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.
Went off on the deep end.
Anybody who posts 15 times a day in the same community needs to go outside. Even worse is if it’s a mod.
I think that’s an adequate reaction. Thank you for taking action and being transparant about it.
As a member of this community for quite some time, the past couple of days felt really weird to me. Instead of peaceful and (from my perspective) valuable communication between vegans and non-vegans, the mood changed to a radical, almost war-like athmosphere. I was not among those being banned but I had several discussions where suddenly loads of other, completely normal posts were deleted.
I think this community should be open for other opinions. Everyone who’d like to engage in a respectful way - vegan or not - should be welcomed. I think the target should be to have a ‘pro-vegan community’ and not a ‘hardline anti everything that is even remotely non-vegan’.
Was de-modding two other moderators because of paranoid fantasies about a conspiracy part of the adequate reaction?
Cant believe you are a mod here again after crying and insulting your way out lmao.
Not a Vegan, but as a mod elsewhere on lemmy.world, I’m often in the modlog, so when I saw all the “Rule 5” bans, well, my spidey sense was tingling. :)
I’m glad you got to the bottom of it and took action.
I was torn on the whole cat food thing, my four kitties will fight you for pepperoni sticks, but my opinion on modding would have been “anyone coming to a Vegan community going ‘uhm aktually - cats!’ is trolling”, same as anyone going into an electric vehicle group going “but what about four stroke internal combustion engines?” would be trolling.
I wish you luck going forward! Modding is a rough gig and not for everyone!
I’ve been seeing a lot of this as a result of posts making it to all without being subscribed. This feels like a good measured response to restore some semblance of order to the community. I don’t mind seeing the occasional vegan related post as it’s an interesting topic I can occasionally learn something from, but I do agree that the constant posting coupled with the capricious bans put me very close to just blocking the community and moving on with life.
I think I’ve reached my limit of drama here. I’m more interested in vegan recipes and vegan news than the clashing of egos between people who just so happen to be vegan. Reckon it’s high time to block this community.
It should hopefully get better from here, and this should hopefully be the last drama post. Vegan news and recipes will be back very shortly, but it’s understandable if you don’t trust that after this.
Blocked Beaver for myself for spamming just hours ago too. I knew all the low quality vegan memes already and many of them are overly self-boasting. Veganism is not for humans first.
Years of watching Ed Winters taught me that overly angry arguments will not be understood or reflected through the filter of rage. Confrontation as a means for civil reflection (ie Asking Questions) works, but one has to know how. Beaver did not.
Interesting course of events
Though I never would have thought to do this in my community, I don’t think it’s unacceptable to ban people over voting behaviors if there is good evidence of brigading or persistence, however, using that specific rule to justify it is a bit of a stretch. It would help to see Beaver’s explanation and what the rest of the moderators make of the events.
When I shared what I thought of events as one of those moderators, I was de-modded. It’s clear what is really happening here.
From the write-up, this looks like another example in microcosm of the Anglosphere’s culture clash over the issue of speech. Namely, openness vs censoriousness, or safety vs harm, depending on one’s point of view - and probably generation.
I am not (quite) vegan but since I seem to spend my time defending vegans I thought I’d try hanging out with a few and perhaps even sharing polite tips on how to be more convincing with omnivores. Risky plan! But I have not yet been canceled. Seems like that is partly to your credit. So thanks for being so thoughtful and open-minded, it really reflects well on this community.
Holy shit. Well, I hope the community can move forward from this.
Posting just to see if i was banned for being critical in that other thread. But yeah i also moved to that other instance.
Glad to hear some of you are trying to clean things up so this community isn’t the laughing stock lemmy though. I mean it, thank you.
In light of rising tempers and what I consider emotional abuses of power against fellow moderators, I am going to take a break from this thread.
Vegan drama! Would you fight with Branches of trees?
I don’t appreciate the policy of enforcing reversion to mediocrity, as if we’re supposed to tolerate the influx of confused and ignorant users who stumble upon some post on the main page.
The same dynamic happens with ®️/all and it’s pain in the ass there too.
The Lemmy platform requires a lot more features, either as sorting the lists of posts with better algorithms, or tools to block the “drive-by hater” phenomenon. There should be no apologies.
There’s already a scaled sort, that will boost the ranking of communities you follow ;). I hated (not) seeing downvoted posts on vegan communities.
Thanks for taking care of that
