So there's some recent major reddit drama at the admin level involving a recently hired admin turning out to have hired their now-convicted pedo father post-arrest during a brief journey into Britbong politics. This has completely exploded over the last couple days after posts on /r/ukpolitics were force-removed, a moderator was suspended (then later reinstated) for linking to an article from the Spectator, and there have been horrifically broad automod rules implemented which were nuking any links to that and more articles, alongside accusations made regarding this admin by name (username and IRL name).
Now, we aren't getting into the weeds on the accusations, but the overwhelming admin level response to them, including mass comment hard nukes (they show up for moderators as [removed] and cannot be reapproved at all), mass user suspensions, as well as the hard block on links to actual news sites (IIRC the Spectator, Independent, and a couple others were included) is something we cannot remotely condone. There's such a thing as a proportional response, and this from the admins is not it.
To add to the mess, we recently felt it necessary to implement a broad "no transgender discussion of any kind" policy on KiA (Reddit, not here) to head off the rather insane Anti-Evil removals and warnings/suspensions issued, including a warning issued to me personally for using the term "chick-with-a-dick" in reference to Polly from HuniePop2 as "promoting hate". When I approached the admins to get clarification on their policy, including a request for a full list of what they consider to be "trans-related slurs", I was given the run around with half-scripted answers before I asked to be escalated to a senior community team member. My request was never escalated, and it now turns out that the admin who gave me the run around was the admin at the center of all this drama. That makes the admin decision a total conflict of interest regarding actual sitewide policy enforcement.
All this put together - the bans, hard comment removals, link blocks, and the direct policy interactions with this admin - have caused us to make the decision to speak up the best way we can to make reddit take notice, by going private alongside hundreds of other subs for at least a day (we will see if it goes longer or not). We just have one benefit that most other subs do not in that we can link to a post here to more clearly explain why we are doing this, instead of just relying on a link to another post on reddit by someone who is not completely representative of our position.
A few of us will be around on and off today to maybe answer some questions, though this is almost fully in the laps of the admins to decide if they are going to continue fucking up their enforcement policies, counter to how things have been run in their own rules regarding public figures for years. Our own Rules 2 and 5 regarding personal info of people were built on the original interpretation of those sitewide rules with admin help. Going completely counter to that makes it impossible for anyone to enforce rules evenly, and the admins need to pull their collective heads out of their asses to understand that.
EDIT: So the admins sacrificed the employee on the altar to appease the masses, but failed to actually address any of the real issues this mess created around sitewide rules, automated moderation, etc. We are going to stay aimed at a target of roughly 24hours of staying private, in hopes that something gets addressed by a redname on that side of things. So figure somewhere in the 5am US Eastern timeframe, give or take, then the sub should be public again.
Huh? That's flimsy as fuck. That's like saying you have no right to say "it's OK to be white" if you happen to be white.
A person has designated criticism of themselves a sitewide violation in a way that applies to no other group. You don't see a problem there?
I haven’t followed this incredibly closely but banning slurs against trans people seems right in line with rules banning slurs against other people.
I didn't realize the word "trans" was limited to this one idiot admin. /s
A trans admin making decisions in relation to trans-related policy issues is a conflict of interest. We don't allow our jewish mods to moderate any jew-related comments on KiA, it'd be a conflict of interest on their part if they did, and last I checked a large part of what caused GG to explode in the first place was undisclosed conflicts of interest.
That’s fucking idiotic logic and is exactly the same shit Trump tried to pull when he attempted to get a non-latino judge to rule on his border wall. You can’t be this dumb.
Conflicts of interest are things like when you have a financial stake in a company you’re covering as a journalist, not intrinsic qualities you’re born with.
What the fuck? Do you prohibit black mods from enforcing R1 against people trying to incite racial violence? Do you not let pinkerbelle enforce R1 against people that say shit like "kill all women" or something? Do you require R3 removals of unrelated political posts of a right-wing variety to be done only by right-wing mods?
How the hell have you guys been enforcing the rules to begin with?
I thought "conflicts of interest" were largely based on peoples' connections and external jobs interfering with their duties, not their goddamned demographics.
It's simple, really. If you are likely to get personally offended and thus emotionally riled up by a topic, you probably shouldn't be moderating posts about that topic, because you're going to be predisposed to judging people harshly about it regardless of their actual intent.
The admin in question demonstrated this herself by demanding harsh moderation about terms that weren't being used negatively.
Bane should've probably worded it like that from the beginning.
Seems like that would need to be a situation where you'd need at least two (three would be better) mods/admins to approve the response as a sort of stopgap to personal skin in the game, unfortunately without a way to randomize which admins/mods are chosen, it would be as easy as picking sympathetic ears to rubberstamp things for you.
They have no black mods. Too much Wight Supremacist Patriarchy for that.
[slow tap]
KiA2 does not have a similar policy, but I find it quite good, actually. 'Transgender' is an ideology. You don't want people who are enthralled to such an ideology to remove comments about it. The more potential bias you avoid, including bias because of demographics, the better.
Quite apart from that, you do not want a moderator (and I think this is the primary reason for KiA) to appear to be partial to his own demographic, which delegitimizes the decisions that he makes.
Then you might as well ban every white and/or male mod from enforcing the rules on the sub--Nearly every post that touches on race and gender in KIA is sympathetic towards whites and dudes. Or is that what you want to do? Neutering the mods' ability to police their own community so people like you can freely post off-topic political shit? Got it.
You got some fucking nerve responding to my posts with your flimsy-ass bullshit arguments. I'm far more convinced your own anti-R3 crusade-like politicking is far more befitting of being considered an "ideology " than some tranny wanting to be called a different gender than the one he was born with.
Go back to KIA2 where you crawled from.