I can't stand by and watch stuff like this happen around here. I will not support subverses (by featuring them or making them defaults) with moderators who impose questionable rules such as "your post has to end with a questionmark". Moderators need to calm their tits and focus on nurturing and growing their communities. Rules can always be bent and what better time to bend the rules then now, while Voat is still growing and under development?
I am thankful for moderators who help keep Voat spam-free and I respect your work. I really do. I started working on automoderator for comments and submissions and your job will be made much easier when this is implemented, but for the time being, moderators need to relax and focus on removing spam and eventual illegal content. If I submit a new post and it gains some traction (hundreds of comments, views and upvoats), and my post gets removed because I broke a rule by forgetting to include a question mark in my submission title... well, I would be pissed. People take removal of their comments and submissions very seriously and moderators must think twice before removing stuff if they want to avoid offending users. Voat has a ranking process where time acts as gravity and older posts will eventually fall off the frontpage. Voat also has automatic public moderation logs and everything you remove will still be visible in these modlogs and your actions may be questioned by the community, just like what happened yesterday.
This action can be reverted if /askvoat mods can convince us that the issue has been dealt with or if some other, less restrictive community takes over.
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SpaceRosa ago
So you support moderators who bend the rules when it suits them?
Granted, it was a stupid rule, but could the two active moderators change it without consulting the majority who weren't? I was under the impression moderators were supposed to enforce rules as long as they remain, not just whenever they feel like it.
rwbj ago
The one and only point of moderators is to serve the desires of the community. In this case did outright deleting a post, with hundreds of upvotes and interesting discussion, because it had the wrong punctuation at the end of it serve the desires of the community? Obviously no.
So how could they handle this more reasonably? Keep an eye out for new submissions and if a sub is submitted with the incorrect punctuation and hasn't garnered much attention then simply copy the source of it, delete it, and then PM the submitter the source to his post and ask he resub it with a different punctuation mark at the end. Friendly, effective, and doesn't interfere with the community.