I was encouraged to create an governance thread for discussion dedicated to community focused around the db0 lemmy instance users. Please see the linked post for context. I decided to leave my original post for potential discussion including voices of outsiders.

In short, not to duplicate information - I’d like to ask our community the following questions:

1. Is the mod’s behaviour of proactively banning users from moderated communities without clear violation in accordance to the instance rules, especially The Golden Rules, which call for “cooperative participation”?
2. If yes, what actions can be proposed to be taken next to alleviate the issue, not only with the two directly mentioned communities in the linked post, but also others that potentially fall a victim to this kind of mod misbehaviour?

It should also be appropriate to hear the stance of the involved moderators, why they do what they do, but obviously it is up to them to provide clarifications.

Thank you in advance, I love you all.

governance type: sense check

I hope I’m not exposing myself to some kind of retailation, but here it goes.

It has been brought to my attention in a totally unrelated discussion that moderator(s) of !stable_diffusion_witches@lemmy.dbzer0.com and !stable_diffusion_mycology@lemmy.dbzer0.com hosted here on db0 seemingly randomly ban users (including me) which had never ever even interacted with the community as being “Anti-AI Trolls”, “Neoliberals” or other names. Some other users are banned for “Vote Manipulation” (what does that even mean?! you still addicted to reddit’s karma or what?).

While I totally don’t mind these communities, content served by them and their rules as stated in the sidebar, I somehow found myself caring for what lemmy.dbzer0.com represents in the fediverse. I am of strong stance that such behaviour like described above (proactively banning random users) stands in a potential violation of The Golden Rules which are the foundation of this instance. This starts to be noticeable and brings negative perception of our instance.

I claim that such behaviour is in contradiction of rules calling for cooperative participation in the community by creating “closed garden” of only the most trusted users by the moderation where noone else can participate. The rules under which someone is banned are not clear, bans are not directly connected to any particular user comment and/or action.

I call for the community to voice their oppinion about this matter and if the community agrees with my objection to such behaviour as described above, I call for a proper action to be taken to enforce the community standards.

Thank you.