Hi,
Some of you may know me from over on reddit as a user who has been fighting an uphill battle to preserve free speech on that site in the face of intense pressure from both the reddit meta and the admin team to abandon such ambitions.
I came to whoaverse (now voat) back when I felt reddit was near the point of collapsing. I watched as the users from /r/conspiratard used bots to register every user name of /r/conspiracy regulars that they could get their hands on. I also watched as a user (pyro) spammed /v/conspiracy with memes for 12-24 hours straight in an attempt to blockade this subverse.
Although I am more active on reddit currently (working to prevent unjust removals on /r/worldnews and protect /r/conspiracy from the likes of bipolarbear and emr), I also visit voat daily in order to make sure that content is being allowed to flow freely on this subverse.
To that end, I am a bit concerned with the current push to add new moderators for one primary reason;
There is currently no mod log available on voat, which means there is no way for mods to know what content (if any) is being removed by other moderators.
I feel we have a team here who can be trusted to adhere to the ethos of free flowing information which is constantly under attack on reddit, and, until mod logs are added on voat, I would be quite weary of any new additions to the mod team.
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The_Oracle ago
If moderator logs were added and full transparency was given to the users so they themselves could guard the guards, would you be willing to step down as moderator and give others the chance to take this sub on as their responsibility?
AssuredlyAThrowAway ago
I'd very much appreciate public mod logs (and would feel far more comfortable with adding new mods if that were the case), but I'd also be interested in continuing to mod if the users would have me.
The_Oracle ago
That's completely fair, one of my main concerns and the reason for me raising a discussion was not knowing the intentions of moderators and the actions that affect what we see as users. With total moderator transparency that would alleviate a lot of potential for malfeasance and the suspicion of unseen censorship of subs which I think is in part the reason why people are moving over here from reddit.
OWNtheNWO ago
I actually agree with you 100% on total moderator transparency and the Voat admin staff building some sort of peer reviewed system that lets us observe what is being removed and why.
HeavyHebrew ago
It's an idea kicking about on v/ideasforvoat. An extremely popular idea in light of what happened on Reddit.
OWNtheNWO ago
Link?