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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PiercingAjarDolphin ago
I'm glad there is a definite push here to punish those that censor other users. I also think there has to be something done with downvoats since people are starting to use those again as disagreement buttons. That's what led to Reddits demise and what's going to kill this place if we don't watch out for it. I'll be the first one to admit that it's hard to get over that Reddit knee-jerk reaction to downvote content you don't agree with, but I think that if we all make a conscious effort, we can improve the signal to noise ratio on this site.
Remember, downvoating is a soft censorship tool, try and use it to improve the discussion, not to make the thread an echo chamber.
SwiftCase ago
I agree. When opinions are downvoted into oblivion it discourages users from speaking up. If everyone had the same opinion discussions would be boring and useless.
PiercingAjarDolphin ago
Indeed, I personally despise a lot of the fringe groups that have found a home here (SJWs, misandrists, black power people, white power people, misogyny advocates) but I'd never dream of censoring them. I say let the idiots out themselves and then pick apart their shitty rethoric one step at a time. You don't win discussions by silencing your opponent. You just push them (and anyone that follows them) away from the discussion table.
The worst thing that I keep seeing is people who try and justify downvoating SJWs for the same reasons that SJWs typically use when they act the same way. Seriously people, if you think SJWs are so bad, why do you act EXACTLY like then when you "censor them for the common good"? It's one thing to downvoat a troll or a spammer, but to downvoat someone because they express that looking at their tits is rape is just stupid.