@kingkongwaswrong can we get on board with this? Honestly, if someone is THAT unwary, they can't really be helped anyway.

Sorry, just got off work and trying to keep track of the conversation up to this point would take a lot more energy than I have at the moment. I did see some conversations between you two where you were both hurling yourselves against each others' defense mechanisms from striking nerves both ways, I was hoping y'all had hashed things out more or less.

The sidebar fix sounds reasonable. I realize my first suggestion to him needed some work, but it was better than what had been presented up to this point. Actually it looks like the sidebar has evolved already.

No comment deletions or nonspammer bans - what about pressuring/asking users for personal info? I don't know the whole story there, but given the dangerous nature of this investigation, it may help keep some unwary user from revealing something?

@kingkongwaswrong do you have any input here?

I especially don't like how @kingkongwaswrong is calling @adhdferret a shill.

To be fair here, it's tough to sort through who is legitimately wanting what's best for Voat and who is acting in bad faith towards everyone. After a while of being attacked from all sides, even friendlies disagreeing with you look like enemies.

Are there other things you think need to be addressed here? I'm more or less attempting to smooth out the edges between Voat and PG.

I am really not

hard to know when theres been multple discussions of 'ousting' the current mods etc

sure as will I, and have been. The way you communicate sets off fight or flight responses, esp because you're in a position of power over us. Dont you realise that?

You need to look for intent - if someone is coming from a good place they will listen and be open to your side. If someone has a bad intent they wont and then its fine to come down hard on them. Im pretty sure the people ive asked to mod have really good intent - i picked them because they looked like they were contributing really positively to the discussion. So can you please go easy on them, maybe link them to something they can read or something so they can get a sense of things. That would actually be helpful rather than jumping in and trying to very aggressively micro-manage and overcorrect

I do a little, but I know what being on this end of things feels like and I dont appreciate the way you're communicating things to some dude i literally asked to help me out, and then he has to cop all this flack.

wow being a dick again

this has been an emotional rollercoaster. I have added new mods and delegated the responsibilities to them - including flairs and organising things.

But some was legitimate concerns and right now @millenial_falcon is behaving exactly like what we left reddit to get away from.

then fucking help him by being decent, not assuming negative intent from the get go. It makes people bristle and want to tell you to fuck off you know, and then you get the fight you were always itching for anyway.

Do you really expect people to grovel to you wen you be a dick? Thats its own power trip mang.

While you squat on the main brand?

We aren't "squatting" on a "brand." If you have a problem with mods ensuring that submissions are actually relevant to the mission of this subverse, go create or join a different one, rather than trying to hijack and disrupt this one. The fact that only a handful of concern trolls are complaining shows there is no actual problem.

you're being a dick again. He said creator, he was just referring to me, and you're reading into it. By moderation he means removing things against the rules WHICH YOU AGREE TO, and that people can leave to the multple alternatives that are moderation free if they want.

You are looking for fights? And being a dick. fucking hell. Stop being an intellectual asshole and actually try to see the intent and help. Shit I cant believe you seriously.

tbh I've dropped out of moderating the sub intelligently, I'm hoping the new mods can pick it up a bit. My energy;s been sapped and I can't process things correctly.

its a hard topic because you need to be up to date to be able to figure out whats going on and classify. We havent even figured out what our flair system is.

So much of my time and energy has gone into this political mess tbh. I understand you guys are interested in protecting free speech but I've been following the guides you set (aside from the mods I added deleting comments which I can't do anything about), and I still get tonnes of bricks on my head and massive pr cleanups.

rip am of half a mind to just abandon ship. You guys have made it really hard for me to integrate, with such an important and critical subject matter. There was no reach out, there was no talk to discuss the needs of the sub, there was nothing but judgement from afar and pouncing on every mistake/issue. All I've had is people trying to take the sub off me since day 1.

I think I would have literally deleted my account rather than weather the shitstorm if it wasnt for the support of some key people.

look stop projecting reddit modding on me - I was never a reddit mod, I have no idea how they operated and I am not bringing a template here. I started off literally not wanting to moderate this sub at all and just figured they could sort out shit themselves.

But I actually care about this investigation and I came under huge fire for 'being a shill' because the quality of the sub was so low - so I started moderating it more and just cleansing of all the trash.

All I've done is apply a common sense approach to try to get this in order.

I have no idea what mods are going to do when I add them - all I can do is brief them, which I did with every mod including instructions NOT TO MODERATE COMMENTS. I can't help what they do after I add them except remind them and then observe their behaviour.

You deleted one yesterday.

can you not see who deleted the comment? It wasn't me.

Good point, however in this instance it is like a ton of muslim refugees moving to a western nation and demanding the right to practice sharia law (complete with child brides and honor killings).

How can you compare this to removing distracting posts that dont follow the rules?

i already said that sounds fne in a previous reply

Also I literally took those rules from @crensch suggestions here - https://voat.co/v/ProtectVoat/1438543/6941764

"Posts not about PIZZAGATE specifically will be removed. Unfounded, outlandish connections will be removed. EVERY new claim needs a valid, clear source. While some hypothesis and guesses are good to have, things about races, religions, (besides possibly satanic stuff,) and other unfounded or non-useful generalizations are not relevant to this investigation."

And maybe make a sub FOR that kind of crap. "pizzagatehangout" or something where people that came over because of pizzagate but don't want to investigate can shitpost or whatever.

and you literally replied with

Your audit of the log is spot on and your suggested rules are direct, clear, and leave no wiggle room. I have nothing to add.

here - https://voat.co/v/ProtectVoat/1438543/6942055

So now you're reversing that and saying 'pizzagate is for general posts' and I have to create a different, more curated sub to follow these rules? I can't follow.

I'm not interested in moderating comments and I never have advocated for this.

And if the users want the submissions to be curated better, why would you force less moderation on them? Some of the major concerns that keep getting raised is the amount of 'clutter' - ie things that dont fit the rules that I just dont have time to delete.

that was millenial falcon and he told me he did it before he remembered i told him we WERENT DELETING COMMENTS. I specifically stated that and it slipped his mind. Do you want me to remove every moderator that starts and makes this same mistake? The comments deletion log is full of mods making that same mistake one (2) time each.

also this post is exactly what we would delete as it doesnt follow the rules. Millenial_falcon just didn;t have context as to what was going on.

it is insanely hard to make a call - to vet sources, to read the post and try to figure out if it is someone taking the piss and to click through the potentially dangerous links to figure out if this is really a lead or just a link to some random twitter post that has nothing.

Especially when you've been doing it for hours. Please don't downplay the difficulty modding this sub is.

I disagree, and so does the creator of the sub. Unfortunately we got banned from reddit. This is sort of our last resort. People are free to go create a new sub if they want to have one with less moderation. Personally, I don't think we've been heavy-handed at all.

can I not say what I think? Is shill discussion not ok? That was one of the first things instated at reddit - that you werent allowed to call someone a shill - before it went to shit.

I said why I thought he was.

• 1. Advocated for no moderation
• 2. downplayed the impact/existence of shills
• 3. literally said it was 'tin foil'
• 4. Asked for other acc he could cross check me with

He also

• 5. refused to take a mod position
• 6. is still angling to remove me

Sorry I'm looking at everything with a cointel lens, but don't gaslight me, there is a huge attack on the sub.

Why dont you have a look at the actual sub and see what users are saying?

Can you please list how I have been abusive in ANY way. I have literally followed every instruction to a T and have removed the previous mods, trying out new mods. One of the new mods even said he doesnt have enough time to deal with the shitposts and needs to share the load with other mods. I pinged you with an FYI.

@crensch @cynabuns @disappointed

"Outlandish" is subjective and depends on the eye of the beholder

That's true, but if we have to have standards. If we let anyone post anything, all the important posts with actual leads will get lost in the mess. @kingkongwaswrong is right that shills are actively attacking this sub. If the admins kick out mods for having standards, then then the sub is hardly worth having.

I especially don't like how @kingkongwaswrong is calling @adhdferret a shill.

Hadn't heard anything about this. @kingkongwaswrong was talking about making him a mod last I heard.

What do you mean?

all censorship is dangerous.

I actually tried to undelete your post almost as soon as I had deleted it. It had been a long day of wading through posts, and I saw KosherHiveKicker's comments in the thread and thought it was yet another concern troll thread. My bad.

shills are confirmed, shill.

referring to it as tin foil shit is another thing that screams shill. Dont downplay this stuff.

The only I see is that, as a newbie here, I can't downvote. I imagine a lot of people in this sub are also new here, and also can't downvote. Otherwise, yeah, I'm all for leaving most anything up for the community to decide,

I am on board with @adhdferret taking a mod position too. I think he will bring some MUCH needed balance to there. Once he accepts, I will back off the sub for a while (to let them get shit in order with a voat veteran...a voataran?) or forever if it goes well. I think he will do a great job, and if he leaves in protest it's a HUGE sign (unless he states otherwise) that there is indeed a deep problem.

You've left out shills, cointel and jtrig efforts consistently in your moderation discussions. These things are real. Dont confuse them with 'free speech', their tactics are underhand and designed to confuse real interested members. What do you suggest we do about that? Just let them be?

so if voats culture is to not moderate and let the users decide via up votes, than why do we need a moderator for this? wouldn't it be more logical to have no moderator, or at least less moderators?

EDIT: with the exception of spam of course.... i guess we need someone for that.