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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12_Years_A_Toucan ago
@Atko the way you handled this worries me. You're completely ignoring that there was a giant witch hunt for @she driven by lies and misinformation. You aren't addressing some serious issues with the community here. The issue should have always been with the rule instead users banded together and decided to blame someone whose political views they didn't agree with. The community caused this problem plain and simple.
If you want control of a subverse and you want defaults(I think defaults are a cancer)make all defaults controlled by @system there is no excuse for you not having done so before this. You don't even need a sub to be abandoned. If you didn't want to do a hostile take over you could have simply messaged any of the mods saying remove rule 1 and explain why then make a public post explaining you've had them change the rules. I feel like what you've done here is bend to mob mentality and swooped in to be the hero rather than address the community issues in a better more relaxed way.
I of course appreciate the fact that you're willing to involve yourself to ensure Voat stays Voat I just wish you'd address the mob mentality issue and not fall to being a part of it. You do a good job with Voat and I felt you deserved some honest feed back from someone who isn't going to immediately start sucking your dick, I'd at least like diner first.
oaken ago
Finally someone with some god damn sense. You mod some questionable subs but shit is it nice to read something that's not batshit red-scare level insane.
12_Years_A_Toucan ago
yeah, look. Obviously I mod some subs people hate. thats fine, hate me? thats fine IDGAF. We still need to think about these issues facing voat and not act like reddit with lynch mobs
oaken ago
You know at first I thought it was some SRS type stunt, a coordinated attack to flood voat with a mass witchhunt. But it seems that the majority of the community actually bought into it... even Atko. All over what, some fucking question marks. Don't know whether to be amused or scared for voat's future.
12_Years_A_Toucan ago
scared is the correct answer here. The fact the @atko caved to mob mentality says a lot about the future of this web site and in such I have lost all faith in it.
oaken ago
From reading some of their comments it seems to me that they skim the site, but don't actually follow it in depth.
I suspect that Atko saw the mass outrage, assumed the majority was in the right, and acted without further investigation. Hopefully he will exercise better judgment in the future.