On Content Removal
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On Content Removal # Harmful, bigoted, or generally distasteful content isn’t as frequent on our site as it is elsewhere, but these do still appear enough that we sometimes get questions about why certain comments are left up. This post is meant to help you understand a bit about how we moderate. As stated in our sidebar and in tons of other places on our site, Beehaw aspires to be(e) a safe, friendly, and diverse place.

Hey all,

Moderation philosophy posts started out as an exercise by myself to put down some of my thoughts on running communities that I’d learned over the years. As they continued I started to more heavily involve the other admins in the writing and brainstorming. This most recent post involved a lot of moderator voices as well, which is super exciting! This is a community, and we want the voices at all levels to represent the community and how it’s run.

This is probably the first of several posts on moderation philosophy, how we make decisions, and an exercise to bring additional transparency to how we operate.

  •  Fluffy (they/them)   ( @Fluffybirb@beehaw.org ) English
    8•1 year ago

    We never saw anything like that in school (I’m in the UK), or were shown dead bodies/people dying/anything like that. The closest we came was travelling to places like the Somme and a lot about the world war.

    TW, unpleasant content

    spoiler

    I remember watching a video at a concentration camp that showed people reduced to near-skeletons because of the horrors they were subjected to, starvation and so forth. I even educated myself in my own time on the horrors of nuclear war as a teen, the horrific injuries and deaths experienced by the victims of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki etc etc, but it still had a huge negative impact on my ability to function (see below) even though I was looking voluntarily.

    And honestly? I **didn’t ** cope well. I have autism, ADHD and OCD (the former two I’ve only been diagnosed with in my 30s), which makes it very hard to filter out, compartmentalise or be ‘thick skinned’ about anything, despite working most of my life on it. I had a really, really hard time. It made my OCD go through the roof, I lived in constant fear and anxiety, and suffered with intrusive thoughts and images of the things I’d seen.

    Unfortunately, not everyone is able to process that kind of imagery or story without it having a massive detrimental impact on their life.

    In this case, I thought I was going to read a story about a bartender dealing with a patron he didn’t want in the bar, on an instance that I thought was safe from shocking content like that. Having a picture like that slapped in my face was, as I said, incredibly upsetting, and I had to spend time processing and dealing with the emotions it brought up (see disabilities above).

    All I’m asking for it a content warning is all, so people can either choose not to look, or at least mentally prepare themselves. :) I hope that helps answer your question a bit, and I’m sorry if it’s rambly!

    Edited to add: I didn’t mention it in my original reply because I didn’t want to be speaking on behalf of others, but there are probably a lot of people out there for whom stumbling across that sort of image would be way more traumatic for a variety of reasons. So my concern wasn’t just for me, if that makes sense?