The software could be changed to facilitate what they want to do, it isn’t like the core design couldn’t handle a feature where people could only comment if they were specifically granted permissions for the community. There could even be permissions on who can vote, like restricting to people who are subscribed and whatnot. The fact that it doesn’t exist yet doesn’t mean it can’t work for the intended purpose.
The reason for being in the fediverse is visibility, same as most other communities.
The underlying issue is one of visibility, and making it more visible could also attract unwanted attention. For example, they could address people like myself who can’t keep track of all the community specific rules by changing their name to something like “WomensStuff (no men)” but that would probably prompt people who would otherwise ignore or block the community to go make a fuss like they are in this post.
They could clarify the reason for the rule, although that does make the rules longer. For example they could include something about the intent being to have discussions from women’s perspectives without them being drowned out when limiting who can comment.
future development doesn’t mean anything in this context, but by all means, open a feature request; I’m sure plenty of communities would welcome features like that!
the problem is the disregard for the design of the platform.
it doesn’t do what they want now, and they need to conform to how the platform works now.
public means public. private means private.
those settings exist for a reason.
if visibility is such a concern, make two communities:
one that is public and allows anyone to participate, and one that is private, invite only.
that last one is obviously what they have tried to recreate here, and it’s not how the platform generally works.
in a traditional forum, this isn’t really an issue, since you’d just have a designated board, clearly separate from others. only lemmy is not a traditional forum. it doesn’t have this separation.
anything that shows up on all is supposed to be fair game for everyone.
if you don’t want that, don’t make it show up in all.
i really don’t care if it’s a womens only, or mens only, or canadians only community. the public feed is not the place for that, and with the current state of the software (which is the only thing of relevance here) what this community wants is not possible.
so either:
find a workaround (that doesn’t annoy the general userbase)
contribute to a technical solution (it is a public repo after all)
use software that actually has the feature you want.
annoying users is generally bad Netiquette. this bad Netiquette is the issue at hand.
not the desire for a designated womens space. i haven’t seen anyone in the thread lamenting that.
this whole thing is kind of like setting up a bbq in the middle of a public park, and getting mad at people, when they point out that there is a designated bbq area that you are supposed to use.
it’s not the people pointing out the existence of a designated bbq area that are wrong!
it’s the people ignoring the signs that say “please use the designated area for your bbqs” that are wrong.
The software also doesn’t force people in any community to stay on the topic of that community, that is done through moderation.
this whole thing is kind of like setting up a bbq in the middle of a public park, and getting mad at people, when they point out that there is a designated bbq area that you are supposed to use
Actually it is more like having a BBQ competition in the park where only people who registered can participate in the BBQ competition but everyone else is free to watch, but not group up and shout over the people participating in the competition.
the park is all of lemmy. WomensStuff doesn’t own all of lemmy, so that doesn’t really fit with the metaphor.
more accurate would be, if a small group marched into the park, staked off a section right in the middle, put up a little sign they made themselves, and declared this to be a competition area. all without any coordination with park authorities, without any permits, and with no prior warning to the general community.
it’s simply rude. that’s really what it boils down to.
lemmy is public by default. that’s the entire point. so declaring that this specific patch lemmy (or grass to keep with the metaphor) suddenly isn’t public anymore, is at least rude.
it’s just not how public spaces work.
i want to reiterate here, that, again, i totally understand why women want a space just for them.
it’s that using the rules instead of any number of other enforcement mechanism is really, really not how things are done around here. that’s why it is considered so rude by so many other users.
The instances are the park authorities and the communities are their permits. They didn’t just stake off a part of the park without that structure in place.
If a park has a camp going on, limited by age, they don’t let people who are not signed up to participate in the camp.
You can still use the rest of the park when the camp is going on and the BBQ competition is going, but they still have some restrictions even in a public setting.
Honestly I’m not sure how limiting who can participate is significantly different from what and how discussions are restricted in communities. The only argument against it that I can see is that it is based on gender, and that simply isn’t a black and white issue.
if someone’s car is blocking half the sidewalk, forcing every passerby to walk around…is that made any better when they hang a little sign on it saying “please mind the car”?
they’re still in the way. they could go all the way up their driveway, there’s plenty of room, they just choose to make their bad parking everyone else’s problem.
that’s what’s going on here:
they could correctly configure their community like everyone else, but they choose to make it everyone else’s problem when they show up in the all feed.
and the all feed is not owned by any one instance, which is why your analogy with the authorities doesn’t work. (the park analogy isn’t great anyway, the driveway/sidewalk one is better, i think)
their attitude of “just block it, if you don’t like it” is the very definition of making their community everybody’s else’s problem.
and i think that’s rude and inconsiderate.
and if you can’t see how it’s way worse to control how who can post is much worse than what gets posted:
it’s the difference between banning pride merch from your store, and banning queer people from your store.
both might be bad, but one is clearly much, MUCH worse!
i agree with this, but would like to point out:
if the software can’t do what you want it to do…you need to use a different software.
from what i can tell about the community, they really want to be a discord server, but on lemmy…why not just use discord in the first place then?
faulting the general userbase for using the software exactly as intended and then getting mad about it seems…really toxic…and intentionally combative.
The software could be changed to facilitate what they want to do, it isn’t like the core design couldn’t handle a feature where people could only comment if they were specifically granted permissions for the community. There could even be permissions on who can vote, like restricting to people who are subscribed and whatnot. The fact that it doesn’t exist yet doesn’t mean it can’t work for the intended purpose.
The reason for being in the fediverse is visibility, same as most other communities.
The underlying issue is one of visibility, and making it more visible could also attract unwanted attention. For example, they could address people like myself who can’t keep track of all the community specific rules by changing their name to something like “WomensStuff (no men)” but that would probably prompt people who would otherwise ignore or block the community to go make a fuss like they are in this post.
They could clarify the reason for the rule, although that does make the rules longer. For example they could include something about the intent being to have discussions from women’s perspectives without them being drowned out when limiting who can comment.
the point I’m making is:
the software doesn’t do what they want right now.
future development doesn’t mean anything in this context, but by all means, open a feature request; I’m sure plenty of communities would welcome features like that!
the problem is the disregard for the design of the platform.
it doesn’t do what they want now, and they need to conform to how the platform works now.
public means public. private means private.
those settings exist for a reason.
if visibility is such a concern, make two communities:
one that is public and allows anyone to participate, and one that is private, invite only.
that last one is obviously what they have tried to recreate here, and it’s not how the platform generally works.
in a traditional forum, this isn’t really an issue, since you’d just have a designated board, clearly separate from others. only lemmy is not a traditional forum. it doesn’t have this separation.
anything that shows up on all is supposed to be fair game for everyone.
if you don’t want that, don’t make it show up in all.
i really don’t care if it’s a womens only, or mens only, or canadians only community. the public feed is not the place for that, and with the current state of the software (which is the only thing of relevance here) what this community wants is not possible.
so either:
annoying users is generally bad Netiquette. this bad Netiquette is the issue at hand.
not the desire for a designated womens space. i haven’t seen anyone in the thread lamenting that.
this whole thing is kind of like setting up a bbq in the middle of a public park, and getting mad at people, when they point out that there is a designated bbq area that you are supposed to use.
it’s not the people pointing out the existence of a designated bbq area that are wrong!
it’s the people ignoring the signs that say “please use the designated area for your bbqs” that are wrong.
The software also doesn’t force people in any community to stay on the topic of that community, that is done through moderation.
Actually it is more like having a BBQ competition in the park where only people who registered can participate in the BBQ competition but everyone else is free to watch, but not group up and shout over the people participating in the competition.
no, that is very much different.
pie recipes on FuckCars get deleted because of their content, not because of who posted them.
rules are supposed to be for content.
this constitutes a misuse of the rule system.
I revised my example to fit the park setting, but not fast enough. Can you see if that makes more sense?
The software limitation signage is that the signage is hard to see.
i mean, kind of? not really?
the park is all of lemmy. WomensStuff doesn’t own all of lemmy, so that doesn’t really fit with the metaphor.
more accurate would be, if a small group marched into the park, staked off a section right in the middle, put up a little sign they made themselves, and declared this to be a competition area. all without any coordination with park authorities, without any permits, and with no prior warning to the general community.
it’s simply rude. that’s really what it boils down to.
lemmy is public by default. that’s the entire point. so declaring that this specific patch lemmy (or grass to keep with the metaphor) suddenly isn’t public anymore, is at least rude.
it’s just not how public spaces work.
i want to reiterate here, that, again, i totally understand why women want a space just for them.
it’s that using the rules instead of any number of other enforcement mechanism is really, really not how things are done around here. that’s why it is considered so rude by so many other users.
it breaks the unspoken rules of the platform.
The instances are the park authorities and the communities are their permits. They didn’t just stake off a part of the park without that structure in place.
If a park has a camp going on, limited by age, they don’t let people who are not signed up to participate in the camp.
You can still use the rest of the park when the camp is going on and the BBQ competition is going, but they still have some restrictions even in a public setting.
Honestly I’m not sure how limiting who can participate is significantly different from what and how discussions are restricted in communities. The only argument against it that I can see is that it is based on gender, and that simply isn’t a black and white issue.
okay, put it a different way:
if someone’s car is blocking half the sidewalk, forcing every passerby to walk around…is that made any better when they hang a little sign on it saying “please mind the car”?
they’re still in the way. they could go all the way up their driveway, there’s plenty of room, they just choose to make their bad parking everyone else’s problem.
that’s what’s going on here:
they could correctly configure their community like everyone else, but they choose to make it everyone else’s problem when they show up in the all feed.
and the all feed is not owned by any one instance, which is why your analogy with the authorities doesn’t work. (the park analogy isn’t great anyway, the driveway/sidewalk one is better, i think)
their attitude of “just block it, if you don’t like it” is the very definition of making their community everybody’s else’s problem.
and i think that’s rude and inconsiderate.
and if you can’t see how it’s way worse to control how who can post is much worse than what gets posted:
it’s the difference between banning pride merch from your store, and banning queer people from your store.
both might be bad, but one is clearly much, MUCH worse!