Hi, everyone. A lot has happened here over the last couple days, and I’ll try to explain both what has been happening and what I’m doing to hopefully fix some of the damage that’s been done. Hopefully these actions can restore even a fraction of the goodwill that we previously had with the wider Lemmy community.
What’s happened
Beaver was recently reinstated as a moderator after finding herself at the center of the recent controversy where Lemmy administrator Rooki unjustly and unilaterally interfered with /c/vegan over a discussion surrounding cat food. I was made a moderator after that same controversy when naeva resigned and went to VeganTheoryClub, an instance defederated from Lemmy.World which is designed to be a haven for discussion of vegan food, activism, art, etc. Things were generally cooling down from that over the last week.
A couple days ago, Beaver began posting to /c/vegan with remarkable frequency (~15 posts/day). Not long after, /u/ccunning contacted me asking about why they had been banned for Rule 5, which is our rule against bad-faith arguments against veganism. ccunning is a member of this community, they might even be vegan, and I’ve never seen them to be anything but mild-mannered and supportive of veganism here. Because I could find no violation, I assumed it was an accident and unbanned them. Very shortly thereafter, ccunning informed me that they had been banned again, and Beaver messaged me in private stating that ccunning had been banned for downvoting vegan comments but encouraging me not to mention that fact publicly. A post on /c/unpopularopinion soon made it apparent that many people were being banned here for this same reason, and taking a look at the mod log, I saw dozens of bans by Beaver whose only stated reason was “Rule 5”.
Beaver continued posting and continued banning, and I messaged them asking if the /c/vegan moderators could have a team-wide discussion and vote concerning this interpretation of Rule 5. I made it clear to them that I felt uncomfortable with their behavior and felt it was doing harm to the community. Beaver ignored this request and simply responded to something else I’d said. 12 hours ago, they stickied a post to the top of /c/vegan daring the admins to interfere, a reference to the previous incident involving Rooki.
What’s being done
- Beaver has been removed as a moderator for the community by me with no interference whatsoever from any of the Lemmy.World administrators. I believe her rash, unilateral actions over the last couple of days have done immense damage to the community under the (I believe misguided) pretense that it’s effective and disruptive activism. Based on the actions previously summarized, I feel strongly that she cannot presently be trusted to moderate cooperatively, to competently assess what’s best for the community, or to be transparent to our users. Although seemingly unlikely at this point, Beaver is encouraged to stay here as a welcome member of the community.
- Anyone who was banned for downvoting will be unbanned effective immediately. This was completely out of line, and to my understanding, the moderation team was not consulted about this rogue interpretation of Rule 5. Because I don’t think you can tie specific comments to a ban, this will be something that could happen over a period of hours while I try to pin down the actual justification for each ban, and anyone currently banned is encouraged to appeal. Rule 5 is still in effect as it has always been, so please continue to participate in good faith.
- Individual users will temporarily be limited to creating a certain number of posts per day. I’ll have to discuss with the rest of the moderation team if they would like this long-term and if so, what a reasonable limit is, but I think this needs to be done at least right now to cool things off. Beaver’s extremely frequent posts have completely drowned out posts made by other users and artificially inflated the activity of this community. The two posts stickied by Beaver will be unstickied, but none of her existing posts will be removed.
I was made a moderator here extremely recently, and so I didn’t feel comfortable intervening because I felt I’d be overstepping and betraying trust I’d been given. However, I see widespread distrust of Beaver as a moderator even among vegans (myself included) and feel that this is an emergency that I need to put a stop to.
You clearly have different ideas about the direction the community should go. For example, you want to invite non-vegans here for the purposes of activism. That seems pretty contrary to the direction implied by the rules and other aspects of the sidebar, the closest thing we have to a constitution or mission. You’ve resorted to using your authority to take unilateral action for what to me seems like an honest disagreement of values and interests. Beaver hasn’t done anything she isn’t entitled to, but you object to how it reflects on you as a fellow moderator, that she isn’t moving in the direction you want this community to be moving in, and your ego is engaged. You should at the very least have brought this up with others. This community may have been dying prior to your intervention, but it’s arguable whether you have improved things.
I’m reading and commenting in this community for more than a year (had a different user before this one) and there was a dramatic shift of this community in the last couple of days. And from my perspective, in the completely wrong direction. It felt like the place I liked before was burnt down violently.
This thread exactly hit the nerve for me and I think it was written in a respectful way. No one said ‘fuck off crazy mod’ but rather ‘we welcome you to stay as a member but we feel you shouldn’t have the extra privileges of a moderator anymore’.
Of course, I can only speak for myself but if the community would have continued in the way it did over the last week I probably would have left and blocked it. I don’t want to have a community with passive aggressive content in my feed and I don’t want to spend time on answering comments if I have to fear them being deleted slightly after.
Us vegans are a part of society and a pretty small part to be honest. As such, we shouldn’t build up a walled garden of moral superiosity, pointing fingers at these ‘stupid, evil carnists’. I already hate these terms. If you want to change the world for the better, don’t think of ‘them’ as the enemy but potential future allys. Especially, If non-vegans are motivated to read and engage in this community respectfully, then that’s a success already.
Even if they’re not going veggie or vegan themselves, they might at least get some positive insights on veganism. That vegans aren’t just freaks but just normal people that eat plants and you can still talk to them and be friends with.
Maybe they own a restaurant IRL and after reading here for some time in /all, they add a vegan option to their menu. Maybe they’re a team lead in IT and thanks to this community, they’ll check with their employees if someone wants a vegan option on the christmas party.
If you ban the ‘evil carnist’ and post insulting memes, you will neither hurt them nor change anything for the better.
How was it “respectful” to accuse two other moderators of being organs of Beaver? Or to start banning people for the sort of disagreement that must necessarily come up so that a consensus can be reached? This was not a good faith moderator action. This was abuse. It happens to be abuse against people you want to see abused. I hope you can see that.
This is exactly the sort of dialogue that should have happened before people got de-modded. I believe I have been as respectful and patient as can be expected given the baseless accusations that have been made against me merely for sharing my opinions in a neutral way. I respect your point of view and if there had been a consensus I could have referred to anywhere, I would have moderated to that consensus and encouraged other moderators to do the same, despite what my personal preferences might have been. I think this was an extremely ugly event that was not handled well, and kind people were disrespected and hurt for no one’s gain.
I would have used the same examples but to show how useless it is to ask someone if they could pretty please tone down the animal holocaust a notch.
Don’t underestimate the mid and long term effect of small changes. If there’s vegan options in supermarkets, restaurants and at festivities, then it’s much easier to be a vegan. The lower the hurdle, the less restricted people feel in their everyday life, the more people will adapt. So that one restaurant owner who doesn’t change his own diet, might still foster the journey of other new vegetarians and vegans.