Censorship has many degrees to it, and your needs would be determined by your threat model. Once you are more aware of what you need, finding proper support should be easier. Otherwise you will wind up getting advice too extreme for your practical purposes.

Obligatory ‘just use linux’

What did Ghengis Khan ever do to you? Actually, nevermind.

Federated communities currently have the benefit of very little automated moderator activity, and being much smaller than communities on reddit. What you describe is just an unfortunate reality of communities that have grown too big for their moderation capacity. Another possibility is too little moderation, and both have their downsides. It really is a shame, though. If it helps at all, I believe you’ll be mostly free from those concerns here at the present, in my experience :)

Also, if you are concerned with ‘risking your rights’ by promoting a productive discussion, you probably lack the trust inherent to working as part of a healthy team. This may not be your fault, as in many cases abuse is rampant. The key to online communities is they are rarely required in the course of someones life, and you have the option to disengage from them when they are not healthy.

To my understanding, a completely flat power structure is definitionally anarchy, and is a good way of levelling imbalances in spaces people cannot avoid, but groups such as online communities are often projects made with an intent, and moderation teams are the tool by which that intent is maintained. In practise, moderators should be more like gardeners taking care of a flower bush than police or councillors.

I imagine it’s very hard to moderate effectively any other way. A moderation team should be on the same page, and believe that other moderators are acting in good faith. Generally, this means moderators take action justified by established rules and/or guidelines, and document their justification should review be required.

Requiring voting for every, or most actions is a monumental amount of time consuming administration work, as most moderators have other obligations, and live across time zones. Moderator action being required is, inherently, because an act in the community is deemed to be harmful to a community or it’s intended purpose. Swift action is especially important when the act is illegal, or dangerous (exploitation media, doxxing, etc).

A voting system is counterintuitive to the intent of moderation. Communities and forums, both physical and ethereal, are not democracies. Each is created with an intent, here in the ‘lemmyverse’ that intent is often to promote discussion. If I founded a crochet group, and the members decided to instead perform seances during meets, the group would no longer serve it’s purpose. Hierarchy of some kind developing is also unavoidable in any relationship; but a positive hierarchy is understood by those within it to be productive, and well intentioned.

Voting systems are not immune to power imbalances, especially when alternate accounts and moderator inactivity are present. Votes enforced on a software level may be manipulated, or held in a permanent limbo. Whereas unenforced votes don’t mean much other than polling opinion, which is already an option, and already relies on trust in the moderators. Members of a community should trust one another enough to feel empowered to bring up concerns.

TL:DR Nothing is perfect, but healthy communities are built on trust, and no level of enforcement changes that. In a healthy ecosystem, people are free to stop engaging where they do not have that trust, and are empowered to promote positive change. The fediverse is built on this principle, as netizens and communities alike must have trust in their admins, and that same trust applies to every step in the hierarchy. It is also practically impossible due to organisational constraints, or undue demand of volunteer moderators’ time.

The comments make it worth it :)

Also, most of the responses here on lemmy.ml have been food related, unlike the other communities, and I’m not sure what that means, but you mentioning the apple slices makes me wonder if it’s some kind of curse at this point lol.

Convenient solutions are the best.

I didn’t know that kind of jewellery was called ‘wire weaving’, TIL. I love the detail on them.

Looks nice, I wish you luck with your gardening endeavors :)

Oh, that makes sense. I’ll admit I’ve not done much gardening at all.

I’ll copy your original comment down here, just to keep it preserved before it gets synced out of existence forever.

both last weekend, and this weekend I made sauce from my bucket loads of san marzano tomatoes. All the herbs (and the carrot I stuck in there) were from the garden too! Muy bien, very happy :)

That’s a brilliant solution, I had never even considered anything along those lines. Sounds like you’ve really helped some people out - I’m absolutely saving this template for later use.

The level of attention to detail 3D artists can wind up creating is absolutely breathtaking, and seeing the end result here? Gorgeous. Thank you for your contribution :)

I, for one, am actually glad when I see people promoting their businesses a little on here. Too often out in the world you’ll just find astroturfed, mass-manufactured things that come from the same 12 factory floors. We should enjoys sharing our work with our community for as long as they don’t.

It was originally two, but the left and right keys wanted some space.

That sounds delicious, although I do wonder what brings forth the need to make weekly batches of sauce.

If I could do this, I swear my life would get 10x easier.

handsome little fella

You’ve done so well, you have my congratulations :)

I would kill to have that cabinet, it’s so pretty… Thank you for your contribution :)