Once again I would like to make a statement about fedi instance administration. :ablobcatbongopost:

The reason is that I increasingly get the feeling that more and more is going wrong on certain instances. Maybe that's because I sometimes don't hear everything from the outside, but i doubt that this is the case.

There are a few issues that need to be addressed:
- Transparency
- Organizational structure
- Conflict Management with Users or other Instances

Transparency:
It is important that things an admin does are transparent to the users of the instance. It is not the users duty to inquire, but the administrators duty to communicate. This begins with conflicts and ends with blocks.

The publication of such data helps both users who are looking for an instance, so that they can assess the instance, and other administrators. This also helps especially when it comes to finding out communication problems between instances or you can see if the admins of an instance maintain their blocklists or dont fullfill their duties.

One of the most used excuses here is that such information is not made public to avoid conflict and drama.
I hardly think this argument is nonsense, especially because Admins of blocked instance will know it somewhen and have more work to figure out whats going on.
Moreover, this does not prevent conflicts and drama at all, every admin knows how easy it is to log on to a new instance or setup a temporary one to confront the counterpart.
In fact, this approach mostly favors the non-maintenance or incorrect maintenance of blocklists, which is to the disadvantage of their own users.

Organizational structure:
I will certainly not dictate to anyone how their instance should be run. However, I often notice that many instances do not announce this themselves. One's own values, rules, ways to adapt these rules, limits that are given, that all should be known. This is all information users are interested in. I think that Fediverse instances are realtively similar to associations, and exactly like this, one should deal with each other. And that brings me to the last part.

Conflict Management with Users or other Instances:
I've been around long enough to have experienced to be able to assess when an admin is acting out of the interest of their instance or acting out of their own interest. I have experienced this against myself or as a passive viewer on the network. Most of the time, this goes so far that people do not take the time for necessary discussions and thus again a transparency problem exists. Problems, intentional or unintentional mistakes are always there, and these should also be allowed to be discussed and one is should also allow to make mistakes but also make learnings from such situations.

And now the controversial own opinion:
There are not many instances which define values and stand up for them: Our decision to enforce our rules locally only is one of them. The software we use allows the user to have control over server mutes/blocks, so the administration can decline the authority to take care of those, and leave this up to the user. Something for which I stand politically strong and therefore I can take the time to care more about local rules and conflicts.

I wish more admins and users would behave like this, was built exactly for this. But after all I can respect if other instances have different rules and behaviors. But what I don't like is when admins can't differentiate between their opinion and their responsibility and use their power to propagate their opinions.

I hope I can inspire someone with this long text.