Okay, people are now talking about an IRC cabal, and since I'm an admin of that IRC, it's time for me to make a statement and answer some questions.

This will be a two part post, first speaking as admin of the IRC, and second being purely my perspective on the latest drama.

As admin of the IRC:

So here's the deal. A number of moderators on Voat have become friends with each other on IRC. This is entirely true. However, that IRC server and our conversations are entirely public and many more people who don't have such positions also participate. If any of you want to join, please do, we could use some fresh blood.

Obviously, the most active people who have been here the longest are the ones that acquire mod positions and are most interested in IRC, so yeah, many of us showed up there. Obvious correlation, not causation.

If anyone has questions or concerns, please, post them here or PM them to me, and I'll do my best to answer them. Especially concerns about policy, because I want this place to be as immune to corruption as possible, and IRC policies are a good part of that.

Personal opinion:

What I see is a few people who are intentionally breaking rules and baiting mods into deleting posts so they can feign outrage and then request those subs for themselves, and a few more people who don't like rules or mods of any kind anywhere.

I mean, @ElectroLumus already admitted to a lot of dishonesty, and @nomerasques requested ownership of /v/askvoat after brigading the hell out of his objection to @she by linking it to a couple other subreddits. (He dropped the request a few hours ago because of people calling him out on the obvious conflict of interest.)

Now people are getting angry about /v/seriousdiscussion, but anyone paying attention will notice a few things:

• It's @ElectroLumus causing the outrage again
• The removed posts were breaking the rules of /v/seriousdiscussion
• People trying to argue against the witch hunt also had some posts removed under the same rules
• Posts with the same message that don't break the rules are not being removed

Now, I've said it dozens of times already, and I'll say it again, I can understand some outrage against /v/askvoat's question mark rule, especially when highly upvoted posts are removed. I supported Atko when he removed /v/askvoat from the defaults, I recommended to askvoat mods that they change the rule, and I supported Stoic when he changed it.

However, when someone posts something critical of a mod and intentionally breaks a rule so it will be removed and he can pretend to be angry, fuck that guy. Now the same people are doing exactly the same thing in /v/seriousdiscussion and a hundred others are just taking their bullshit at face value.

If you break rules, your posts will be removed. That's not censorship, that's how the website is designed, how quality is maintained, and how the purpose of many subs (/v/seriousdiscussion especially) is enforced. If you want /v/seriousdiscussion to turn into a cesspool of insults instead of actual serious discussion, then by all means, keep protesting every deletion. The rest of us, myself included, will protest against you.

If you see people deleting posts to push a political agenda, whether it's liberal, conservative, or anything else, then let me know, because I'll join that protest with whatever influence I have.

If you all have any questions or arguments or whatever, I'll respond to whatever I can in the comments below.

Edit: Lol I made manhood101 hate me and even spam up the IRC server. I feel so validated now.

Edit 2: As soon as @ElectroLumus was pinged, @Scandinavian and @kevdude also showed up and I got 5 downvotes on most of my comments. Now, who's in a secret cabal here?