Hi everyone,
I've been thinking over how to address large amounts of outside engagement disrupting the safety of our community. As Lemmy is a large space that extends well beyond the borders of our community, when posts hit front page we often start getting a lot of engagement on posts by people outside of the transfeminine experience. Often well-meaning people engage here and say things that are insensitive, require OP to further explain themselves and their experiences unrelated to the topic of the post, or disrupt the safety of the space for transfeminine people.
This is a problem that I'm taking seriously. The purpose of this community as I see it is and has always been to provide a safe supportive community to transfeminine people. So with that in mind posters are now allowed to request engagement from specific groups on their post. This can be gender diverse people, trans people with unsupportive parents, trans parents, people who have struggled with addictions, trans people of color, etc.
I've seen a few people make comments on engagement issues lately and so I've decided that this course of action makes the most sense to preserve the safety of the community while still allowing engagement from other people when that engagement is wanted.
How you choose to make this clear is for the moment up to you. You can add a tag in your title, state so explicitly in your title, or write it somewhere in your post (try and do so clearly as I might not have the chance to fully read your post in time).
Moderator action may be taken per your request. I'm choosing to keep a steady eye on how this affects the community and to ensure that it isn't being weaponized against marginalized people within our community. I ask that everyone is patient and expect some adjustment to this new rule. A certain amount of discretion will also be applied on a per incident basis, this is not a rule banning all non-transfems from the community just providing posters a choice with regards to engagement.
This new change has been added to the sidebar and is considered effective immediately.
Feedback on this change would be great. If you think some aspect of this should be changed or you have concerns please let us know.
I agree, and think what you're proposing is worthwhile in standardizing how such requests are made. Having title tags was what I initially thought of as well. There are some considerations, like the fact that engagement requests are kinda open ended. As of now, we don't have a set list of permissible engagement groups in mind. But even just adding a tag to post title with the engagement request may work out, with the closed square brackets format.
Also totally get what you mean about blahaj routinely levying criticism for how the admins protect the interests of the users here, and I anticipated this implementation might draw some of that criticism.