Note: Can you guys please stop downvoting stuff of his that is unrelated to the situation? Just because he’s a shitty moderator in this particular moment and situation does not mean that his other posts deserve to be criticized or downvoted as well. Leave the dude alone. Only criticize him on his moderator behavior in this thread or when seen in the wild. Do not bully or go after this guy for no reason. Please. That’s not what I made this post for, and it’s not what I’m trying to direct.
Bro is used pretty colloquially and, admittedly, often as a dismissive turn of phrase. Exactly as it was in this comment of mine on the post “Lemmy users are in an uproar because MAGA fascists spun up their own server.”
I made a pretty off hand dismissive comment because I thought the wording of the post was a bit sanctimonious. Didn’t even downvote it. Then I took a nap and woke up to a comment from the mod. He has now deleted it after it hit -20+ comments but was
“Yes, that’s what I’m saying. Also, we’re not related. Refrain from the bro speak.”
A comment that I thought was kind of idiotic and so I dismissed it as much with a response
What I didn’t see was that the moderator had DMed me at the same time.
So because of a moderators personal interpretation of how the word “bro” is used, using the word at all is offensive to them and ergo is banned from usage on !fediversenews@piefed.social under the rule of “Be Civil.”
Now this is utterly impossible for any user to ever follow unless it is made clear. This moderator refuses to make this information clear publicly so I edited my original comment, gave context and added a screenshot of that message.
At the same time I also responded to the moderator via DMs.
I got another notification from @shifty@leminal.space with this comment:
I went to respond but by the time that I had, the moderator had already banned me (effectively permanently) from the community.
So let’s recap here. The moderator is taking the word “Bro” as personally insulting/offensive for whatever reason. They’re using the rule of be civil as a cudgel to enforce their opinion but they refuse to make this opinion clear. Meaning that it is impossible to properly follow this rule. On top of that, if the moderator messages you then you must keep that entirely private or you will be banned.
@atomicpoet@piefed.social is out here complaining about fascism while using fascism. Neato.
The whole time I thought I was just dealing with the atomicpoet@piefed.social account but I didn’t realize that user has made his own instance and account on it with @atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org. THAT account was what posted the original post and that account doesn’t even have moderator abilities. What an utter joke. But this entire community is filled with extremely heavy handed moderation. 11m ago, 12m ago, 22m ago, 23m ago, 24m ago… My apologies to people like @TherapyGary@lemmy.dbzer0.com, apparently you’ve been permanently banned from the above community for “Downvote Brigading”. This AtomicPoet dude should go back to reddit…
I’d suggest people start defederating from this dude though. Looks like he’s a hairtrigger away from doing it to you if you piss him off.
Also… I couldn’t help myself. I sent him the link to this post with the wording “Here you go, bro”
What can I say. I’m also an asshole.
Edit: I forgot to add these into the post and that is entirely on me. One of them doesn’t make me look awesome but I should have put it in and it’s unfair of me that I didn’t.
After my initial response to his DM, he sent this back:
Immediately after he sent that message, he banned me. My guess is that he clicked on my username and refreshed or something, saw the screenshot that had been added to the comment and then banned me for the previously mentioned reason of posting a screenshot of a DM. Guess I’m really violating this now.
Before realizing I had been banned, I then sent this DM to him. This is the one that does make me look like an absolute wankstain.
That last line is really arrogant and narcissistic on my part. I was just waking up from a nap and he was aggravating me but that’s not really an excuse. I did act like a bit of a fuckstick there. I can be a twat. This is known. Also one reason why I don’t do much in the run of moderation anymore, I just don’t trust myself to not turn into what I hate. But I could have worded that a LOT differently. What I was trying to get across was that my most recent post was the Jordan Lund one and getting annoyed by his behavior and that acting like a power tripping moderator to the dude who literally just did an expose on that might not be the greatest course of action. But I didn’t word it as such. I worded it the way I did and came of like a cuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuunt. That is totally on me and I hate myself for it.
If you liked this manuscript of moderator misconduct, you may also marvel at Jordan Lund: Master of Malicious Mismanagement and The Admins of StarTrek.website: Value Subtracted & Corgana’s Calamitous Command. Collect the complete compendium of corruption today!
If this is the approach, then the first part is never “not as a mod”. You can’t take off the mod hat, when you have the power to put it back on to enforce your own preferences. This is not how it works and people will call you out on this.
To be an effective moderator, you need to be transparent and honest, or people will notice and raise hell about it until your inevitable crash-out.
I totally agree that one cannot cover every potentially situation in the rules or else rule-lawyers will get around it, but you also need to be cognizant when some personal preferences like “bro” are not what most people would consider “uncivil” and in this case you need to spell them out explicitly to avoid issues, or just accept that you are in the minority on this and don’t enforce them at all and instead try to organically curate a community which agrees with you on it.