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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battletoad ago
This. 100x this. Voat is a democracy. The posts worthy of discussion will be upvoated, and it is especially asinine for mods to remove such posts when it has hundreds of upvoats. It is especially suspicious when the said post with hundreds of upvoats being deleted was questioning the practices of the mods. That itself is the biggest red flag. Thank you @Atko for doing the right thing.
FilmMakingShitlord ago
Let's say you belong to an unpopular sub: like /v/coontown. Would you want the masses to be able to come in and change your rules?
battletoad ago
/v/askvoat was a default sub for the masses, while /v/coontown is a niche sub with users who know their views will be unpopular. One is as an open forum for public, the other is a private club. Think of it this way: the KKK wouldn't want the voting public to go change their racism, but you better be damn sure that citizens of the United States would want to vote for changes in their country. The public should have the right to change the rules that serve the public. That's why there's the word public in republic.
FilmMakingShitlord ago
And how do you make that distinction?
battletoad ago
I'm pretty sure I said one was a default sub.
FilmMakingShitlord ago
So if atko decides that he likes your sub enough for it to be featured then you should lose your ability to moderate it?
the-code-always-wins ago
I am pretty sure Atko would ask you before defaulting your sub.
FilmMakingShitlord ago
Who would want their sub to be a default if it meant they could lose it?
frankenmine ago
Mods with integrity who know they'll never be voted out because they do their job honestly and properly.
FilmMakingShitlord ago
I can say right now I would never opt in to having a sub I ran have elections. That's how you get a hostile take over. You know how easy it would be to go on reddit or 4chan and get people together to take over a sub by election? It's just a disaster waiting to happen.
frankenmine ago
That simply shows you're not honest and can't count on maintaining user trust.
That's your problem. It's not anybody else's problem.