Self Host to Local Communities

Comments

• Rentlar@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

  Which brings me to the part we cannot skip, we have to evaluate every definition of a community against a simple test…

  Can it be used to harm others, and can it be used to harm itself?

  I don’t believe this is as simple of a test for the definition of community as the author makes out, without narrowing down from the numerous definitions of harm as well. Harm could be physical injury, it could be crimes and derogatory hate speech, but it could just as easily be defined as someone feeling uncomfortable, or not being given an opportunity to speak when they felt they deserved one.

  To have a healthy community that can still withstand some inevitable episodes of dispute and drama that brew over time, two elements are required in my mental model:

  • A community’s control and cohesiveness cannot fully depend on one entity, whose absence would cause the community to fall apart.
  • People within the community have to accept to a certain degree, that people don’t think exactly the same as them on everything.

  And so from my perspective, what that degree of acceptable difference is will help define what the harm to be avoided is or could be, in turn informing the test to define the community.

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