I've recently been made a janitor on this sub verse.

When I logged off Voat yesterday I had 289 contribution points and now, 7 hours later, I have -160. This means I can no longer comment on submissions and I can't downvoat/upvoat. It appears that the shills will band together and target someone they're not happy with and downvoat all their contributions.

This is not good news because I can't comment on or upvoat brilliant posts that I have an interest in: the origins of the Alephantis family, like this voater here who just put up a new post.

https://sli.mg/ZGCz64

So I can't collaborate with people who are doing similar research to me. I am doing research behind the scenes, but I don't post submissions about it to collect voats unless I have something new to say, or to ask a question if I've hit a brick wall.

It looks like shills will band together and target someone who they're not happy with, and downvoat them into oblivion.

Instead of making new accounts which are easy to spot (especially if they are called AnyBot5 etc, lol), it looks like the new tactic is to grab any old news article or video link from the net about pedophilia, post it without any comment as to how it furthers the investigation into pizzagate, and clog up the boards in this way.

That means you and I have to plough through a 50 minute YouTube video of something completely unrelated to pizzagate.

They get a couple of upvoats every time, which could mean they get enough voats to downvoat your legit post out of the water and make YOU look like a shill.

What can you do?

1. Use your downvoats and comments to help the mods identify a Lazy Link Shitpost

2. Ping us if you think you've identified a repeat offender or if it looks like the shills are downvoating your historical contributions too.

3. If you're posting a link, please try to explain in your comments why it is worth a watch and why you think it helps further the investigation. Your title should describe what I am about to view.

4. Post your blinding new information on a Sunday. Looks like Hills don't pay double time, I didn't see many around last week.

5. If you spot a new tactic, let us know.

6. If you have any questions about a moderation decision please message us or ping us if you don't have messaging ability. There are new mods here because they are sorely needed, and we might make mistakes occasionally (I hold my hands up, I am new, the other mods were quick to put me right, they are good folks). We want to be transparent and to uphold the aims of Voat, no censorship. This is hard when we have shills spreading disinformation and posting unrelated news. I spend about 12 hours a day on Voat, trying to read everything and flair things I think are brilliant. If you think something should be flaired because it's epic, ping us, just use @AnyFucker to do this, or @themoderatorofyourchoice. The list of mods is in the sidebar to the right, as are moderating decisions (deleted posts etc)

What I can do

I can still delete posts for rule violations. I can still post submissions.