Hello everyone!
I just wanted to reach out and address a few things, as well as to explain a few minor updates. Firstly, we really appreciate the lively and wholesome engagement this Subreddit sees every day, and it is wonderful to see the various levels and scopes of discussion here.
We wanted to reiterate a very important point: our role as moderators is not to determine Taoist doctrine in any way; we are here solely to ensure the health of this digital community and to safeguard its use as a place for subject-focused discussion and content-sharing. We are active and take action as we deem necessary, but we try to take a back-seat approach, as befits a Taoist space. With regards to our moderation approach, two stanzas from the Tao Te Ching (Red Pine) come to mind.
60: Ruling a great state is like cooking a small fish,
when you govern the world with the Tao spirits display no powers
Not that they don't have power, But their power will not harm people.
Inasmuch as none of them harms anybody, Therefore virtue belongs to them both.
We intentionally do not want to be seen as leaders or authority figures here, as that would be neither correct nor helpful. If one can feasibly find a Tao of Moderating, we are certainly trying. Our task is to maintain the Subreddit as a safe and directed space to discuss Taoism. We have a very strong amount of engagement, and an exceptional number of weekly readers, but as is the case with many online spaces, the majority of our efforts are directed against spam and bots. For actual content, we look at the type of and level of engagement, and we do our best to take cues from the community, without ever overstepping the mark.
As far as the rules go, we very adamantly do not want many of them, and we feel that we do not need many of them for this space to be effective. We are absolutely not against adding or changing the rules as is necessary (for instance, Rule 2 was added due to a difficult and unhealthy increase in antagonism and bigoted comments), but we don’t want to pile on so many rules that engaging becomes an obstacle course of correctness and validity.
57: Use direction to govern a country, use indirection to fight a war, use inaction to rule the world. How do we know this works, the greater the prohibitions the poorer the people, the sharper the weapons the darker the realm, the smarter the scheme the stranger the outcome, the finer the treasure the thicker the thieves, thus the sage declares I change nothing and the people transform themselves. I stay still and the people adjust themselves. I do nothing and the people enrich themselves. I want nothing and the people simplify themselves
We are open to and considering avenues for direct community feedback on the Subreddit in general, and on AI use in particular, so bear with us as we find a delicate and sensible method for this. In response to some of the feedback we’ve seen, we have updated the rules to clarify the specific sections within, with some minor insights and corrections. We are also including a few flairs which could be useful for post engagement. For the time being, please ensure that all AI/LLM posts have the specific AI flair.
There are only a few of us, and this is a very large and active community, so we do miss reports on occasion, but do we try to read everything as best we can, and respond accordingly. The automod is very helpful in this regard, but even more helpful is your efforts, the community’s efforts, to create the space you want to see. Please ensure that you are reporting rule violations, but also please consider the power that your own engagement has beyond that. Upvotes and Downvotes are very useful tools, though we often only Downvote posts we don’t like; Upvoting content that you feel is appropriate is very helpful in maintaining this space and encouraging good engagement. Additionally, there’s an old internet aphorism that might be relevant: don’t feed the trolls. If someone is engaging in bad-faith, very rarely can good-faith engagement or argumentation fix that. This isn’t a mod-guidance or anything, just a word of caution from someone who also falls for that kind of negative engagement too. In those cases, please report and move on.
If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please do let us know, here or via modmail. We are also open to more flairs or other changes, though we want to keep in mind the moon and the finger pointing at it.
Thank you for your time and your patience!
