This post was approved by the administration and is posted collectively under our name
Lemmygrad becomes what you make of it. We strive to be a disciplined Marxist-Leninist space, not a second Reddit.
For some time, we have noticed a lack of discipline taking hold on Lemmygrad. This isn’t a space to get a quick quip in before dipping out, or to admonish someone for not sharing your opinions. This is a space to grow. To discuss things you can’t discuss elsewhere, ask thoughtful questions, and submit your ideas for comradely consideration, with the understanding that others will engage with them in the same spirit.
Clarifying what “be respectful” means in practice
Our sitewide rule 3 states: “Be respectful. This is a safe space where all comrades should feel welcome; this includes a warning against uncritical sectarianism.”
We need to clarify what “respect” means here, in the context of a disciplined political space. It’s not just politeness; rule 3 extends to disciplinary failures in engagement, including:
- Making undisciplined, low-effort comments, especially in tense or theory conversations.
- Entrenching oneself to prove a point rather than to discuss an idea.
- Insulting or disparaging comrades.
- Trolling or acting in bad faith.
- Refusing to budge on one’s held beliefs and lashing out as a consequence.
From now on, we will enforce this rule more heavily. This is also a moment of self-criticism: in wanting to be hands-off and promote self-moderation, we have let things slide that we shouldn’t have. To address this, we are recruiting more community mods and discussing adding new admins alongside making this post.
The core principle: struggle against ideas, not individuals
This is the foundation of comradely struggle. If you can’t make a comment without resorting to pettiness, strawmanning, or attacking the individual instead of pointing out the flaws in their ideas, we urge you to step back. Not everything needs an immediate reaction.
Conversely, you are expected to start discussions in good faith so that you receive the same treatment.
Why draw this distinction? Debates struggle against individuals, using underhanded tactics to “win” in front of an audience. Our method is to struggle against incorrect ideas, with the goal of helping each other grow and develop our place in the struggle.
A concrete historical example
During the Long March, Bo Gu was removed from command of the Red Army at the Zunyi Conference. Mao and others argued that Bo had rigidly applied USSR Red Army tactics, leading to excessive, avoidable losses against the KMT.
The decision wasn’t about the committee liking Mao more. It was a recognition that the tactics were incompatible with reality and needed to change. Crucially, was Bo Gu solely to blame? No. He had been put in command by the Politburo, which shared responsibility for believing those tactics would work. This wasn’t primarily an individual moral failing, but a collective responsibility for a flawed line that needed correction. Notably, Bo Gu continued to work alongside Mao and Zhou afterwards.
This is our model. We critique the line, the strategy and the idea – not the comrade’s worth. Leave the ego at the door. We work for the community, we don’t commandeer it.
New policy in moderation
Guided by this principle, our moderation will change.
We will now more readily delete comments that break rule 3, and we will use short, temporary bans (1-2 days) more often as a “cooling-off” period. These bans may be local to a specific community or instance-wide at our discretion.
We know nobody likes bans, but experience shows these short breaks effectively defuse tense situations. We also count on mods to use this tool within their communities. If a dispute spills outside of the original comment chain, we will consider it harassment and issue longer bans.
We also want to add a word in regards to serial downvoting. Downvotes can be used as harassment, and we urge you to consider before issuing a downvote on a post or comment. Ask yourself: is it helpful to downvote? Is it productive? What does it communicate?
These standards also apply to users from other instances. We expect you to apply them when you post on Lemmygrad.
Your responsibility and how to report effectively
We appreciate your cooperation if a temp ban is issued to your account. If it happens, the best thing you can do is reflect on it privately (or with comrades if you feel so inclined) and then move on from it. Making a post to complain about a ban after it’s passed has shown through experience that it’s rarely productive - this is not us telling you not to appeal to be clear, just that the best thing you can do is to simply carry on after a ban. So thank you for cooperating with the admin team and the community on this.
Moderation is a partnership. When you report something, we see only the specific content, your username, and your reason in the report. Understanding the full context requires significant labor. Therefore, your role is critical:
- Your first tool should be disengagement. Step away from unproductive conversations. You do not need to have the last word.
- When reporting, provide context. Explain why in the reason box. What happened, and why exactly are you making a report? Reports used as a “super-downvote” or for revenge don’t help.
- Understand that we see this from an outside perspective. We can’t know how you feel in the moment of a heated conversation, and through experience we find that usually both parties have some blame by the time we get the report. This is why we ask you to step away and report instead of participating in a conversation that is spiraling out of control.
tl;dr: commenting and posting on Lemmygrad ought to be thoughtful, principled, good faith and Marxist in nature. Diamat means that both parties should abide by these principles with the other to make a new dialectic emerge.
Please feel free to ask questions in the comments.
I’m not 100% sure what brought about this policy change because this website seems the same to me as it’s always been. I’m probably missing something, idk, I’m not a mod. But I’m worried about punitive moderation because that has been pretty disastrous for hexbear.
People will absolutely remember when you ban them, even years in the future, even if it was temporary, even if it was ostensibly educational. A ban will shut someone up in the moment, of course it will, but I’m not so confident that it’s an effective tool for guiding our own community members (ban the random libs that wander in here all you want though). I’d say that it breeds resentment more than it prompts reflection and if it becomes common, we’ll definitely be seeing arguments about petty banning, mod bias, censorship, etc. I just don’t understand why this is happening when most posts get single-digit comments, if any.
Agree with this sentiment 100% and also came here from Hexbear after the moderation team there starting behaving in ways that killed the community.
This is mostly a clarification on how rule 3 should work, with most of the responsibility being on us as we are the ones who are supposed to enforce it (as well as community mods but because lemmygrad is still small enough, most actions will have to be taken sitewide.) Instead we’ve been slack with it, letting things slide on the basis that it “wasn’t our responsibility”. But then whose responsibility was it? Keep in mind that while this isn’t something that happens too often, it’s something we’ve been letting slide for several months - over time, it builds up. In fact, it’s very likely most people won’t even notice anything different; we count on our comrades to be more mindful when they post with this explainer on what rule 3 means in practice.
In our opinion what builds resentment is letting arguments spiral out of control instead of both parties engaging on the right basis. If we can stop them before they spiral out, they will become more productive and resolve better. This is also something the community can participate in, users can step in and urge both parties to keep cool heads. In particular those fanning the flames as we say might also get a community-wide ban or their comment deleted, on the grounds that they make unhelpful comments that don’t help resolve the dialectic but instead only put up a higher wall. This can be considered a form of wrecking, even if it’s done unintentionally.
In our experience short 1-2 day bans, either community-wide or sitewide as needed, work very well to diffuse these situations. After one day emotions have calmed down and after that people are allowed to argue again in the comment chain if they want, provided it stays comradely this time. This is why we also urge comrades to remember they can step back and reply later if they don’t feel like they would be able to make a ‘worthwhile’ comment in the moment.