Should c/Conspiracies jointly petition admin for new moderation as opposed to it remaining an unmoderated Wild West?
Please answer YES or NO in separate main comments below, with any reasoning as desired.
This poll methodology is recognized to be unscientific but is better than nothing. Thank you for your responses.
Add: There is now a megathread. I would still appreciate contributors taking the time to add a YES or NO here to gauge interest on this specific question (thank you early adopters).
Vote analysis after 12 days:
Yes from u/Neo1, u/SicSemperTyrannis2, u/SwampRangers, u/Thisisnotanexit. Conditional yes from u/DresdenFirebomber.
Goals: discussion posts, community effort, order, teamwork, stickies, wikis, proper moderation enforcement (against shills, trolls, spam, flames, sequestrable topics (FlatEarth, Nazis), tyranny).
No from u/GuywholikesDjtof2024.
Concerns: censorship, tyranny.
A very large silent contingent can be considered to have abstained despite awareness of the poll. Evidence indicates they lean toward No (preservation of anarchy) but legally via their nonadvocacy their standing is equivalent to going with the flow of what the most active are doing. There was also a burst of what could be grouped as envelope-pushing activity to test the community's limits, and this has included some self-moderation as it's lessened. u/Graphenium, though silent here, can be commended for taking on himself the role of promoting group action via ordinary user rights rather than mod rights, in posting an independent roundtable; this too was met with silence by many.
Therefore we can declare the vote (unless people chime in late) to have rendered a passing total of 4-1-1 in favor of Yes; but to interpret the vote it's clear that it reflects only those willing to be active in supporting a mod board of most any composition. As we proceed to build informal consensus if any, the contingent that consciously deprecates deliberative processes by nonparticipation, and by active redirection via other activity (including squabbling), will need either to draw itself out into making commitments, or to be bypassed by their alternate activity being overcome by community consensus activity.
u/Paleo
u/Perun
u/Doggos
u/C
This comment from u/SwampRangers is admitting to a takeover of the c/Conspiracies forum by the Swamp Cult. Both u/Graphenium and u/Neo1 did not want u/Thisisnotanexit to be mod of the forum. You can see u/Neo1's disdain at https://communities.win/c/Conspiracies/p/1ASFhYB4Kf/i-regret-to-find-out-this-place-/c and u/Graphenium's comment below
The ones voting for a mod are the Swamp Cult and no others. It's a group effort to target the forum and create an illusion of a community consensus by only considering members of the Swamp Cult as the community. There are more that didn't want moderation and ones who didn't want u/Thisisnotanexit than did. They swooped in, raised the call for moderation through lies, and got one of their own in power.
u/Doggos, u/C, and u/Perun you guys are listed as the mods of this forum and have utterly failed to do so. It was never u/SwampRangers position to rig a passing vote for getting a mod, especially when it's one of his lackeys.
u/Slechta5614 admitted that there's a plan by the Swamp Cult to take over the site. https://communities.win/c/Christianity/p/1ASFhNzhq6/the-dark-tower-chapter-1/c/4eZE8o0aFM9?d=50
u/JosephGoebbel5, u/DresdenFirebomber, u/RealWildRanter, u/Neo1, u/Third-Eye-Vision, u/dukey, u/newfunturistic, u/user20461, u/Eccentrik, u/LightBringerFlex, u/guywholikesDjtof2024, u/Zyxl, u/defenderOfMontrosity, u/TurnToGodNow, u/deletedandredacted, u/muhqtardtho, u/Mrexreturns, u/free-will-of-choice, u/SicSemperTyrannis2
This "vote" had very little to do with it.
u/Thisisnotanexit was chosen because she came to this site with the Conspiracies crowd, has worked as a moderator on other communities already, was active in the community consistently for a long time, and multiple c/Meta threads asking for help with spammers like the pedospammer.
u/Thisisnotanexit is doing a fantastic job getting this community back to how it was intended to be.
This is a blatant admission you decided to install her as mod prior to any community input about whether or not to have a mod and who it would be.
The voting and Meta posts about community input about the mod position was all performative. None of it mattered. You made a decision from the beginning and the alleged community input was about you and the Swamp Cult being able to claim it was community driven.
Way to tell us you're a member of the Swamp Rangers without saying it...
What's your position on this site? Doesn't say you're admin and you're not listed as a mod. Admin that doesnt use the official admin stamp on here? Part owner or developer perhaps? Why are you calling the shots on who the mod is on c/Conspiracies and about who to ban or not?
Why are you mad? c/Conspiracies needed a good mod, now they have one. That's a good thing.
I like Swamp, I respect him. He's been around since the beginning like I was.
I don't recognize you though. Did you just arrive 2 months ago? Or is this an alt?
u/Paleo isn't admitting any prejudice. As usual, he writes for those with reading comprehension skills. "This 'vote'" page was about a desire for a mod, not about the identity of the mod. There were maybe five candidates who proposed they could be mod, on several different pages, and it's clear the admins and Paleo based their decision on those several pages, where the vocal among the community expressed their views (and those who opted not to express their views had fair warning). The decision appears to have been made after a week or two of my and others' raising the point, but they didn't implement it for months, presumably to gauge people's reaction to u/Thisisnotanexit indicating direction.
Paleo is not a Swamp Ranger to my knowledge; he was well established here long before the Rangers were publicly announced (by Scott Lively, late 2020). Now I've said repeatedly that, when Neo1 (who doesn't want my pings) expressed a desire for a return to moderated activity, I affirmed him and pointed out here and on Meta that it seemed incongruous to have no active mod. I didn't press any agenda, I proposed a couple community questions like this one, as did others. There was sufficient consensus that moderation was preferable but insufficient consensus on who or how many it should be; so admin stepped in by having TINAE state a direction and waited to see that direction validated by the community. You could've stepped in anytime, maybe you did, and could've done anything I did, in your own idiom; it happened the way it did because of group dynamics.
(This being Conspiracies, I don't mind at all being told I conspired with others as if secretly to get things to happen. But it's not like anyone at any point had any better idea that the community was behind. They picked a good mod, she'd certainly be willing to yield some or all decisions to someone who could be a better mod, if one arose from the field.)
Paleo, to my knowledge, is a mod of 20+ communities that is trusted by admin to assist with and/or process sitewide concerns. His account has never identified as an admin account. It's been publicly stated that there are five part owners and that it's not important who; if you've been following the admin accounts, they indicate clearly their relative roles on behalf of those owners, and their closeness with ownership. TINAE stated publicly, 2 months ago, that admin had chosen her tentatively as mod, and Paleo has every right to be a channel for admin comms, including making his usual wise ban recommendations.
Now, please feel free to lay into me for speaking up on behalf of other anons that I know only by reputation. I am happy to explain things I know about, even in so much detail as to repel people. I will continue to believe that transparency is the best antidote to charges of conspiracy.