Hey all,
In light of recent events concerning one of our communities (/c/vegan), we (as a team) have spent the last week working on how to address better some concerns that had arisen between the moderators of that community and the site admin team. We always strive to find a balance between the free expression of communities hosted here and protecting users from potentially harmful content.
We as a team try to stick to a general rule of respect and consideration for the physical and mental well-being of our users when drafting new rules and revising existing ones. Furthermore, we've done our best to try to codify these core beliefs into the additions to the ToS and a new by-laws section.
ToS Additions
That being said, we will be adding a new section to our “terms of service” concerning misinformation. While we do try to be as exact as reasonably able, we also understand that rules can be up to interpretation as well. This is a living document, and users are free to respectfully disagree. We as site admins will do our best to consider the recommendations of all users regarding potentially revising any rules.
Regarding misinformation, we've tried our best to capture these main ideas, which we believe are very reasonable:
- Users are encouraged to post information they believe is true and helpful.
- We recommend users conduct thorough research using reputable scientific sources.
- When in doubt, a policy of “Do No Harm”, based on the Hippocratic Oath, is a good compass on what is okay to post.
- Health-related information should ideally be from peer-reviewed, reproducible scientific studies.
- Single studies may be valid, but often provide inadequate sample sizes for health-related advice.
- Non-peer-reviewed studies by individuals are not considered safe for health matters.
We reserve the right to remove information that could cause imminent physical harm to any living being. This includes topics like conversion therapy, unhealthy diets, and dangerous medical procedures. Information that could result in imminent physical harm to property or other living beings may also be removed.
We know some folks who are free speech absolutists may disagree with this stance, but we need to look out for both the individuals who use this site and for the site itself.
By-laws Addition
We've also added a new by-laws section as well as a result of this incident. This new section is to better codify the course of action that should be taken by site and community moderators when resolving conflict on the site, and also how to deal with dormant communities.
This new section provides also provides a course of action for resolving conflict with site admin staff, should it arise. We want both the users and moderators here to feel like they have a voice that is heard, and essentially a contact point that they can feel safe going to, to “talk to the manager” type situation, more or less a new Lemmy.World HR department that we've created as a result of what has happened over the last week.
Please feel free to raise any questions in this thread. We encourage everyone to please take the time to read over these new additions detailing YOUR rights and how we hope to better protect everyone here.
https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/#80-misinformation
https://legal.lemmy.world/bylaws/
Sincerely,
FHF / LemmyWorld Operations Team
EDIT:
We will be releasing a separate post regarding the moderation incident in the next 24-48 hours, just getting final approval from the team.
EDIT 2 (2024-08-31):
We've posted a response, sorry for the delay.
This is not specific to cats. If you plan to formulate your own food for a pet, you need input from a vet and a nutritionist, or else risk hurting your animal. Plenty of people cooking fresh food for their dogs are not giving them a full nutrient profile either.
I think this is showing how much faith people have in regular commercial pet food. Normal pet food isnt great for your pets, look into what the ingredients actually are and their quality.
The only reason the idea of vegan food for cats and dogs came about was in an effort to make them healthier and happier animals. Its not to force a vegans morals onto an animal.
I'm vegan and I have a cat. My vet approved the vegan food for a trial but the cat didnt like it, so she eats meat now. If thats abusive to you then I'm not sure what to say.
Tell me why my entire vet office approved of this trial if its animal abuse always. The discussions here on this site simply dont match the discussions youll find if you talk to a vet or an animal nutritionist.
Not stepping into the vegan drama here, just wanted to chime in here about cat food. Two of my three family cats growing up had terrible kidney issues in their elder years. It turns out that - even setting aside the grains and fillers added to kibble - dry food is bad for cats unless they drink a ton of water with it.
Domestic cats are descended from desert wildcats that obtained most of their water content from their prey, and they inherited a low natural thirst drive because of this. Kidney issues are common if cats don't get enough moisture in their diet, and since they instinctively hide symptoms of illness, you might not notice anything is wrong until it's too late.
Kibble became the norm because a) most people are used to dogs and b) it's cheaper and way more convenient than canned food (which is a messy bacterial magnet that can't be safely left out for more than an hour). If anyone reading this feeds their cat exclusively dry food, consider switching to at least a partially wet food diet or buying a cat fountain (the sound of flowing water entices some cats to drink more often). Watching your beloved family members suffer from kidney failure is a hell I wouldn't wish on anyone.
firstly, you can’t just say the entire “regular” pet food industry is of poor quality and bad for your pets. it’s not a monolith. if you want to criticize poor quality pet food by all means go ahead, but it’s not like switching to a vegan food automatically fixes that. if anything you’re more likely to get food lacking in nutrients if you go plant based.
secondly you can’t just say “look what the ingredients actually are” which is ingredient list fear mongering. of course average people are going to see a few ingredients they don’t recognize, but everything on there has been studied and approved as safe by the FDA. so what specifically in “regular” pet food do you think is so bad?