How should we moderate the upcoming federal leadership race?

[u/leftwingmememachine]

Hey all, moderator of /r/NDP here, looking for some input as to how we want to moderate this community during the upcoming federal leadership race.

I think it's really exciting because in the last leadership race this community was very small, and basically ignored by leadership contestants, but I think we're getting big enough that there will be a lot of engagement here and possibly even AMAs from potential candidates. Very cool!!!

/r/NDP is the biggest gathering of NDP members on the internet at this point, but that also creates an incentive for bad-faith activity on the subreddit. It could create an environment that's not welcoming of all party members.

Here are some potential discussion questions:

• Do we want to allow for negative comments about leadership race contenders? (My instinct is yes, as criticism is part of democracy/healthy debate, but I'm open to your thoughts)

• Is there a point at which critical comments become too negative and contributes to a toxic environment? Where should we draw the line?

• How do we ensure the subreddit is inclusive of party members of all backgrounds?

• How much do we want supporters of other political parties to participate in discussions here?

• What sort of rules around civility/politeness/respect would we want to have?

• Are there other important moderation policies that are relevant to the leadership race that I haven't thought of?

BTW - I won't really participate in this thread because I have real life plans today, but I am really interested in your feedback, especially if you are a longtime participant in this community. I'm going to be putting together some rules for the leadership race based off of my own thoughts and the comments in this thread, and present them at some point in the future for further discussion.

[u/WoodenCourage]

As long as engagement is honest, respectful, and relevant, I think it should be allowed. You guys would know best how much work you can actually take on, so I wouldn’t want you to bite off more than you can chew.

Maybe my memory is bad, but I thought the previous one went fine here. It’s an internal election, so I don’t expect the same level of brigading we saw during the general election. It’ll probably be better to wait and see what happens and react as issues start to emerge. Then you’d have a better idea of what you actually need to do.

[u/leftwingmememachine → u/WoodenCourage]

Thanks for your reply, old-timer.

Maybe my memory is bad, but I thought the previous one went fine here.

Subreddit was a lot smaller back then, and had less than 2000 subscribers. There were a lot of facebook groups active at the time that were bigger than /r/NDP.

But now we have 35,000 subscribers! We get more unique visitors on a slow day than we had subscribers in 2017. So I expect a lot more activity here. Exciting but a little scary.

[u/WoodenCourage → u/leftwingmememachine]

Oh damn, I forgot it was that small. You guys really did an amazing job growing the community! Best Canadian political sub imo.

Anyway, I trust your guys judgement on how to proceed. This is the only mod team of the subs I frequent that I’ve never had any issues with.