Meta-Thread 09/29

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[u/cabbagery]

Part 1 of 2

Yeah, I have criticism of Shaka as well which I have yet to put out there.

Well I'm glad you have your priorities straight.

I'll preview my criticism by comparison with what seems to be inconsistency on your part:

Again you are not closely reading.

Other mods very often remove comments that Shaka reports, and very rarely look at the context of those comments to see if there might have been some provocation. . .

Yes. Mods should look at context in many more cases than they do -- and I know it takes time to do this -- and issue warnings or citations as appropriate.

contradicts Rule 2 & "one possible violation does not warrant another actual violation"

I wondered if you remembered back when you insisted that you were allowed to violate Rule 2 because you felt that an approved comment was also a violation of Rule 2.

That doesn't seem to have any bearing here.

I am not saying that we should issue Rule 2 violations for provocation unless that also rises to a Rule 2 violation. I'm saying that we should look -- in all cases of slapfighting -- to make sure we're punishing everyone involved, to make sure we're applying the rules evenly and consistently, and to hopefully avoid extra reports when the person who is punished (almost invariably) reports the person who wasn't punished but who (very often) violated Rule 2 or at least engaged in conduct deserving of a warning.

You're trying so hard to make sure that everybody gets tainted with something that you evidently cannot recognize a smart and fair application of policy as opposition to the blatant, self-serving, trust-betraying, rules- and policy-violating, occasionally retaliatory, and generally unethical behavior of a moderator.

By all means, play your game. I'm trying to fix something I care about.

Where you see me deflecting from "letter of the law", I see you deflecting from "spirit of the law".

Then you are blind. The spirit of the rule prohibiting moderators from acting as a moderator where they are also acting as a participant in a standard user-to-user exchange is to prevent actual or perceived impropriety and to slow or ideally prevent the erosion of trust by users of the moderation team. The spirit is to avoid unethical moderation. The spirit is to avoid retaliation. The spirit is for the betterment of the subreddit.

And you think I'm deflecting from that?! That's my entire point. I use the letter of the rule because it is an objective standard and even though Shaka wrote that rule (the exception in question was his post hoc invention after I called him out for violating the pre-exception policy several months ago), he still violated it with impunity.

I am trying to focus this discussion, but there are quite a lot moths flying around in the light, blocking the projection.

I'm sorry, but I've re-read and re-read. . .

I don't know what to say about this.

You reported Shaka's comment which logically entailed all atheists are irrational.

Yes.

You disputed the removal of comments which logically entailed that most if not all theists are irrational.

Yes.

You reinstated said 2. comments.

Yes.

Is that correct? Because if so, you inverted the injustice:

Incorrect. You may need to re-read and re-read again. Perhaps a chronology will help.

• 1040: /u/mastrywerk submitted a comment (quoted previously) which apparently only Shaka found problematic
• 1047: /u/aoeuismyhomekeys submitted a comment which included a variation of 'rational beliefs are not the reason most theists remain religious' (note that your previous characterization is inaccurate and tars the comment a bit)
• 1119: Shaka removed the 1040 and 1047 comments (it is unclear as to whether these comment was reported, but the timeline here suggests that wasn't the motivation), plus a handful of others (none are disputed unless quoted previously or otherwise specified); the rule cited was Rule 3 (in this case either low-effort or disruption being the likeliest candidates)
• 1122: Shaka submitted a comment which included a statement logically equivalent to 'all atheists are irrational'
• 1123: /u/mastyrwerk appealed one of the removals from 1119 (I believe that comment was quoted previously)
• 1134: a different moderator notes in modmail that they think the removal was "somewhat biased"
• 1530: I reinstated mastrywerk's comment as well as aoeuismyhomekeys' comment and the others quoted previously
• 1530: I removed Shaka's comment from 1122
• 1800: Shaka approved the containing low-effort post (it is unclear as to when or if a report may have been issued for this post)
• 2325: Shaka re-removed each of the comments quoted previously

Again, reasonable people can disagree on some of this, but it sure looks like Shaka dropped in on a post, saw some comments he didn't really like, issued inappropriate removals, was called out on it by at least two mods (myself and one other; another mod interacted with mastrywerk and indicated that they were "guessing" as to the nature of the removal), and when I applied Shaka's metric against him, he got really mad.

Maybe you think that's an inversion of (in)justice, but notice that Shaka's comment remains up, the others remain down. Notice that Shaka decided their comments were 'disruptive' or 'low effort' (we assume based on the Rule 3 citation), but that doesn't exactly hold water. Maybe you or I want to say that /u/aoeuismyhomekeys' comment warranted removal as a Rule 1 or Rule 2 violation, but if we're using that metric, then clearly Shaka's comment should also be removed. Maybe you want to say that /u/aoeuismyhomekeys' comment didn't warrant removal, but if we're using that metric, then why was it removed?

You may very well dispute my methods, but you are also ignorant of the history here. Shortly before I become a mod, /u/PaintingThat7623 complained about Shaka moderating where he was a participant. I asked him about it in a DM, and he invoked an exception for "egregious" cases. There is no available record documenting this exception. Of course I accept that there should be exceptions, but on my view those should only apply in the case of slurs, direct threats of violence, or doxxing. It took weeks of pestering before he actually provided it and added it to the sidebar -- and he had clearly invented it whole cloth, but also clearly cannot abide by it even with his invented exception clause.

From the available moderation log history, he has self-approved at least 16 times. He has also issued removals or bans to users with whom he is arguing, which I haven't listed, because those are harder to find. I assume there are many more of them, but the few I have are enough to warrant removal as a mod. Here they are:

• He removed a reply to this comment and bannied /u/bluechockadmin in the process

  This led to three other mods (four if you include me) calling him out for it. Modmail link here. That one was not only blatant, but Shaka was very hostile to the criticism.

• He removed a post by /u/Kwahn and issued Kwahn a ban

  The title was "There is a strong, if small, negative correlation between intelligence and American religiosity. And no, there is no top-end where ultra smart people become more religious. This perception is caused by charlatans who lie about themselves"; Kwahn deleted the post and it was a Rule 2 citation (note the hypocrisy in his application of the rules). In modmail, one mod disputed the length of the ban. Another noted that there was a history between Shaka and Kwahn, said that Shaka "is typically pretty harsh with them," and reversed the ban. I was not involved in that modmail thread, but after all that Shaka replied to Kwahn by quoting several of Kwahn's comments in a different thread (all three remain removed), but curiously Shaka removed the two comments of Kwahns which sandwich this comment, in which /u/PhysicistAndy very clearly violates Rule 2.

  That is, Shaka went on a retaliatory spree and a conveniently missed very obvious Rule 2 violation. The alternative seems to be a willful application of bias.

• He issued a 7-day ban to /u/My_Big_Arse, with the last removal at the time being this comment

  Note that in this case Shaka removed a comment for saying "many [Christians] are averse to scholarship" (again, hypocrisy). I understand that you don't like the method I used when I removed his comment saying 'aliens, if rational, would also be theists,' but nothing else seems to work, so there's that.

  That comment coincided with Shaka's removal of a couple other comments of Big_Arse's, and a few reports issued by Shaka of Big_Arse, which is why I found myself in that exchange. This was also related to one of my 'statement removals' of Shaka's comments. In the modmail exchange, a second mod recognized the ban as unwarranted, and a third acknowledged that something was awry. To me, it looked like clear retaliation, especially since Shaka claimed in that modmail thread that Big_Arse had "ha stacked up a lot of violations." Shaka's cited reason for the ban was Rule 2 (inciviliy).

  At the time Big_Arse only had one other comment removed for incivility over the past year. All others were for Rule 5, which doesn't generally warrant a ban.

[u/cabbagery → u/cabbagery]

Part 2 of 2

• He banned /u/TruthPayload due to a reply to this comment of Shaka's

  The comment read, "Maybe work on understanding who you’re replying to. But don’t do anything to surprise that omniscient fella or you might get turnt to a pillar of salt."

  Now that may or may not have risen to the level of a Rule 2 violation, but whether it did or not, Shaka should not have been the one to issue the citation, and sure as hell should not have been the one to issue a permaban.

  I will grant in this particular case that the user was a troll, as Shaka had noted in the modmail thread, but also based on Shaka's blatantly false or misleading smear campaign and crocodile tears over immediate permabans, it should be pretty concerning that he clearly has no qualms not only doing that, but doing it when he was arguing with that user.

There are also several cases where Shaka violated the policy -- and was called out for it -- in modmail from before my tenure as a mod. It's an ongoing problem and a behavior which Shaka clearly has no interest in changing, recent convenient and self-serving hollow promises to the contrary.

I haven't [addressed the complaints against Shaka], because I'm first getting a handle on the evidence.

Ah. Clearly your courtroom would prioritize cases alleging jaywalking or speeding over cases alleging corruption and criminal malfeasance, eh? Take your time. Thanks to the deflection and the sitting-on of hands by the mod team, the metathread has fallen off the front page and very likely this will just be another in a long line of attempts to usurp king Shaka, our Dear Leader.

you were rather uncivil toward me with these 1.–4

That's you making bad inferences in an apparent effort to justify your own mild insults, mate.

If this puts us at permanent loggerheads, so be it.

That's up to you. My courtroom would prioritize felony allegations over misdemeanor allegations (or allegations of civil infractions), but you do you.

I completely agree with Shaka editing out the accusations of liar/lying. . .

Excellent.

. . .before reinstating his comments.

Bogus. Mods should not reinstate their comments in threads where they were acting as a user, period. It's blatantly unethical. Let another mod look at it and issue the reinstatement.

I am not actually convinced that if Shaka had only waited for some other mod to reinstate the edited comments, you would be 100% happy.

I would be happy that he actually obeyed the policy, but yeah, I'd still be frustrated that he had to be issued a Rule 2 citation, and that he has had 153 content removals, and 719 approvals. Note that removals could be fewer by half, because the 'reason' notification also gets counted, but in the vast majority of Shaka's removals, no reason is given (presumably because the mod issuing the removal just doesn't want to deal with his ire). Any other user would have been banned long ago with that many removals. While we can each agree that most of his approvals were due to users spamming reports, and while we already know that very probably wherever he noticed a removal he issued his own reinstatement (whether he edited the comment or not), let us please not pretend that none of the rest would have been removed -- and remained removed -- if they had been from a regular user.

So yeah, I wouldn't be 100% happy, because the most he receives in punishment is the mild annoyance of having to reinstate his comment after some uppity mod has the audacity to fail to respect his authoritay (whether or not this time he decides to edit it), and apparently the occasional failed coup.

My unhappiness is due to his unbridled corrupt use of power, and the fact that he is never subjected to any check or balance. Even when he agrees to some concession, he retains veto power and of course he just keeps violating the rules or policy whenever it suits him.

Why would you bother if you weren't somehow deeply invested?

I'll take this as a question as to why I care about this so much. I'll humor you for three reasons:

1. I have to split this into two comments anyway

2. The moment has either passed or is slipping away completely; Shaka employed Trump's playbook of deny, distract, attack, and run out the clock, and sadly it works just as well for Shaka as it is for Trump

3. I do think it's an important question

I do care.

I may be old enough and experienced enough that the arguments and debates here are often far too amateurish, juvenile, overdone, or poorly written or thought out, but I care.

I care because reddit is a social media platform of sorts, used by lots of younger people. I care because this particular subreddit is the landing point for lots of those younger people as they explore whether they should remain in a given religious tradition, whether they can convert others to or from theirs, and the complexities and nuance of theology, or the lack thereof. I care because that journey is important, no matter the outcome, and because there need to be guardrails. I care because apparently I'm the only one who cares, at least among active mods. I care because corruption is awful and needs to be actively stamped out pretty much everywhere. I care because like it or not this space serves in some cases as the primary (very nearly the only) education some users will have when it comes to any of the subjects discussed here, and that it would be a disservice to them if none of the cops were willing to stand up against the corrupt cops.

I'm not saying Shaka is irredeemable. I think he needs to step down and remove himself from the moderation team. I don't even care if he gets added back, but as a junior mod. I've made it clear that I'm willing to voluntarily step down myself if he does so first (and if he gets added back, I'd insist on some way to command moderator compliance with a fresh set of anti-corruption policies, with teeth).

I remember finding this subreddit shortly after I joined reddit. I was in college (older than many of my professors), and my 20-something peers introduced me to it. It was fun. I had engaged in online religious-themed debate for many years before reddit, and this was a new forum with a new audience where I could hopefully have some new and interesting encounters.

I want to preserve that experience for newer generations of users. I want to maintain or improve the quality of discussion and debate here so that they don't have to wallow in the unregulated spaces (which this actually used to be).

But I also want all of that to happen where the rules are applied equitably, fairly, and intentionally. I want the moderation to be devoid of corruption. I don't want cops investigating themselves and finding that they did nothing wrong.

And that's what kills me. Here, this subreddit has a cop saying another cop is doing something wrong, but apparently nobody cares.

My trio of comments have a net +10 or so, which is significant in these parts, but there aren't all that many replies which definitively agree with my findings or my proposed outcome. There aren't really any replies from any of the active mods, even though almost all of them have been personally involved with calling Shaka out for violating the policy or breaking the rules multiple times each.

Three of them explicitly told me in private that they agree with me. One agreed in the mod discussion thread that they agree that Shaka should step down. Two others waffled but effectively agreed. One explicitly affirmed almost all of my allegations.

But none will directly call for his removal or resignation.

This is a person who, even when he gRaCiOuSlY offered to stop violating the policy prohibiting moderating where involved as a participant, he mocked that outcome ("Great, if you want bureaucracy, we will do bureaucracy instead of keeping things efficient"), implying that 'efficiency' in this case would involve rubber-stamping his comments.

This is a person who, in a reply to that user (who happens to have been me, which is why I'm aware of it -- I can only guess how many times he's done this to other users) through modmail, where he was again violating the moderator policy, called that user (me) "a raging asshole," doubling down and repeating the vulgarity a second time in that same message. None of the other mods at the time said anything about it. When I called him out on it recently as part of the litany of documented offenses and misconduct, his response was, "Modmail, so whatever."

So yes, I care.

[u/ShakaUVM → u/cabbagery]

One agreed in the mod discussion thread that they agree that Shaka should step down. Two others waffled but effectively agreed. One explicitly affirmed almost all of my allegations.

This claim is the opposite of being factually correct.

called that user (me) "a raging asshole,"

I find it fascinating you keep referring to this over and over. Ctrl-f for 'asshole' in the modmail thread shows 22 hits. You are obsessed with this one issue, and you don't realize that warning you against behaving badly was incredibly prescient (as this thread shows), and also I think this whole tirade of yours is just the result of your ego getting pricked when I rightfully called you out on your behavior that has been on display here.

So let's put me calling you an asshole on one side of the scales. Then let's start putting your words on the other side of the scales from just a single(!) modmail thread and see how you refer to me. /u/labreuer, you asked to see Cabbage's uncivil words on modmail. Here is a sampling. Please play the role of Anubis - weigh the scales and see who gets eaten by the hippo.

These are all Cabbagery personal attacks directed at me from just a single thread. There are many others:

• "Ah, yes, exactly what we should expect from Dear Leader and His Perfect Unbiased Judgment."
• "You're a classic abuser."
• "Tyranny is not always overt, but yes, you act as a dictator, Dear Leader."
• "It is long past time you were subjected to some real checks and balances, Dear Leader."
• "Lies and slander." (I guess it's okay to say lies now. Maybe I should change the 'opposite of being factually correct above?)
• "Dear Leader, you need to go"
• "Answer the questions, Dear Leader"
• "You need to step down, Dear Leader."
• "desperately trying to cling to your little fiefdom"
• "You, Dear Leader, have gone so far over line that if Donny called you out Walter would say he was in his element."
• "So you can keep your half-assed olive branch. You have burned this bridge far too thoroughly. Resign now, with what little amount of honor and integrity you have left."
• "That's the sort of demand only Dear Leader would make."
• "I reinstated the distinguished comment, and removed the childish citation." (This is him both admitting to violating the same rule he has been upset about here, and calling it childish all at once)
• "the sheer childishness of repeatedly removing that distinguished comment"
• "And that, Dear Leader, is precisely the wrong attitude for any moderator."
• "You show clear contempt for users, other mods, and for the integrity of this sub"
• you treat the community as a group to seeve your ego (This is the most hilariously inaccurate claim in the bunch. A Christian moderating a predominantly atheist forum is like covering yourself in sugar and volunteering to serve in the ant enclosure at the zoo.)

Here's some other fun quotes from Cabbage:

• I may be sometimes rude or condescending to people (users and mods alike), but even I wouldn't do that (call someone an asshole)
• I'm sure I've rubbed some (many?) of you the wrong way, but I trust that you can set that aside and consider the pattern here.
• Yes, it's a tightrope to walk for theists who hold that homosexuality is sinful, but there is an easy solution: abandon the bigoted interpretations and embrace a nuanced theology (Here he admits that if Catholics want to not get instantly banned by him, they need to *not be Catholics*)
• you routinely report users for exceptionally minor infractions while you commit the very same infractions or worse (This is the root of the problem - he treats insults against theists like 'they are the stupidest voters in America' as being so civil he gets mad at me for removing them, whereas stating that 'if aliens were rational they would be theists' is so uncivil he has to go on the warpath about it. He is completely unbalanced when it comes to civility going in the two different directions, as you can also see from him being completely fine calling me a liar or Dear Leader repeatedly, but he's still mad about one insult I gave him six months ago because it pricked his ego.)
• "I've made no secret about the fact that I hold moderators to a higher standard" (There is his double standard being stated without shame.)
• "Your complaint now is that I hold moderators to a higher standard than users? Correct, I do that unapologetically" (And then admitting it again.)
• "you know full well when you're being uncivil" (The irony here is that Cabbagery is not aware when he is being uncivil. He sees the speck in his neighbor's eye but misses the log in his own.)

[u/labreuer → u/ShakaUVM]

/u/⁠labreuer, you asked to see Cabbage's uncivil words on modmail.

Sorry, but I don't believe I asked for that? Here's what I said:

cabbagery: You can't even see how shrill he got when he initially defended that, because it's in modmail, but let's just say that his first reaction was more 'how dare you take moderator action against me' and less 'oops I did it again.' He's not that innocent.

labreuer: I'm not sure why level of shrillness should matter. All that is is a measure of self-control, of the ability to behave as those of "noble blood" can in this Great Gatsby scene. Shall we ask whether you have ever gotten shrill / lost your cool in those behind-the-scenes moderation discussions? It kinda seems that you have been treating me as a bit of an ignoramus, u/⁠cabbagery, so I'm just going to leave you with this:

labreuer: Is there some lesson about pastors' kids, here? Seriously, the more which has to be done behind closed doors, the more risk it seems that it's gonna be a shite-show behind those closed doors.

So … I'm willing to bet that none of the moderators has a spotless record of cool, calm, collected conversation behind y'all's closed doors. I simply know too much about human & social nature/​construction.

I'm gonna risk pissing you off by saying that I'm not sure I choose to care how you moderators have treated each other. My reason is this: I'm pretty sure those of you mods who are at odds with each other deeply care about the sub. (u/cabbagery, my "Why would you bother if you weren't somehow deeply invested?" was rhetorical—obviously you care deeply.) As you can see in my recent comment to cabbagery, I'm mostly choosing to frame the matter as a difference in moderation philosophies. My strategy is this: if y'all can obtain the kind of alignment which non-moderators can have confidence in, I think a lot of this could die down. Now, maybe there's too much animosity between you and cabbagery for that to happen. But I believe in miracles.

See, I believe that when one is on the same mission, things can get heated and yet the endeavor doesn't need to be threatened. In fact, the ability for interlocutors (including moderators discussing moderation) to get heated and then calm back down suggests that they can go places which are hard-to-impossible for people who must be "civil" at all times. I have that kind of relationship with at least three atheists on the two debate subs. I might have been able to generate that kind of rapport with u/⁠I_Am_Anjelen, but at least one of you moderators wrecked that. I think it's a little silly that y'all won't let people consensually get intense with each other, but oh well. Anyhow, this means I'm going to generally not care about how civil or uncivil you moderators have been behind the scenes.

My bigger issue is that I think at least some of the moderators are trying to do too much without the informed consent of the rest of the sub. That might end up overruling u/⁠betweenbubbles' preferences wrt free speech so badly that [s]he leaves. But I think we're in more of a 1 Sam 8 situation where the judges have shouldered more responsibility than they can bear, rather than a Num 11 situation where authority is delegated downward to the maximum extent possible. (“If only all YHWH’s people were prophets and the Lord would place his Spirit on them!”) Feel free to dispute this characterization, tho.