cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/11959024
tl;dr The admins of Startrek.website are censoring users, have been harassing me across multiple websites, and have tried to convince the admins of other instances to ban me because I didn’t remove comments that were critical of them on TenForward which I only made in turn because the mod of Risa was doing whatever he wanted despite it saying “No rules”.
Hey. So when creating TenForward, this information was being kept out of the loop for a very good reason. We didn’t want the community to be based off of drama or bad vibes or bad feelings in any way. When we made the post saying that we had created it for the explicit reason of wanting to have a place with more robust mods and with more rules, that was 100% true. However the reason as to why I came to this conclusion?
I started posting on Startrek.website back in August. Within a week or two I had gone to their Patreon and immediately subscribed, even sending a message of support and saying that if I was causing any issues to please let me know immediately. Over time I started posting more and more across different communities and instances, mostly taking inspiration from the one and only Picard Maneuver. Anyone who gives me praise should really just be giving it all to him.
Things kept going perfectly fine until a couple of months ago when I noticed some weird things in the modlog of /c/Risa. A friend of mine had made a post and it got removed within an hour. It was the same type of post that I would have made but got taken down and with no reason given. Looking at the modlog of the community, I noticed that a lot of posts were being removed for strange reasons. Either the explanation was simply “Does not inspire Jamaharon” or something super dismissive. This really left a bad taste in my mouth considering Risa’s sidebar explicitly stated at the time (and does today) “there are no real rules”. I contacted the admins (on my startrek.website account) and asked what the deal with the moderation and questioned the behavior of one moderator in particular as being extremely aggressive. They said that they didn’t really get involved in moderation of Risa unless it was against the instance rules entirely, they just let the mods do their thing.
At this point there were two mods on the log. USS Burrito Truck and Carrot. GuyFleegman had previously left and I’d never seen Carrot active. USS BT on the other hand was the only one who was actively posting content and comments. I had a couple of run ins with BT. First was when I was making the Car Talk with Martok posts. I accidentally double posted and deleted one of them. The one left up was removed. When I asked if they could be reinstated, BT said that the double posting was suspicious. That’s why for the longest time there were two posts saying “Image Only” and not linking to the full posts. BTs behavior as well was just questionable. All of his comments with people are incredibly aggressive, needlessly so, and abrasive in an unwarranted way.
The last time I encountered him was on one of my posts on Risa. I genuinely don’t remember what the post was or what the situation was but a user was being quite aggressive and troll-y. Stuff like “This is why all left wing people” or something along those lines. Just silly shit. But they also said something that I personally found transphobic. I genuinely don’t remember what it was and due to my deleting my Startrek.website account (I’ll get to that), I can’t check the post themselves.
I said that it was disgustingly transphobic and it had no place belonging in the Star Trek community as a whole, nevermind the community or instance. I then reported it. Sometime later, BT came in and said that it wasn’t my place to say what did and didn’t belong. Fair enough. That is totally true. But then he left the comment up and banned the person for 2 weeks for saying “This is my biggest problem with the left.” Sidenote here but this user in question? They’re a self admitted alt account of someone who was banned from lemmy.world, startrek.website, lemmy.ml and even hexbear for transphobic and bigoted behavior.
So I messaged the admins of StarTrek.website, SysAdmin and ValueSubtracted, again about the situation and asked what they thought. SysAdmin reiterated that they didn’t want to get involved with community moderation and only stay at an admin level (slightly hypocritical as they’re both moderators of /c/StarTrek, /c/Quarks and /c/StarTrekOnline, the biggest communities outside of /c/Risa). I thanked them for their time then and said I was leaving and heading over to lemmy.world. I was also going to set up my own community that was not meant to compete with but meant to be an alternate to. SysAdmin wished me luck (I’m not sure Value Subtracted ever messaged me again, although he could have) and I left. I created /c/StarTrekMemes on lemmy.world.
Some stuff personally happened and I got fairly depressed and took a break from lemmy entirely. StarTrekMemes had died on arrival due to me not bothering to put any effort in or really try, just leaving out of frustration. After about a month or so I go back to look at /c/Risa and see what the deal is and if things have gotten better. First place I check is BTs profile to see if he’s cooled off at all. No. He’s in the comments of someones post being very heavy handed and with a really harsh tone. So I check the post itself. It was one by NegativeNull that was openly questioning the removal of a Star Trek Shitpost and saying that it didn’t compute. Various people were in the comments questioning it. Out of frustration I made a few comments elaborating that this was precisely the reason that I left Risa and set up /c/StarTrekMemes. I also elaborated on the transphobic comment thing and that I wasn’t comfortable with it. I deleted it not long later because I didn’t want to cause headaches for the admins of StarTrek.website. Oh did I get over that frame of mind very quickly.
Upon realizing that more and more people were growing frustrated with this, I reached out to a few people to see if they would be interested in making a new community together, ignoring the extremely bland/uninspired name of StarTrekMemes and building something fresh. We explicitly decided to not call out Risa by name or USS Burrito Truck. We wanted to build the community off of what it is and not base it off of a public disagreement. TenForward is now pretty heavily established which is why I have no issue making this post at this point. We made our point. We built TenForward for what it is. What it is is just a community with a robust community team and with a pinned and clear rule set so users can know what’s going on and what to expect.
We announced the community and how fast we gained subscribers was a shock to us all. There are messages between us mods being genuinely surprised at how quickly people filtered in. On the announcement post we got a comment that surprised the hell out of me. It was from GuyFleegman. You may remember that name from earlier as being a moderator of Risa. What I didn’t know was that he was the creator of original Risa on Reddit and the one who came over and created Risa on Startrek.website. He said that TenForward was his original choice of name for Risa which was a really great boost for us but he also said this:
“No real rules” worked just fine for years, in practice I enforced the same self-evident conduct boundaries that you have outlined here. If you have to tell someone to be civil and tolerant then that person was going to ignore the rules even if they had been communicated.
Which honestly makes sense. Totally see where he was coming from. But he also said this…
But since I stopped modding, the mod there seems to have moved beyond these boundaries without committing to any actual rules. This is totally unsurprising given the way that group of mods runs their communities, so I’m glad to see this place pop up.
Group of mods? USS Burrito Truck (mod of Risa), Value Subtracted (mod of /r/StarTrek) and Corgana (creator and mod of /r/StarTrek). Corgana being the public facing account of SysAdmin. ValueSubtracted was a heavily active mod and the top mod outside of Corgana. If you ever wondered why Reddit had so many different Star Trek communities, that was because of Value. If you ever wondered why /r/StarTrek had the reputation of banning anyone who spoke critically of Discovery, that was because of Value. Any criticism was taken as abuse towards the show itself and was immediately acted upon with bans. /r/StarTrekDiscovery was created with the specific intention of distancing themselves from Value and allowing people to discuss the show without fear of mod retribution.
So the announcement post carries on. People who start questioning the Risa stuff we start steering away. All of us were openly saying what I did before because it’s the truth. We had a different mod philosophy and wanted to make a different community to reflect that and have more clear rules. When I said that Risa didn’t have a blatant rule against Bigotry, Corgana responded saying the entire instance did. GuyFleegman said that he took some slight offense to the way I was wording things and suggesting that he or Risa allowed bigotry, which is not what I meant but my language didn’t properly reflect that. I apologized and even said I’d take that more into account with how I was phrasing things. Guy said it wasn’t a problem but I even explicitly said that I was not trying to cause problems with anyone.
Some people started going through the modlogs of Risa and through that, the previous post questioning moderation, or my deleted comments were able to piece it together. They started answering people questioning it. One such comment was one saying:
Fun hatin, power trippin mod got butthurt abt sumthin and can’t abide. IDK it’s pretty early.
This comment will be relevant in a moment.
One of the people who answered was Corgana, an admin of Startrek.website. He left a comment, got a response, and then tried to edit it after the fact to make it look like something else. Here is a screenshot of the conversation:
The refresh at the bottom was a comment Corgana made where he said that the mod at Risa was just doing what he thought was best for the community and making sure that it wasn’t ‘unfun’. It got downvoted into the negative. Someone responded saying “Then make a rule about it and don’t just say that there are “no rules”” that was upvoted into the double digits. Corgana deleted his comment. I then sent a private message to Teft specifically saying thank you for laying it out correctly.
Remember that comment I mentioned earlier about a power trippin mod? Well that comment was actually reported. By whom? ValueSubtracted. I can’t even tell what the entire report was as he appears to have written a small novel.
In response, I sent a message to Value with the screenshot of that comment. What follows is a series of back and forth messages. Lemmy lists the messages from top to bottom which is why I’m making these individual screenshots but I will leave a section to prove that it does carry on from that point.
At this point I sent a message to Corgana.
He never responded. Value continued to message.
(Unrelated message to another friend about TenForward rules has been blurred)
I was absolutely floored by this. I had talked to Value a bunch across Mastodon and Lemmy about Star Trek, especially Discovery. It’s not exactly a secret that I’m a fan of the show so it was nice being able to chat with someone who shared similar perspectives on the show. There was also a user who had joined and was commenting on every single person who responded to my posts on Risa and was calling me a transphobe. Everyone asked for evidence and they couldn’t provide any but I messaged Value about it and he stepped in and took care of it. Like I never saw this coming in any way, shape, or form.
So I reached out to people who may have worked with him in the past. This was the response one gave.
So, VT has one of the most insane “fight” instincts I have ever encountered, online or off. Catch him on a good day and he is a perfectly reasonable individual, pleasant to talk to with clever insights about Star Trek. Catch him on a bad day, and oh man you’re fucked. Shields up red alert, you are going to be dismissed at best and belittled and insulted at worst. If you intend to direct any criticism or doubt in his direction, you need to walk on the most delicate of eggshells for the conversation to be even remotely productive. He’s a uniquely bad choice to lead an online community, and /r/StarTrek’s “no criticizing Discovery” reputation is squarely on him: he loves Discovery and interprets all but the most saccharine and qualified criticism of that show to be an uncivil attack.
He’s not actually a bad person, and I can guarantee there was no bigoted intent in whatever dust-up you had with him: you said something that made him mad and then it was over, he decided to not do what you were asking because you were asking. At the end of the day he’s just very sensitive and a bad fit for community moderation because of his paranoid and combative nature. Elevating him to admin has made it that much worse.
I kept this in mind but didn’t take things further. I wanted things to just chill out. I only ever started posting memes to post memes and make people laugh. I didn’t want to be a moderator or get involved in stuff like this but I just felt enraged by the fact that someone was abusing that position. Power Corrupts, right? I’m always terrified that I’ll step over that line and there have been times I’ve probably come real close. That’s another reason why I wanted a team of us at TenForward. We generally run things by one another, when we rarely need to, and come to a consensus. Things run kinda great in that fashion honestly. We don’t always agree either which is even better. You never want to have everyone come to the same conclusion immediately. You want people to have different perspectives. You want criticism of your opinions and actions to know how to improve them.
I don’t know if it was hours later or the next day but Value made another report that was unfounded and overly dramatic.
I sent another message to Value. While I was sending the message, another message coming through at the same time from a random person on lemmy. They came to me completely unprompted but are directly questioning Values behavior explicitly. They’re on bottom.
I responded to that person which is in the next screenshot. I’ve kept that in to demonstrate that I was going out of my way to not cause drama and not direct harassment towards anyone, even in private.
From here on is just the conversation with Value.
My response is on the next page so there’s nothing below to back it up and no real reason to screenshot it. That being said…
Was that petty? Yeah. But I was so frustrated with having to deal with this. I respected this dude a lot and now he was being monumentally petty and abusing the report function?
That was the last report that he made. I thought it was over. Until I got a message from an admin asking what the hell was going on. I asked why. He showed me this
I showed him the above screenshots and he said okay and carried on. When I asked later what happened he said
He basically wanted to avoid inter-instance drama and asked what Lemmy World’s stance was on this. I said we are hands-off and inter-instance drama is something I deal with daily. It’s part of the gig. And if we try to mute people we get flack for it and they will just create new accounts. I also pointed out that you were supported by the original creator of the subreddit/community. Then I told him I don’t have time for this as I’m at work.
I realized how absolutely unhinged with power Value Subtracted was and at that point I deleted my Startrek.website account and cancelled my Patreon subscription. I didn’t want him having access to my information in any way shape or form because I just couldn’t trust that he wouldn’t take it too far.
Flash forward to a couple of days ago.
I noticed that I was subscribed to /c/StarTrek@startrek.website still due to a post saying Congratulations to us! In the comment was Corgana, the alternate account of an admin, saying “Thank you guys for all the work you do.” It was at this point I realized he had done this several times in the past. There were other comments where he said people should add stuff to the website, that the admins were doing a great job, or thanking the admins. Honestly this is kinda gross behavior so I openly asked “Why are you using an alternate account to thank yourself?” The comment got downvoted. A day past. Everyone forgot about it. I forgot about it. Then I got a message from the automod.
The comment was removed for ‘drama’. By who? Value Subtracted.
So I made the comment again. Removed this time for “being a diva” within less than a minute.
I made a third comment this time. I was fucking annoyed. The comment had been forgotten about by everyone and no one cared but Value couldn’t let it go in any way, shape or form. So yeah. This is a bit bitchy and dramatic.
The comment was removed but this time it took much longer. As I found later, it was because Value had messaged an admin trying to get them to take action using multiple different reasonings. They interpreted those comments as harassment and the admin disagreed with the assessment.
In response to this information, I went to my personal Mastodon account where I sent out a toot:
Within an hour and a half, I got an email ‘Warning’ from Mastodon. The Admin of my Mastodon instance was asking what my relationship with Startrek.website was. I then elaborated on everything that has happened thus far and provided the same screenshots, although not edited/placed nearly as well. In the email I asked the Mastodon Admin about the report. I said I was concerned that it was a particular person. After providing all this information, the Mastodon Admin replied with this:
[…] your post regarding startrek.website was reported to me. I will not disclose who reported it as per our instance policy. I take all reports seriously so I reached out using the “warning” system Mastodon provides (it also sends an email and I wanted to make sure you received my question via email.). I asked for elaboration so I understood the situation regarding you and startrek.website better. After reviewing your response I don’t think any further action is needed on my part.
Now I am 100% assuming this but who else is filing reports as a super complaint button and trying to get admins to take action on any criticism I say? Yeah. I am fairly sure it was Value Subtracted. After the reported was dismissed, I carried on until today when someone on Mastodon posted this
The ban is timed to be around the same time as my toot recommending people look into a different instance.
Value Subtracted has harassed multiple admins across multiple different federation instances trying to get them to take action on my posts or my account simply because I do not agree with him. He is petty and vindictive and is taking things to an extreme that I find beyond abhorrent. If he just wanted to get angry and whine to admins, fine. There is a reason I did nothing in response to any of his reports or when the admins reported back saying what he had done. Personally I thought they were the actions of a narcissist who was terrified of criticism and couldn’t handle the concept of anyone ever seeing that criticism of him but I kept it to myself. I didn’t post anything other than just suggesting people look elsewhere. Not even move. Not saying they had to. SUGGESTING.
Value Subtracted has been harassing me for a month across multiple websites and going through multiple admins. He is banning people he disagrees with personally and abusing the position he has as an admin. He is abusing that privlidge and authority by silencing a slew of people (check the modlog of /c/StarTrek where he’s the active mod) and generally acting like such an abrasive person that people openly question his behavior. Whenever anyone pushes against it, the other admin hides behind an alternate account and supports him while pretending to be just a subscriber and a friend.
I have no goals in making this post. I have no goals in airing this. I am just fucking tired of being harassed by this person because any ounce of criticism thrown their way, whether it be to them or a friend, is tantamount to harassment and abuse.
TenForward was created explicitly because the moderator of that community was abusing their position and silencing whoever they wanted. Why in the hell, for even a moment, did I think that the admins would be anything different?
Like I said on Mastodon. I highly encourage and suggest anyone with a Startrek.website (Who won’t see this because they’ve banned me) to leave their instance. Not because they banned me and because I want revenge. But because they’ve proven that they have wildly inconsistent administration and condone cross website abuse and harassment.
I need a fucking drink. Considering I’m an alcoholic, that’s saying probably not that much.
Upvoted because Nerd Drama…🖖
Also, appreciated the work you put in to outlining everything. Was a good read over ☕️.
Edit: Last thing, a lot of us left Reddit in the first place because of Mod power tripping. I was a 14+ year Redditor. After getting Perma-Banned from r/politics for hurting one of the Mods fee fee’s I had enough. Fuck that noise. Politics is contentious, and life is about challenging your viewpoints. If you want to ban people who are inside the rules, but who disagree with you personally then fuck you.
It was a while before I left Reddit, but an r/politics mod banned me because there was a post about Rupert Murdoch being in the hospital and I said I hope he gets a staph infection.
I was banned for comparing Krysten Sinema to Dolores Umbridge from Harry Potter. Not kidding.
I am regularly grateful for leaving Reddit.
That was because it was a tremendous insult to Dolores.
I was banned for calling Putin a See You Next Tuesday. Spelled out just like that.
I feel like I was baited into doing so (it was fun banter at his expense) and then promptly banned for hate speech of all things. It almost seemed organized and the sub gamed by bad actors. My attempts to be unbanned were thwarted. Ah well. Good riddance.
Sounds like the Mods of r/politics:
Can’t
Understand
Normal
ThinkingI was banned from /r/politics for the following:
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” - John F. Kennedy
And I was banned for inciting violence.
It’s a fair comparison. Props mate.
I was banned for saying Moscow Mitch is old.
That’s tame.
I was once banned from a twitter based subreddit for posting something which got a few thousand upvotes. My post was deleted, I was banned, then it was reposted by what I presume was one of the mod’s alternate accounts with the exact same title.
I was also permabanned for posting this gif:
https://gifs.com/gif/starship-troopers-war-y8n00P
…in response to (IRC) someone suggesting a small power shortage in Denmark was the fault of the Russians. Inciting violence. Against the rules.
Then there was that time during covid when I ever so politely suggested to the mod of a national subreddit, that perhaps they shouldn’t compare vitamin D supplements to cyanide or give medical advice, and posted a link to an article on the British Medical Association’s website which gave advise on whether to take them. At which point the mod banned me, and reported me for ban evasion. I don’t think I got permabanned for that one.
TBH I’m most angry at myself for having wasted so much time on reddit over the years. Being banned by the mods on occasion was kinda funny, given it didn’t actually matter if you had a VPN and I regularly deleted my account for privacy reasons anyway.
Wow, that’s tame compared to how I feel about that asshole. Murdoch is scum.
Yes, anxiety narcissists shit their pants regularly in Reddit.
And on lemmy apparently.
Truth
I agree entirely with your edit. I still have an account that’s active and 11 years old. I first joined a year before that. I also left reddit for the exact same reason. That’s why I’m so annoyed by this.
That’s what makes being able to make your own instance with blackjack and hookers so appealing.
If I had the money…
If anyone asks I deal blackjack
Yeah, I left Reddit because they killed RIF is fun, but I was well aware of the mod issues they had without ever running into it personally, other then one removed post that I don’t even remember which sub it was on. But I did occasionally look through the mirror sites that highlight deleted posts and often wondered wtf at some of the removed posts.
The fediverse is better because you can get away from bad admins and it has the modlog where most actions can be audited by anyone who wants to have a look. It is not immune to problem mods or even problem admins. Though I am glad to see that the issues don’t appear to be as rampant here as they seemed to be on Reddit. I’ve only had good interactions so far with the lemmy.world admins.
Same on the lemmy.world admins front and it’s not like all my interactions have been awesome. Sometimes my posts cross a line or what not. We talk about things. But I’ve never felt anything but respect from the admins here and they have nothing less from me. They’re great people.
I just love the fact that ALL the r/startrek mods are hidden…
Dude I am twitching so fucking hard to not say what I want to say right now. So I’ll just put it in crossword clue form instead of typing out the whole sentence I was going to say. Maybe you’ll get the point anyway.
What is a 7 letter word for “Vulnerably delicate” or “Lacking in substance or force”?
Boimler?
I had an account at least as old. I had been hating reddit for a while at the point they started charging insane amounts for the API usage. That was reason enough to leave.
Yeah, Spez and the gaggle of fuckwits over there really made some interesting choices…
Heh, I got banned from r/onguardforthee, the left-leaning alternative to r/Canada. I had suggested that “not everyone is capable of doing every job, and no matter how hard we try, this will always be the case” – ban message, “ablism”. How the hell are you supposed to have meaningful conversations about politics, progress, and society if the banhammer comes out every time.
Anyway, there !actual_discussion@lemmy.ca which promises to be diving into the nuts and bolts – we shall see. It’s so hard to be a centrist – you’re never extreme enough for anyone.
Lol. They tell stamets to stop making drama. Stamets says “baby, I’ll show you drama.”
Listen, I’m gay. I have a reputation to uphold.
Thank you for the laugh and the opportunity to make a joke <3
Removed by mod
Something that isn’t happening. Don’t waste my time with petty squabblings.
Not a petty squabbling, a legitimate concern based on what I had seen. However, I am willing to admit I am wrong, and I was. I dug through the modlog and discovered that it was a sh.itjust.works imposter, so I am sorry for making such an accusation. I am a bit bothered by your reaction with no requests for proof or anything, but that’s another matter.
No. It was a petty squabbling. Whether it is true or not has no bearing on that. You made a backhanded and snarky comment publicly that leveled accusations against a moderator with no proof at all. On top of that, you did it in such a way to activate cause drama and nonsense with the “Oh you’re gay but you approve of this mod who wants to destroy the lgbtq community?” You say you’re bothered by me not asking for proof but honestly I shouldn’t have to. The onus is on you to actually back up what you’re claiming. Saying such an insanely divisive thing like that with zero evidence at all? Honestly that violates the first rule. You’d be making accusations of someone that are unproven and undocumented. In the real world we call that slander.
If it had a single screenshot then it would have been left up, at least until authenticity was confirmed.
For future reference, if you have an issue with a moderator try this.
1: Contact a mod on the community privately about the issue. Detail the issue and provide proof of your claims.
2: If the mod doesn’t respond appropriately or at all then message the admins of the instance, also with evidence. Most instances have things in place to prevent mods from abusing their position.
3: If admins don’t respond appropriately or at all then make your post publicly. Again, with evidence.
To be clear, I will try your approach next time.
Okay here are some screenshots for you:
This is why I disagreed with it being petty or squabbling. Transphobia is a real issue, and is not “not very important.” Maybe “baseless accusation” would’ve been a better way to communicate what you seem to be saying?
I’ve only evef dealt with power tripping mods before, and I have yet to have a time where privately messaging the mods works. I didn’t know how to access the modlog yet, and the original post was removed, so I had no way to show any proof, so my comment was written to alert you, yes. I expected you to react with concern, again, because there are divisive people who claim to be allies that are actually TERFs, and because I didn’t know how to see the modlog yet.
Okay, here are some screenshots for you
Amazing. You are specifically told to stop being so insanely petty and what do you do? Double down while adding in a huge dose of being disingenuous by being picky with your definitions.
Let’s fix your screenshots, shall we?
First, petty.
Your first comment and the one I’m replying to fit this perfectly. Also do take not that I used the same dictionary as you. I was not describing your complaint as petty. I was describing your behavior as petty. This is made abundantly clear by the English Language considering the thing being described as petty was a squabbling, not the rule itself.
So lets go into the next screenshot, shall we?
Again, fits perfectly. This one even uses the word petty which backs up my point even more. Your complaint was not the squabble. It was the entire comment. You did not provide evidence. You made a false claim that you openly admitted was wrong. You did not bother to educate yourself on the situation. You continued false claims based off of your own misunderstanding. If you had done a second of research, as you later did, you would have known it was fake. This means it was a small matter of your own making and your own fault due to not bothering to cite yourself at all.
This is why I disagreed with it being petty or squabbling. Transphobia is a real issue, and is not “not very important.” Maybe “baseless accusation” would’ve been a better way to communicate what you seem to be saying?
They are two different things. The accusation is baseless and you were being incredibly petty by making a false claim without even attempting to back yourself up. You also did so phrased like an insult.
Wait you’re gay and cool with flying squid being a mod even as he tries to discredit and attack the LGBTQ community? Interesting development.
You’re not just insulting him there. You’re also insulting me by suggesting that I’m okay with it. If you had left it as an open question? That would have been different. But you didn’t. You claimed it as fact without bothering to provide any evidence and then you based an opinion off of me based off of your own misunderstanding of the entire situation without even letting me bother to react. “Interesting development” is pretty conclusive there. It’s not “Is this true?” or questioning, it’s factual. You are behaving as if it were abundantly true despite not even attempting to back up your own claims.
I’ve only ever dealt with power tripping mods before, and I have yet to have a time where privately messaging the mods works.
And? Are we supposed to just let everyone make whatever claims they want publicly and with no proof because some mods abuse their position? Of course not. You do it anyway. Then if it doesn’t work you move on to the next thing. You do not make wild unsubstantiated and baseless claims against two moderators publicly and then just carry on.
I didn’t know how to access the modlog yet, and the original post was removed, so I had no way to show any proof, so my comment was written to alert you, yes.
Why should I care about this? There’s nothing in your comment even remotely suggesting that this was a factor. You made a baseless claim against two people and then got upset when that claim was removed. Your first reaction was then going “Oh yeah, I was wrong” so clearly it wasn’t much effort for you to actually find the modlog. Sounds like something you probably could have, and definitely should have, done before making public claims about two moderators. One of whom was not involved in the situation at all.
I expected you to react with concern, again, because there are divisive people who claim to be allies that are actually TERFs, and because I didn’t know how to see the modlog yet.
I don’t believe you. If you actually expected me to react with concern you would have asked me what my opinion was. You didn’t. You assumed it and then acted off of it. “Interesting development” is conclusive. “That would be an interesting development” is not conclusive. Very big difference between those two that you completely neglected.
You made baseless claims against two moderators with no evidence. You are upset that I didn’t ask you for evidence when it is your responsibility to provide it in the first place. You are upset at me for dismissing you when you openly insulted me at the start.
I’m not continuing this conversation. You’ve been informed on how to deal with abusive moderators in the future. I highly recommend you follow those steps.
I can’t see this post on my startrek.website account. I guess that’s all the confirmation I need
I’m really sorry this happened to all of you, Stamets. Somehow I almost never get involved in this sort of thing and somehow USS BT didn’t remove any of my posts, but I was fine leaving Risa because you and others who I liked were leaving and I came along with you. I was flattered when you asked me to be a mod and I’m glad I can help out here.
Honestly, I was only slightly aware of any of this. It’s the sort of thing I generally steer clear of and don’t want to be a part of, but let me know if there’s anything I can do to help in this situation because it really leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
I appreciate you man. Thank you. I reached out because I saw how you posted and interacted with people. I don’t always agree with you, lord knows especially on Discovery, but I respect and care about you my friend. One doesn’t need to agree with someone to be civil, kind, and respectful.
Just keep being the awesome person you are. All I ask.
You too, my friend! You too!
Ooo can I jump on this bandwagon?
Yes, I also ask that you keep being awesome.
Somehow I almost never get involved in this sort of thing and somehow USS BT didn’t remove any of my posts, but I was fine leaving Risa because you and others who I liked were leaving and I came along with you.
Same here. I didn’t know much about the politics, but I liked Stamets and trusted his judgment. Nothing I’ve seen has indicated that he was wrong about anything he said.
Fuck it, lets kick this drama starship into transwarp. I am the creator of /r/DaystromInstitute, /r/Risa, I modded /r/startrek for about a year, and I helped to create startrek.website. AMAA.
Okay. I’d like to go first.
How common would you say my experience is? Obviously it’s pretty specific to Lemmy and what not but outside of that?
Alternatively, would you describe my characterization of Value in this post as unfair?
It’s common enough that /r/startrek developed a reputation for being unfairly draconian with their moderation which spread beyond Reddit. I knew they were really in trouble when I encountered comments about how bizarre and punitive their moderation style is in places like Twitter, Mastodon, and YouTube comments. Every once in a while I would see someone recommending Daystrom to someone who was banned from /r/startrek because the “mods aren’t as strict,” which is wild when you think about it: Daystrom has many pages of very specific rules and they are all actively enforced.
It’s pretty harsh and I’m biased because I’ve had some fun conversations about Star Trek with Value, but… no it’s probably not unfair. My interactions with them never reached this level of intensity because I just left, but the stubbornness has always been there.
Oops I did the ADHD thing.
I had no idea that the reputation of /r/StarTrek was across shit like even YouTube comments. That’s kind of insane when you think about it.
And as for harsh… yeah. I cannot argue with that assessment. I was trying to be as fair as I possibly could while also being truthful and honest. It’s a hard line to walk.
I’m sorry if any of this blows up on you in some way. Truly. I love and respect you man.
None of the startrek.website folks have been in contact with me, and even they were I’d tell them to go pound sand—it’s great that VS & BT are finally experiencing some actual consequences for their poor conduct. Selfishly, I want a place where I can talk about Star Trek because I like Star Trek and those two keep ruining the places I want to hang out and talk about Star Trek in.
This has happened before, both on Reddit and Lemmy, but the problem with a bunch of loudmouths who make a splinter community is that you never know if those loudmouths have legitimate grievances or they’re just reactionary dipshits who want to bitch about wokeness. Every previous time this has happened, the reactionary dipshits flooded in and ruined the splinter community before it could get off the ground. Things got stuck in this reinforcing loop where the situation was “well /r/startrek (and later startrek.website) are run by petty tyrants but at least they keep the bigots in check.”
I was really hoping that I could steer startrek.website into being a fairer community than what came before, but there was just no receptiveness to feedback or open discussion over there whatsoever. I tried to warn them about how bad their reputation had become, but they didn’t want to hear it and I got iced out pretty much immediately. I had just about accepted that Lemmy would be a repeat of Reddit in this regard and the largest Star Trek community would suck. So, this is great. Seriously.
Along those lines, serious question: is /c/TenForward going to host episode discussion for Discovery season 5 and future Star Trek? I saw you mentioned that the Lemmy.World admins cleaned up lemmy.world/c/startrek, do you know the new mod over there? Any plans to coordinate with them?
To put a finer point on it: you successfully rescued /c/risa from startrek.website, can the team you’ve created here extend that success and rescue /c/startrek as well?
Yeah I can’t say I have any love lost for the crew over there. The petty and vindictive behavior is just fucking pathetic and the lot of them need to grow the hell up.
I’m glad that we’ve been able to weather the storm of their harassing horseshit and that the admins here haven’t bought into the bullshit. As for DSC episode discussions, I was planning on posting them here but you make a good point about /c/StarTrek. Especially that last line.
I think I might have a talk with the admins about whether or not that community is going anywhere because yeah. We rescued /c/Risa. We saved the same vibe and energy and escaped the toxicity.
I would be more than glad to help erase the toxicity of Value Subtracted as moderator as well. I don’t know if the current team would be down to mod it because, as you know, modding is a lot of work and often a thankless job. But I’d be down.
Well then I guess the question is, what’s the deal with lemmy.world/c/startrek? Almost all the posts are from the top mod who has been banned. Then there are two obvious troll posts. The one mod there mods a whole ton of communities and doesn’t seem active there at all.
I haven’t the foggiest idea but I will be asking community team about it. It’s just been sort of left there. No ones tried to claim it or anything.
Along those lines, serious question: is /c/TenForward going to host episode discussion for Discovery season 5 and future Star Trek? I saw you mentioned that the Lemmy.World admins cleaned up lemmy.world/c/startrek, do you know the new mod over there? Any plans to coordinate with them?
Someone else asked us this. My response (and I believe other mods are in agreement) that as long as spoilers are left out of titles and thumbnails, that would be fine. But I don’t know that any of us will be the ones to remember to put one up every week. I generally don’t watch a new episode immediately, so it definitely won’t be me.
What if I told you I had the same thing happen to me on IRC in the late 90s? I think it’s just a particular kind of person can’t be trusted with privileges in a social setting.
Very true. And before that local BBSes.
And i can remember before that, when it was Star Trek Fanzines in the 70s. Drama amongst fans has been around as long as ST has existed.
That must have been very slow drama.
And you couldn’t scroll back to refresh your memory, you had to pull out at least one issue, usually more, to remind yourself what the fuck folks were arguing about.
I really wouldn’t worry about it. Reddit had exactly the same problem it is not an issue exclusive to Lemmy. I don’t even think it’s necessarily a problem of “power corrupts”, so I wouldn’t worry that you would step over the line. It’s more an issue of intent, as Douglas Adams pointed out, those who seek power are those least suitable to acquire it. I mean why on earth would anyone want to moderate a forum anyway, it’s a lot of work and you don’t get paid or thanked, there are really only two reasons to do it, because you like the power trip, or because somebody else is being annoying.
There are many highly popular subreddits on Reddit and Lemmy today that only exist because of pretty much something like this, the moderator of an alternative community was being a bit of a dick and everyone couldn’t be bothered with it.
Guy, you are awesome! Thank you for everything you have one and all the joy you have brought us because of it! None of the drama here will ever erase it!
Not a question just a statement: what a name! Mmmm… Guy🦑. You and Stamets rock! Grade A community builders!
Why is Discovery just Doctor Who level of “chosen one” plotlines that make no sense?
I think Discovery’s general story convolution and continual escalating of stakes is largely a consequence of production staff turmoil from the first two seasons. It was Fuller, then Kurtzman, then Berg/Harberts, then back to Kurtzman, before finally settling on Paradise. No one was clearly in charge for more than one full season during the first two, and so it’s kind of a mess—there are really 4 full arcs in the first 2 seasons with very minimal connection between them. Keeping the stakes high is an easy mode way of driving the story and that kept things together as people were rotating in and out.
Seasons 3 and 4 are far more coherent, but by that point “something threatens the entire galaxy and it’s up to Burnham to save us” had calcified as Discovery’s shtick, so we got two more of those. I’ll be pretty surprised if season 5 isn’t one final go at that story.
Hypothesis tested: critique of Discovery is back on the menu! ;)
It always was. I’m a big fan of Discovery but I’m not blind to its flaws. I might disagree with peoples assessments but provided people are being honest and civil? Yeah I don’t care. Say you think Burnham is a piece of shit all you want. Say she sucks and whines too much and the story is dumb and whatever else. I disagree with you heavily but I’m not going to remove you for that.
If you start saying shit like “Discovery is stupid because they give too much time to the LGBTQ+ characters” that’s walking a line and depending on responses could end up in that being removed but in and of itself? Again I disagree with but it’s an opinion.
If it’s something like “There’s nothing redeemable about Discovery. Everyone involved is pure fucking filth and I hope none of them work ever again.” again I’d allow it. I think you’re being a massive dick and it’s walking the line but I’ll allow it.
I’m not Value. Y’all can disagree with me all you want. I’ll remove stuff that violates rules, not my personal taste and opinion.
It isn’t.
Damn, that is insane! I’m sorry you’re having to deal with that, what the hell is wrong with some people?
For what it’s worth, I’m Team Stamets all the way, and I’m sure plenty of us would agree.
I don’t know. I’m tired. What drives me fucking insane is when people call themselves Star Trek fans and then ignore core principles of the show. Want a great line for it? Watch here if you prefer. But it’s a quote from Picard.
“With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." […] The first time any mans freedom is trodden on, we’re all damaged.
I don’t care that I’ve been banned. I have zero interest in that instance anymore after my experience anyway. What I’m so pissed off by is that it’s the same thing that happened on Risa. It’s abuse at the highest level. And I’m a well known poster who he credited as being one of the reasons Risa succeeded. I also post a lot and it’ll be noticed if I disappear. If he’s willing to ban me for no reason then he’s going to ban anyone for any reason.
100%. In fact it should be a point of obligation as a self-proclaimed Star Trek fan that if someone has to quote The Drumhead at them, they need to step back and examine their life.
What if they quote Measure of a Man at them?
Does Data have a soul? I don’t know that he has. I don’t know that I have. But I have got to give him the freedom to explore that question himself. It is the ruling of this court that Lieutenant Commander Data has the freedom to choose.
I know that has nothing to do with this thread, I just wanted to know what would happen.
Haha, or The First Duty:
The first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth, whether it’s scientific truth or historical truth or personal truth! It is the guiding principle on which Starfleet is based. And if you can’t find it within yourself to stand up and tell the truth about what happened, you don’t deserve to wear that uniform!
There’s a lot of guiding principles in that show!
I’m quite fond of this dialogue in Mirror, Mirror:
KIRK: In my cabin is a device that will make you invincible.
SPOCK: Indeed?
KIRK: What will it be? Past or future? Tyranny or freedom? It’s up to you.
SPOCK: It is time.
KIRK: In every revolution, there’s one man with a vision.
SPOCK: Captain Kirk, I shall consider it.
You’ve been banned by Value Subtracted for ‘Content Manipulation’ according to their modlog. I’m guessing you had the audacity to downvote him a couple times?
Lol sure did! I was curious as to how long it that would take.
Well… This certainly explains why my account over there got banned for criticizing Discovery lol
Careful, they’ll ban you again for talking about being banned.
That’s what they did to me, after talking about bans with other banned users on a separate instance.
BANCEPTION
Yeah. That would certainly track.
What even is the point in a Star Trek community that doesn’t allow the criticizing of Discovery?
We should be allowed to criticise all of Trek, there are aspects of every series worth criticising.
Is desperately resisting making a meme of Green Goblin saying ‘BAN HIM’
Well this is awesome. Post it lol
I’m sorry, this is all just a big misunderstanding. When the Risa mods said "no rules’, they meant for themselves. Not for the rest of us.
Hope that clears it all up.
This sucks, I’m sorry all this happened to you! It was cathartic to read because I’ve also been on the receiving end of this shit. This guy is a piece of work.
Just wanted to share my experience with what I now realise was the same person (Value) all along. I’d noticed that they were removing a lot of comments quite arbitrarily on r/startrek, and basically tried to ask why. I tried in the thread with the deletions, but they said “no meta” and deleted it. I tried to ask via dm and was temporarily banned. Happened again after I was allowed back. Total asshole the whole time, pointlessly combative, sarcastic, and seriously power tripping. There was basically no discussion of the moderation allowed under any circumstances. I tried to ask on the monthly kind-of meta thread and was banned outright.
Then I moved over to r/star_trek and while there were many issues (a lot of people very bitter about experiences like mine), it was nice to have a place to be open about the new shows. Just like your story, someone said that the community was leading to a lot of harassment of r/startrek, as if it was some kind of troll farm and not just a refuge for people who had crossed him.
And in the end he won. He went to the reddit admins and complained. For a while, the subreddit could only exist if they never mentioned the main sub (which actually improved things content wise). The moderation got a little lax after some months and in the end it was taken down.
So you have control of the main community and use it to unfairly ban people. Then the people you did this to make their own community instead. And rather than just ignoring it, to each their own etc, you just have to insert yourself and make this impossible. Not only do you have to rule “your” community with an iron fist, you also have to stop anybody from having an alternative.
I jokingly asked about this overall issue in the c/startrek intro post, during the exodus from reddit, and he hit me straight away with the same attitude. My first openly hostile experience on Lemmy. A couple of people dmed me, horrified to see the same problems starting already, and suggested some alternatives. But they are really all quite dead.
I saw someone comment here asking where we can go on Lemmy to avoid this bullshit and actually talk about Trek. Honestly this is the best place I’ve found and it’s a meme community.
This person has apparently single handedly created this problem. I just want to talk about Star Trek, why in the name of Picard would you go out of your way to so consistently ruin that for me?
I’m sorry you had to go through all of that too. I am not even the slightest bit surprised. There is one part that stood out enormously to me though…
And in the end he won. He went to the reddit admins and complained. For a while, the subreddit could only exist if they never mentioned the main sub. So you have control of the main community and use it to unfairly ban people. Then the people you did this to make their own community instead. And rather than just ignoring it, to each their own etc, you just have to insert yourself and make this impossible. Not only do you have to rule “your” community with an iron fist, you also have to stop anybody from having an alternative.
Sounds like what he’s been trying to do with me. Talking to the admins of other websites and trying to get them to silence dissenters. There can be no competition unless it has no mention of them because they’re incapable of dealing with criticism of some form or another.
This person has apparently single handedly created this problem. I just want to talk about Star Trek, why in the name of Picard would you go out of your way to so consistently ruin that for me?
I don’t know. I wish I had an answer. I have met so many people who were aggressively die hard Trump supporters but claimed that the Federation was the best thing in the world and Star Trek was awesome. I’ve never met someone who was relatively left leaning (at least from my understanding, could be wrong) be so incredibly authoritarian and dictatorial in his behavior? Gul Dukat isn’t supposed to be something to aspire to.
Sounds like what he’s been trying to do with me. Talking to the admins of other websites and trying to get them to silence dissenters.
Absolutely the same strategy, this is one reason I wanted to comment because the similarities were too strong. The stuff with the Mastodon post is outrageous.
I have met so many people who were aggressively die hard Trump supporters but claimed that the Federation was the best thing in the world and Star Trek was awesome. I’ve never met someone who was relatively left leaning (at least from my understanding, could be wrong) be so incredibly authoritarian and dictatorial in his behavior?
I actually made this point to him on reddit! He temp banned me (obvs). How is this at all inkeeping with the morality and philosophy of the show we all love? There is no way Picard would stand by and do nothing while somebody else was using their unearned authority to silence the views of other people, much less act this way himself.
Gul Dukat isn’t supposed to be something to aspire to.
Exactly. I guess like Dukat there is a version of this story in his head where he is the hero. But I have no idea how exactly that would work or how any explanation would really excuse his behaviour.
I would honestly go out of my way to stop this from happening again. If there’s ever anything you need help with let me know.
The Mastodon was what really set me off. Banning me for false accusations only make it more intense. It is so utterly and monumentally pathetic, childish, and pitiful to reach out to the admins over that. Like that is some Trumpian level ego problems.
And thanks man. Ideally he’ll just fuck off and stop being such a cunt to other people too. Doubtful but at least now people are aware of his harassing and abusive ways. Ideally if anyone searches his name they’ll find this and be able to see that he is not someone who should be easily trusted and to take everything he says with an enormous grain of salt.
So much drama over star trek memes. Some people really need to feel like they are the king of their made up little internet castle. In case I wasn’t clear, I’m not saying that about you.
I used to moderate a decently sized subreddit. I genuinely wanted to make the community a better place. But there was no escaping the drama. People take this internet shit way too seriously sometimes.
Also if you are an alcoholic and trying to get sober, this stuff is so so so not worth taking a drink over. Though I realize that was likely more a joke than anything.
Oh the drink thing was a joke. I do want a drink but for things that actually matter.
But yeah, I’ve definitely changed the image in my head of him from the Trek character he selected as his bio and of a child in a paper captains hat.
I think he looks more like this:
Massive props for not just saying “fuck it” and walking away. Stay sane my guy.
I swear to god, there was a single line ringing in my head. When he banned me after I kept just letting shit go there was only one line I could hear.
Hopefully you didn’t break your little ships!
No, thank god. My lil Discovery sits nice and pretty on my desk. God I love this little thing.
I’m glad you can tank the abuse. Always happy to see some stamets memes on adhd memes
Oh I’m a big boy. It’s going to take a lot more than some third rate narcissist with a fourth rate ego to get through my armor.
attaboi!
Perfect.
I really enjoy your posts, both here and in other communities. Thank you for being awesome, and for having a strong heart. Live long and prosper, friend.
Peace and long life 🖖
I want very, very badly for the Fediverse to be made up of primarily interest group focused websites. Smaller, topic of community focused sites that people can claim as their home base and primary interest community, but with thr ability to look over the fence at everyone else’s yard, as is were, and not a handful of these large, general purpose sites that suck all of the air out of the room.
So, to see this bullshit being pulled not only by moderators and admins of Star Trek focused subcommunities, but also a website that’s acting out my hopes for the social web as a whole.
Fuck the lot of them. I hope they moderate over the bitter, bitter ashes.
I have the same hopes. Ideally the ones without extremely abusive admins who harass others will become more popular.
No shit.
This is so sad, and infuriating. I’m so sorry you, and seemingly quite a few others, have experienced this bullshit.
I’m lucky too. I am a well known poster who can make a post like this that people will listen to.
How many people has he banned for no reason? How many more?
Drama sucks but I actually really appreciate this post. I’m not a huge Trekkie, but a lot of your content on Risa gave me a laugh. Honestly was why I ‘subbed’ to Risa and got me into watching some more Trek stuff. When I saw TenForward pop up I subbed right away because the memes were from people who had made me laugh. Now that I know what is up I can ‘unsub’ to Risa. So I appreciate knowing what is up.
Thanks for the love and appreciation, it means a lot. I hope that TenForward gives you a lot more giggles for a long while to come.
