Hi, everyone. A lot has happened here over the last couple days, and I'll try to explain both what has been happening and what I'm doing to hopefully fix some of the damage that's been done. Hopefully these actions can restore even a fraction of the goodwill that we previously had with the wider Lemmy community.
What's happened
Beaver was recently reinstated as a moderator after finding herself at the center of the recent controversy where Lemmy administrator Rooki unjustly and unilaterally interfered with /c/vegan over a discussion surrounding cat food. I was made a moderator after that same controversy when naeva resigned and went to VeganTheoryClub, an instance defederated from Lemmy.World which is designed to be a haven for discussion of vegan food, activism, art, etc. Things were generally cooling down from that over the last week.
A couple days ago, Beaver began posting to /c/vegan with remarkable frequency (~15 posts/day). Not long after, /u/ccunning contacted me asking about why they had been banned for Rule 5, which is our rule against bad-faith arguments against veganism. ccunning is a member of this community, they might even be vegan, and I've never seen them to be anything but mild-mannered and supportive of veganism here. Because I could find no violation, I assumed it was an accident and unbanned them. Very shortly thereafter, ccunning informed me that they had been banned again, and Beaver messaged me in private stating that ccunning had been banned for downvoting vegan comments but encouraging me not to mention that fact publicly. A post on /c/unpopularopinion soon made it apparent that many people were being banned here for this same reason, and taking a look at the mod log, I saw dozens of bans by Beaver whose only stated reason was "Rule 5".
Beaver continued posting and continued banning, and I messaged them asking if the /c/vegan moderators could have a team-wide discussion and vote concerning this interpretation of Rule 5. I made it clear to them that I felt uncomfortable with their behavior and felt it was doing harm to the community. Beaver ignored this request and simply responded to something else I'd said. 12 hours ago, they stickied a post to the top of /c/vegan daring the admins to interfere, a reference to the previous incident involving Rooki.
What's being done
- Beaver has been removed as a moderator for the community by me with no interference whatsoever from any of the Lemmy.World administrators. I believe her rash, unilateral actions over the last couple of days have done immense damage to the community under the (I believe misguided) pretense that it's effective and disruptive activism. Based on the actions previously summarized, I feel strongly that she cannot presently be trusted to moderate cooperatively, to competently assess what's best for the community, or to be transparent to our users. Although seemingly unlikely at this point, Beaver is encouraged to stay here as a welcome member of the community.
- Anyone who was banned for downvoting will be unbanned effective immediately. This was completely out of line, and to my understanding, the moderation team was not consulted about this rogue interpretation of Rule 5. Because I don't think you can tie specific comments to a ban, this will be something that could happen over a period of hours while I try to pin down the actual justification for each ban, and anyone currently banned is encouraged to appeal. Rule 5 is still in effect as it has always been, so please continue to participate in good faith.
- Individual users will temporarily be limited to creating a certain number of posts per day. I'll have to discuss with the rest of the moderation team if they would like this long-term and if so, what a reasonable limit is, but I think this needs to be done at least right now to cool things off. Beaver's extremely frequent posts have completely drowned out posts made by other users and artificially inflated the activity of this community. The two posts stickied by Beaver will be unstickied, but none of her existing posts will be removed.
I was made a moderator here extremely recently, and so I didn't feel comfortable intervening because I felt I'd be overstepping and betraying trust I'd been given. However, I see widespread distrust of Beaver as a moderator even among vegans (myself included) and feel that this is an emergency that I need to put a stop to.
Though I never would have thought to do this in my community, I don't think it's unacceptable to ban people over voting behaviors if there is good evidence of brigading or persistence, however, using that specific rule to justify it is a bit of a stretch. It would help to see Beaver's explanation and what the rest of the moderators make of the events.
When I shared what I thought of events as one of those moderators, I was de-modded. It's clear what is really happening here.