Josh Marshall on Harris‘s unusual relationship with the political press: “They treated her as something between a punchline and a nonentity and now she’s the odds-on favorite, if only by a small margin, to the next President. Why should she care?”
Please don’t give up on the group! This is a moderation issue. There is only a tiny number of people playing this “both sides are evil” game, and they can be dealt with.
I'm sorry, John, I didn't mean to include you in that cris de coeur — this thread has been posted to a Friendica group, (at)kamalaharrisforpresidentnews, so it's automatically reposted to everyone who subscribes — roughly 1500 of us right now — and this Erik fellow has more or less commandeered the entire discussion. There are moderators who *ought* to be responding but, as you likely know, the fediverse is a work-in-progress. Please join in as you please!
@feditips If you *are* going to push people toward smaller servers, at least acknowledge some of the problems that may arise.
The admin may get overwhelmed, depressed, or fed up — and just quit, with minimal notice. The server then ceases to exist. This happens all the time.
The admins of small servers often feud with one another, and with larger servers, which leads to impulsive defederation, which messes up the user experience. There's no easy way to foresee which servers will be affected.
@feditips I question whether you should be editorializing from the Fedi.tips account. Many people have come to rely on you for understanding how to use mastodon (and the fediverse generally), and will assume you're speaking in some official capacity.
But what you're doing is advocating for a particular view of the fediverse — which I consider alarmist and, at the very least, open to debate. There's no objective standard by which a server can be declared "too large." Why stoke this conflict?
Moderation cuts two ways. Yes, bigger servers have more posts and more posters to moderate. But they also, being larger, can field a well-trained moderation team.
With small servers, what you've typically got is one admin and maybe a couple of (volunteer) helpers. Maybe they are good at what they do. But maybe they're erratic, distracted, or just not suited to the task. It's quite difficult really, and more complex than one might think.
@thomasfuchs Do you think it's really dying? I follow almost nobody but photographers over there, and that part of the scene is enjoyable, from my perspective — though having said that, I do not spend much time there at all.
I'm a writer and gardener living in the remnant of a forest on the coast of Maine USA. My novels include Rumors of Spring, Tex and Molly in the Afterlife, and Another Green World. I'm a gay father and granddaddy. He/him#gardening #wald #woods #trees #Wandervogel #Romantik #ChoralMusic #EarlyMusic #anglican #neopagan #Episcopagan #LGBT #TMSidhi #fantasy #science #SF #PlantScience #botany #labyrinths #impossible #paranormal #folklore #magic #UAP #NAFO #Ukraine #Maine #photography #liminal