A new challenge for Moderating on Ethereum World - Who the heck is Minami Yamada?

[Martin]

One of our dear Ethereans has put the AKSHA Foundation internal moderating team once more to a test. I am posting this here bluntly again. The picture itself can be initially seen as “neutral” I mean there’s more to be seen in some underwear advertisements.

Some people might find it sexist.

As a moderator on Ethereum World I personally find a random text decorated by a photo of a young female barely dressed does not add value really. But who am I to judge that?

Does this image violate our current CoC?

That depends. Do we classify this as soft porn? Well, may be?

Then I ran the image through google image search and I end up identifying it belongs to a person names Minami Yamada.

山田南実

Minami is apparently a famous J-Pop character: Yamada Minami | Jpop Wiki | Fandom

As you see she seems to have a preference to pose barely dressed, and theres a strong preference for poses with 'breast".

I’d like to have a discussion here: what should we do with such posts?

• It that something that needs to be tolerated?
  ( It is perhaps common in some other cultures (I’m bringing here my middle European culture in the mix, this would requires someone from Japan to judge)?
• Shall we come together and update the CoC to make it more clear that random shitposts (I’d classify this as one, but again that’s my personal opinion) should be reported and moderated?

[RyanLynnWells]

Hello Martin. I think this situation can be very tricky to evaluate especially since I do not know the context of what is being said in a post that is written in Japanese. I don’t necessarily disagree that this may be considered a random shitpost that does not add value, I also cannot directly verify that. I feel more context would be needed to determine if this should be reported and moderated.

I do feel that right now it probably doesn’t add value, but I also think it could be a dangerous notion to start moderating and removing content for how people choose to express themselves such as how they dress in pictures posted of themselves. I don’t see anything that would be considered pornographic in my background which is the midwestern United States. I think this is content that should be up to the individual to determine if they want to avoid by using the in app tools to block such users.

I’ll say again that I do think this is probably not a valuable piece of content currently, but I think if we begin removing such content, we risk the long-term growth of the platform because I think there are many people that would be alienated by such moderating. Thoughts?

[sheldrake]

Thanks for opening up this conversation @Martin. I believe this is a question of purpose, values, and context, and without wishing to over-simplify, that list is possibly in reverse order of relevance here. But let’s take it in that order.

Purpose

What is the purpose of Ethereum World?

Well, without requiring any current or future participant to read anything much at all, the clue is very much in the name. The social network is dedicated to all things Ethereum, and therefore open to anyone with an interest in Ethereum. Does the post in question relate in any way to Ethereum, no.

But being a social network inviting participants to bring their ‘whole selves’, and us all being human, we don’t ever just stay on topic. So then we come to the difference between, say, raving about the new Harry Styles album and sharing a photo of scantily clad J-Pop star.

Values

A (human) community may be defined as a group of individuals who share mutual concern for one another’s welfare. Members of a community have other things in common including a set of values and social norms (enacted values) that may often be left largely unsaid in long-term non-digital community because we learn the ‘rules’ by observing and emulating, but usually need to be made explicit in new digital community because everyone is new around here.

Ethereum World expresses those values as a code of conduct (behaviours), and these in turn emanate from the AKASHA Foundation’s values if only because the key participants around here at the moment are also AKASHA team members. This will evolve.

Every community is a network. Not every network is a community, and equally a network may encompass multiple communities.

Ethereum World is a network and it is a singular community right now given its nascency, or more precisely it has the aspiration for community. The conversation we’re having right here right now is part and parcel of that formative process. With scale, Ethereum World will host multiple communities and participants will gravitate to just the one or a few or very many.

Is the photograph here counter to those values. Well, we’ve been clear that the AKASHA team isn’t pro- or anti- anything so long as it’s legal, but there remains a time and a place, which is a common saying referring to …

Context

If a community coalescing around Ethereum also wishes to explore model railways, Zen poetry, or J-Pop babes, then go for your life. Establish the context (channel) and learn, inform, enjoy. Context is king.

But post something that is obviously out of context and likely to fall into a context that not every participant would embrace, then you should expect other participants to moderate this behaviour. In my humble opinion.

That moderating behaviour could be to, effectively, invite the participant to more their posting to a more appropriate community, or move it for them. This side of the Ethereum World network hosting multiple communities, we have less choice. In this instance, the only option is delisting the post and inviting the participant who posted it to the conversation here.

[Martin]

Thank you @sheldrake . We have definitely different ways also again weaving the technical code in here how this could be approached. For example, if the post was tagged in some way to appear under a category and all participants had a choice to add or remove the category from their immediate attention this would invite for a wider variety of topics to be possible without loosing “context”. As long as we are in a nascent state and the possibilities are more limited in customization we might need to approach this the way it was done here. That said. I hope on the front of evolving both codes - the technical and the social we will soon make the necessary steps forward.

[sheldrake]

+1

As soon as Ethereum World is back up and running — or more precisely, as soon as the Textile services we rely upon are back up and running — I guess one of us should invite the publisher of the content discussed here to the conversation here. Would you like to do that or shall I?

[Martin]

@sheldrake This invitation has happened. If you follow the transparency log as well as comments I made below a post of the person.

@RyanLynnWells: I agree this is a difficult call and context is required and also in a geographic sense.

My judgement here was the one of a moderator that had such additional information “in context”: The specific profile has a history of posting out of context content, including a post I commented on in this topic. In the real post no black bars were not present…

In my opinion the profile was testing “what is possible” and also test the borders between “freedom of speech” and “freedom of attention”.

Lacking any contextual information removing the lingerie post is clearly border line. With additional information I felt compelled that the post was “spammy”, “not adding value”, “testing the limits”.

As we evolve Ethereum world we need to look at several aspects:

• We need to continue to have meta discussion and evolve the Code of Conduct and Values this community stands for.
• We need to continue to ask ourselves what brings value to the community and what not and how we can both help participants to filter to content that they find valuable as well as agree what content is generally falling into the “valuable” and not "valuable category.

In the longer term future I would believe such instances of the AKASHA Framework to become more specialized and combine moderation and curation in a way that clearly defines what a world shall be focussed at and what not.

Today, with only one world there’s no place to go. But in the future the lingerie posts may simply move to a lingerie channel, or better a lingerie world.