Well, I definitely get wanting a dedicated leftist space for sure. It’s the line between dedicated and echoey that’s harder to pin down. Obviously, that’s a line that has to be determined to some degree on the fly. Kinda hard to predict everything, so there’s always change along the way.

Me? I see that line being about banning policies. A dedicated space won’t permanently ban a first offense if the rules are vague (and they are here). An echo chamber bans any infractions immediately, no matter how few rules there are, or how clear they are.

Now, I quit being a mod for anything with chances of getting popular because reddit burnt me out with their fuckery, but I get it. Back at the turn of the century, I moderated a neo-pagan/wiccan dedicated forum. The tools to deal with trolls and bad actors were almost nil, and easy to get around. You ain’t seen fuckery until you deal with christians that think they’re on a crusade lol. All I could do back then was ban a specific account, and had no way to block new ones (wasn’t my site).

So, I definitely get the need to preserve a dedicated space.

This is unasked for advice, so no issues if/when it gets ignored. I think the first thing to do, if you’re gong to consult the community about what rules need to be, and the details of policy enforcing them, is get it in front of the community fast. Draw up your plans, post it, and get the feedback before things snowball. With the rules as vague as they are, and federation making it almost certain to bring in regular visitors that are new to not only this C/, but leftist thinking in general, you’ll end up whacking moles left and right. Which is the lot of a mod, but when you have clear rules and policies, the jerks can’t complain when they get banned because it’s right there. The user has the obligation to follow the rules, but when they’re meh, it leaves interpretation room. And that’s a source for drama of the kind that got the C/ boiling recently.