So, about a week ago I spun up a hosted Mastodon instance for my town.

I haven't advertised it yet. I want to be deliberate and intentional before getting a lot of folks involved. And to knew what the hell I'm doing.

#MastoAdmin

I have concerns and misgivings. As a middle aged white AFAB person, I'm in the demographic who cluelessly screws over Black communities. People like me tend to have the best intentions but bad outcomes, because blind spots and tone deafness due to being raised in a racist society.

I do not want to perpetuate the pattern.

#MastoAdmin

My town is over 85% Black, and I'm not. I want to serve my community fully and eventually hand the mature project over to a council of the people so it's run by the consensus of the membership.

I don't really know how to get there.

It's so important that this space be welcoming and comfortable for Black folks as well as other non-white folks in the community. So moderation has to be right.

#MastoAdmin

People in my demographic tend to ask Black people to do a lot of free labor when trying to make a fair space. That's awful and I don't want to do that. Just because I'm ignorant, that doesn't entitle me to the efforts of my neighbors to educate my ignorant ass. It's on me to find things out and there's tons of recorded works in various media to help me with that.

TikTok got me started on this and Mastodon, even in its wild imperfection, has helped.

#MastoAdmin

But.

I don't know thing 1 about how to #admin and #moderate an instance properly.

So all of this is to ask all-a- y'all if you know of any admin or moderator training materials that emphasize racial justice and anti-racism?

It doesn't have to be Mastodon specific. Likely the concepts will transfer even if they were written for message boards or whatever.

#MastoAdmin

@springdiesel https://www.techpolicy.press/the-whiteness-of-mastodon/ might be a good starting point.

The following might also have some pointers for you on where to get started with moderating for a Black community:

@thenexusofprivacy @are0h @mekkaokereke

It's great that you're thinking abou this @springdiesel! I don't know any great moderator training materials that emphasize anti-racism but a couple o other resources that might be useful.

• A lot of the suggestions in 5 things white people can do to start making the fediverse less toxic for Black people are relevant to moderators as well (and therre are lots of links with more background about past issues here). The appenxdix on "Blocklist resources for moderators" has suggestions about getting a good instance blocklist in place, which is a critical thing to do ASAP.

• Sarah Gilbert's Towards Intersectional Moderation is a great read on an overall approach

@gunchleoc