Moderation Policies
With as much focus as I've described above on shared communal values, it's important to actually describe what I see those values to be for the incremental games community specifically. I don't believe anything here should be considered set in stone, as what's most important is for the moderation to match as closely as possible the will of the community. But here's what I'd consider a good initial set of values, modified from what I originally wrote for the TMT Discord, which I believe the community can agree would make it a space worth participating within:
- No slurs or other defamatory language. Everyone should feel safe participating here.
- No attacking other members of the community, or otherwise creating drama.
- No spamming unless explicitly mentioned.
- No advertising. Exceptions made for relevant promotions when posting content online, such as linking to your game, personal website, matrix channel, or discord server.
- No NSFW content of any kind, including within shared projects. If in doubt, contact a mod. There are no NSFW spaces or communities within Incremental Social. This rule extends to nicknames and PFPs.
- This is not a server for discussing politics or other sensitive topics. They may come up organically, particularly in relation to projects members share that may be about sensitive topics, but messages or conversations solely intended for heated conversations are not allowed. If a moderator ends a conversation, any further messages may receive punishment. This does not apply to conversations on federated communities, which naturally have their own topic lists.
Punishments will typically just be removing the offending content and an appropriate warning. Extreme or repeated violations will lead to bans, at moderator discretion.
Motivations behind Incremental Social
Hi! I'm The Paper Pilot, and I've enjoyed building and playing incremental games for quite awhile now. It's legitimately the hobby of mine I've most closely attached my identity to, especially since it includes my other main interests of programming and game design. I've even been working on an engine for making coding incremental games called Profectus, and have written quite a bit about my thoughts on the genre.
Over the years I've become increasingly skeptical of large corporations and depending on centralized services with significant power to affect what you've created, especially as the profit motive drives those services to make policies that are against the best interests of the user, to generate more than enough money to sustain the service. To contrast, federated services allow individuals and small communities to start up instances that don't cost much to run, and allow the community to be more specialized to the specific desires of its users. I believe this enables the community to be a cozy space to exist within, and is the principal motivation behind making Incremental Social.
Federation
In the world of online communities, the choice between centralized and federated services is not just about technical infrastructure; it's about values and priorities. Centralized services are dependent on shareholders, and often have to rely on collecting data about their users in order to keep the costs to the user as low as possible. Smaller federated communities can be passion projects like this one that don't need to generate profit or grow endlessly. This means they can better serve the members of the community, with features that would be paid for/"premium" on other platforms, and give users more control and privacy.
Federated communities closely align with the concepts of the "cozy web". This is a concept within the "dark forest" analogy for the internet, where large public spaces like Twitter and TikTok are filled with deluges of content from strangers without common interests or values, mixed in with clickbait, botted content, and other algorithmically optimized junk (which is only about to increase with the advent of LLMs). Amongst this forest are data scavengers, advertisements, and trolls that are actively hostile to anyone within the space. The "cozy web" refers to small close-knit communities that thrive within group chats and niche blogs. On the cozy web, the focus is on quality over quantity, allowing like-minded individuals to engage in meaningful, nuanced conversations. These have historically been places like discord or slack, and are defined by common interests and shared communal values when it comes to things like moderation. Put another way, it's a (mentally) healthier way to be social online.
These smaller, focused communities also offer a refuge from the one-size-fits-all public personas imposed by big platforms. You can use multiple identities across the fediverse, each an isolated and controlled facet of you. These allow you to have identities for specific hobbies, or for controlling who you're sharing details about your life with. They reflect how you act differently when around your family versus coworkers versus strangers.
The importance of both synchronicity and asynchronicity
Most online communities focus on either synchronous communication, like group chats or discord channels; or asynchronous communication, like forum threads. However, both are useful and complementary to a community, which is why Incremental Social includes services for both. Synchronous chat allows for live informal discussions, where you can connect with others without needing to put too much thought. These are where ideas are initially brought up, and may or may not become anything more. If an idea seems promising or complex it should be able to as seamlessly as possible transition to a more formal discussion, that's web searchable so it can be linked to and referenced, in a way that builds up a "digital garden", or knowledge base for the community. There's more to it, and I suggest reading this blog post for details on the complementary nature of synchronous and asynchronous communication within communities.