowing more extreme sorts of discussion would really further anything useful dramatically, and would radically increase the danger of 'the system' coming down on the server, its owner, and possibly its users. It's not worth the risk!
Again, I'm in agreement here. As someone who is trying to cut out industrial meat from my diet because of the extreme ethical violations in the meat industry, I do still believe that meat can be sourced fairly ethically on a small scale (at least for some species). My reasoning for such is based on my own unscientific opinion, but one which I'm satisfied is in the ballpark of being good enough. (I can go into detail for those interested, but for now will leave it to myself, as I don't know if it would contribute to the discussion at hand).
I'm in favor of allowing animal husbandry related posts and meat-based recipes in the food communities. Coming down on that aspect harshly I think would do more harm than good, and may turn people away from the rest of the movement.
That's just my two cents.
I'd say meat-based recipes can be found on any other mainstream instance on lemmy but Slrpnk should stand for things that help improve our environmental impact. For me it's like having tuning tips for gas guzzlers.
Nobody needs to eat meat.