Hey everyone!
I'm so excited to be the new top mod of this community. I've been a part of this community since the beginning, and I've seen how much it's grown and evolved. I'm grateful to the previous top mod for creating this space, and I'm honored to be taking over.
On Twitter, I'm @CantStopPoppin, and on Reddit, I'm u/CantStopPoppin. I've been active on both platforms for over 5 years, and I've always been a strong advocate for diversity, inclusion, and quality content.
I'm planning to make a few slight changes to the community, but I want to get your input first. I want this to be a place where everyone feels welcome, regardless of their background or beliefs. That means that hate speech, racism, anti-LGBTQ+, and trolling will not be tolerated.
I believe that our differences make us stronger together. We can learn from each other and create something truly special. I'm committed to listening to the community and working together to make this happen.
I'll be leaving this post unlocked for 72 hours so that you can share your thoughts and suggestions. I'll also be going through the comments to answer any questions you may have.
Here are a few specific things I'm thinking about changing:
- I'd like to make the community more welcoming to people from all walks of life. This means being more inclusive of people from different cultures, religions, and LGBTQ communities.
- I'd like to make the community more focused on quality content. This means promoting posts that are well-written, informative, and thought-provoking.
- I'd like to make the community more active. This means encouraging people to participate in discussions and share their thoughts and ideas.
I'm open to other suggestions, so please let me know what you think. I'm excited to work with you to make this community even better!
A few things to note:
- YouTube and Twitter will not be allowed in the community. Only legitimate news sources will be accepted.
- There may be a "Pundit Tuesday" in the future, but not at this time.
- Fox News local stations will be allowed, but their syndicated stations and talking heads will not be accepted due to their many dishonest reports and lawsuits.
I'm excited to hear your thoughts!
Thank you again for helping to create, nurture, and seed this community. I'm looking forward to working with you to make it even better!
This post will stay unlocked for 72 hours for an AMA. I will try to answer as many questions as I can, but it may take some time.
I hope to see you all in the comments!
It would be great if there could be some discussion of what exactly "diversity" means. It's one of those words that people seem to assume is well defined but I can't get anyone to define it.
I don't know what the definition should be but I've seen variations that assume different definitions and I'm more comfortable with some than with others.
I have a friend who works at a bank. He bragged that his team was 100% diverse. When I asked him what that mean he said there were no white people on his team. Personally, this seems like a bad definition. I have trouble thinking of "diversity" as the removal of some group, even if that group is otherwise over-represented elsewhere. It also ignores any potential diversity around any other factors; either the traditional political factors such as gender or religion or any diversity of thought (do their analysts include both Frequentists and Baysians?)
Reddit mostly has users from the US. Should we consider a Lemmy community diverse if it represents the predominant views and voices of the US? If that's the case the image above needs more white people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States#Race_and_ethnicity
The world is a big place and anyone could join Lemmy. Should we consider a community diverse if it matches the demographics of the planet? In that case the image above has too many white people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#Global_demographics
The above focuses on race but it's more widely applicable. This community will most likely consists of mostly US citizens for the near future. If the community is firmly focused on US ideas it will be more about US opinion of the rest of the world than actual diversity. If it actually does include a globally diverse set of ideas it's likely to get pretty uncomfortable for the majority of the people here.
I was waiting for this question! Everyone means including white people lol! I a more mixed then a bottle of nuts think of me as a mutt persay. I have been raised by people from all walks of life white, black, mexican, russian, to put it simply you name the ethenic group and I can tell you something about their culture and if I cant I will be the first one my nose in a book to learn. It can mean different things to different people. But I think we can all agree that it's important to have a variety of different people in our community. That means people from all different backgrounds, with different experiences and perspectives.
I know what you're thinking: "We need to be more diverse." And you're right. We can always learn from each other and grow as a community.
So how do we make our community more diverse? Well, for starters, we can start by welcoming people from all over the world. We can also make sure that our discussions are inclusive and respectful of everyone's viewpoints. And finally, we can challenge ourselves to think outside the box and consider new ideas.
I think if we all work together, we can make our community a more diverse and inclusive community. And that would be pretty chill, wouldn't it?
Oh I almost forgot the way you framed that question makes me wonder if you are talking about that sudo fear of "replacement theory". Please clarifiy because I noticed some of your concerns was that I would chase away all the white folks and have BBQ and collared greens everyday 🙃
I had to look that up but it was basically what I expected it to be.
Short answer. No. I have no particular fear of white people (or anyone else for that matter) being replaced.
I'm talking less about any concerns of what the demographics should be and more on identifying what we're talking about. That's why I brought up the two contrasting demographics of the US vs the world.
Americans, even those with diverse ancestral backgrounds, tend to view the world through the lens of Americans. Individual subgroups within the US tend to view America through the lens of their subgroup. I've noticed that diversity means different things to different people and I'm wondering what it will mean here.
A comment elsewhere in this thread illustrates the potential conflict. They note that we want to avoid islamophobia, which I agree with and we want to avoid homophobia, which I also agree with. But they make it sound like it will be easy to reconcile the two on a global scale. I suspect that will be much harder to pull off.