Why I left Startrek.website, created TenForward, and the admin abuse I've suffered from ST.W since then

cross-posted from: 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:

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/dfd2fe07-2fe4-4a2f-813c-58b56b065175.png

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.

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/5fcc20f6-dd5b-427f-ba6a-7f288362a89d.png

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.

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/b371a159-c17a-4944-a869-a0791cda2a7f.png

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.

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/840087e3-04e6-4316-9833-cba3cf0b0ce2.png

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/6dbd2b47-aaa4-4d1d-9566-ee13af183be7.png

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/86fefff8-4c73-4d72-9725-4416723f803a.png

At this point I sent a message to Corgana.

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/66b698d8-ce18-43a2-978a-43dc97c50de7.png

He never responded. Value continued to message.

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/4db362b0-59c6-4674-b399-d609854cae3c.png

(Unrelated message to another friend about TenForward rules has been blurred)

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/92e92fe3-12b4-4c17-a9ab-e1378cb57872.png

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/e4c537ff-6777-483e-b305-0a8e0a8c4d4a.png

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/650667d8-c000-4ce2-99f6-2d702ac50714.png

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.

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/a5ba7490-9a2b-4ec0-92ad-8fe01ad569a4.png

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.

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/3259e02f-100a-44ed-b970-3e0ed272e121.png

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.

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/aa64cf77-deb1-4570-9828-340ec9fef6ca.png

From here on is just the conversation with Value.

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/35622c65-0b13-4868-84d0-3eab4a707317.png

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/506d560f-f054-483b-ab0f-52f39fdb25e6.png

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/7090d82e-a7a1-4009-85bb-f6a412f50afc.png

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/fca8b22e-bcfe-40e4-b45c-a1cb5caafcb0.png

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/777ae933-0c3a-4c19-a3b8-76b3006ae84b.png

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…

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/c7f2baba-6f91-4c94-8400-59357f483192.png

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

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/199342d9-7bb9-4e8b-9028-2aa455ec885b.png

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.

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/378aaedf-ce61-49a3-993e-f189dc954534.png

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:

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/d5cda4a6-2b28-45b8-9ee4-132559c673f9.png

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

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/18851fa0-3edb-4734-b3ef-bbabd85ac594.png

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.

zcd,

I can’t see this post on my startrek.website account. I guess that’s all the confirmation I need

HeyThisIsntTheYMCA,
@HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world avatar

I mean damn. I thought I was petty and malignant. Then I read those messages they sent you. Sorry you have all this bullshit following you around, Stamets. Thanks for making a great community here on the internet for us.

Stamets,
@Stamets@lemmy.world avatar

Thanks buddy <3 and I’m sure you’re not that bad… I hope…

jawa21,
@jawa21@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

I won’t be deleting my ST.W account, because there is too much there and archiving it (and more importantly reposting it all) would be annoying to everyone involved.

However, I will no longer be doing anything with that account. No more of my mid tier at best OC will be advertising that instance. If I wind up banned for saying this, well, then it would be even more damning.

Thanks for airing this. And thanks to Lemmy for making mod log public info.

Stamets,
@Stamets@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah I deleted mine out of paranoia from the previous harassment. I don’t encourage others to do it unless that’s what they want to do. Not my place to tell people what to do. If you did get banned for it… I wouldn’t be surprised. Like I said before, he reported me for even suggesting people use another instance on Mastodon and that’s a place where he has zero authority.

FrostyCaveman,

It looks like the decentralised approach of Lemmy is working.

That’s real nice to see.

The internet is healing!

Stamets,
@Stamets@lemmy.world avatar

For real, right? If this was reddit we’d have to kowtow to the Startrek.website admins (like the /r/Star_Trek mods had to bow to /r/StarTrek). Luckily it isn’t and we have admins at lemmy.world who actually listen and investigate and try to be impartial.

GuyFleegman,

You really do not want compare this place to /r/Star_Trek. I saw a lot of really hateful shit in that sub. It was hijacked by bigoted culture warriors almost immediately after being created. It was easily the Reddit focal point for “Discovery is too woke” discourse.

The lone mod for that place was a creepy weirdo who was completely oblivious to what being a responsible moderator entailed. He regularly left comments containing actual hate speech up due to a combination of being too incompetent to use Reddit’s mod tools and too ignorant to understand that yes you actually do need to remove hate speech and slurs when you’re in charge. The Reddit admins had more than enough justification to nuke it.

Stamets,
@Stamets@lemmy.world avatar

Okay then nevermind on what I said before. I was unaware of how far that went. Holy shit.

nickwitha_k,

I hadn’t seen Risa posts from you in a while and was rather missing them.

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.

While I have been a regular defender of the latter, I finally got tired of the unhealthy aggression and bad faith towards anyone not M-L and blocked their comms, myself. But, while I may find their mods suspect on some topics (don’t discuss human motivations related to mid-20th century conflicts in non-black-and-white terms, if you don’t want to catch unfair mischaracterizations and potentially bans). However, I will absolutely stand up for them against anyone that suggests that they are soft on those who discriminate against LGBTQ folks. They do that very right.

Anyway, I’m glad to see your posting again. Even more glad to see you building a new ST shitposts/memes comm WITH EXPLICIT RULES and a more democratic mod team!!! Oh. And you have folks like Flying Squid on your mod team? As the kids say these days, this is going to be fucking lit (they probably don’t say that anymore - I’m no longer with “it”, and doubt that I ever was).

Stamets,
@Stamets@lemmy.world avatar

Oh we’ve been here for about a month and going strong! We hit over a thousand subscribers in the first week. MINDBLOWING! But yeah we got Flying Squid, Negative Null and Picard on the modteam here! I went out of my way to ask the people I see the most and trust the most and who have been nothing but kind and wonderful to everyone on Lemmy. That’s what we needed and so far it looks like things are working.

nickwitha_k,

That’s incredible! Though, if you build a team of folks that are visibly seen to be engaging with others thoughtfully and with kindness (but not being afraid to call bullshit what it is) all around Lemmy (not to mention posting quality shitposts and memes), I’d say that was inevitable. Happy to see it!

Zagorath,
@Zagorath@aussie.zone avatar

However, I will absolutely stand up for them against anyone that suggests that they are soft on those who discriminate against LGBTQ folks

I find this very hard to square with their blatant mockery of sharing your pronouns. Not all of them of course, but there are way too many “none/use name” or “comrade”, and I think I recall seeing at least one “it”, for me to believe that they’re actually as LGBTQ±friendly as they claim to be. It’s just way too “one joke”.

nickwitha_k,

Those, to me, seem pretty straightforward-ish. “none/use name” would be someone who does not feel comfortable with people using pronouns to address them. Kinda odd but I’ve met people like that IRL. “comrade” is gender neutral and the majority of folks there identify as Marxist-Leninists. For many M-Ls that I’ve interacted with online, ideology IS what they identify with most. And for “it”, agender is a thing. We humans are a bit inscrutable sometimes but that’s part of the beauty of humanity.

From what I’ve seen, I don’t think there’s any evidence that is a big “one joke” thing. They made pronouns mandatory and specifically do not allow arbitrary/make your own in order to avoid members using transphobic “jokes”. As I understand it, they put a lot of thought into the acceptable list to both cover all bases and protect against transphobia. This going out of their way to try to get ahead of transphobes caused them drama and some loss of membership.

They really are serious and passionate about it.

Zagorath,
@Zagorath@aussie.zone avatar

I’m sorry but I don’t buy it. Comrade is a noun, not a pronoun. Asking people not to use any pronoun at all is ridiculous and impractical, and it just isn’t going to happen in practice. “It” might be a genuine preferred choice for some people, but I can’t imagine there would be too many who would choose that over “they”. “They” is very common when talking about people and even animals, whether they are non-binary or if you just don’t know or don’t want to specify their gender. “It” has connotations of inanimate objects. It’s not just non-binary, but non-human and even non-animal. Now, I’m not going to declare that there absolutely aren’t any individuals of the species Homo sapiens which would prefer not to identify as an animal and who would prefer to be called a thing. But I am going to remain highly sceptical of individuals on the Internet claiming that.

You say yourself that they lost some uses over mandatory pronouns. Maybe the admins of the instance are sincere, but I have zero faith that the majority of people using these options are. It’s simple Ockham’s razor. Which is simpler, that a whole bunch of people are identifying sincerely as things, or that members of a community known for bad-faith trolling might also be trolling about their claimed preferred pronouns?

TheAvarageNerd, (edited )

Nothing to do with that instance, but I’d like to add something to the discussion on people using ‘it’ as pronouns. I have spoken with several nb folks from Germany, where a genderneutral they/them just doesn’t exist in the language. For these people, it was either using neopronouns, or making ‘it’ (German: ‘es’) work. I’d say the pronoun has the same connotations of being about inanimate objects as ‘it’ in English, but the ones I’ve spoken to who use it have gotten so used to it, that the direct translation to English is used in English speaking communities.

Not saying, that everybody using ‘it’ as their pronouns is German (or from a place with a similarly more strongly gendered language), or that noone uses ‘it’ as a joke. Just want to point out that especially in larrger communities which might attract more international folks, more people than one would assume might use ‘it’ pronouns.

Zagorath,
@Zagorath@aussie.zone avatar

Not saying, that everybody using ‘it’ as it’s pronouns

Perhaps ironically, the plural of “it” in English is…they. The possessive is “its” (no apostrophe), plural “their”. So even if we do take it that you want to refer to them as “it”, when referring to multiple of them as you were here, it would still be correct to say “their”. Same as how someone who identifies as “he/him” would, when being referred to collectively, be part of “them”.

E.g. I have one mouse. It is a Logitech. I have two headphones, they are Jabra and SteelSeries.

“It’s”, with apostrophe, only ever means “it is”, and doesn’t make sense here.

TheAvarageNerd,

You’re right. I corrected it.

This plural ‘they’ actually does exist in German, and is usually used to refer to everybody, no matter their (grammatical) gender, so I don’t know why I was overthinking the English version here -.-

nickwitha_k, (edited )

It’s simple Ockham’s razor. Which is simpler, that a whole bunch of people are identifying sincerely as things, or that members of a community known for bad-faith trolling might also be trolling about their claimed preferred pronouns?

Which is a simpler explanation?:

  • An instance full of users (one of the larger Lemmy-compatible ones) conspiring to make transphobic “jokes” and masquerading as extremely pro-LGBTQ+ Marxist-Leninists, without any of them breaking character or letting it slip.
  • An instance where people did their best to enable as many potentially legitimate pronoun options, including those for people for whom English is not their native tongue and those that care more about Marxist-Lenninism than gender identity.

There’s definitely folks engaging in toxic behavior to feed their cravings for dopamine rushes but they’re quick to stamp out any thing close to transphobia.

ETA: Just to be clear, I’m not saying that the instance doesn’t have problems (they’ve become as bad as r/conservative towards dissent in some cases and condone behavior intended to sow discord rather than unity). Just that I don’t think that one can legitimately claim that there is transphobic stuff going on, unless there is compelling evidence otherwise.

loudWaterEnjoyer,
@loudWaterEnjoyer@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Damn a whole book about drama on a StarTrek forum

OrangeJoe,

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.

Stamets,
@Stamets@lemmy.world avatar

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.

samus12345,
@samus12345@lemmy.world avatar

I think he looks more like this:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/Benedict_Arnold_1color.jpg

cosmicrookie,
@cosmicrookie@lemmy.world avatar

I don’t have time to read what I assume is the longest post on any Lemmy instance but tell me what we can do and I’ll do it!

Stamets,
@Stamets@lemmy.world avatar

I’m not here to tell anyone what to do. Just to make their own decisions based off of the information provided. Information that shows the administration of Startrek.website to be incompetent, harassing and abusive. I know what I would personally do in that situation but it’s up to people to make their own.

Otherwise the pissbaby is going to go crying to an admin saying “SEE BRIGADING!” because he is no doubt refreshing my page in a state of perpetual narcissistic terror.

Syrus,

Anyone have TL:DR?

Stern,
@Stern@lemmy.world avatar

tl;dr startrek.website bad.

If that’s too short you should probably read the post.

Stamets,
@Stamets@lemmy.world avatar

The post literally starts with a tl;dr lol

Syrus,

Ain’t nobody got time for that!

Olgratin_Magmatoe,

Switched from my star trek website account to this one just in case.

Dude, you have way more patience than I would have had in your shoes, it’s genuinely impressive. If they want to be dicks, they can go do so on their own.

And I am thankful you made the push for a better star trek community. So question: Is there blackjack and hookers here?

n3m37h,

I could def snort some of that white off a hookers ass right about now

Stamets,
@Stamets@lemmy.world avatar

Blackjack is on tuesdays and thursdays, the hookers on every night ending in Y.

Olgratin_Magmatoe,

Hell yeah

Dvixen,
@Dvixen@lemmy.world avatar

I’m always hesitant to engage with fan communities. Usually because of drama and crap like this happening to people.

There are certain subreddits (and some communities in the fediverse) for Star Trek I actively avoid. If a community has toxic leadership, it shows. I’ve been online long enough to recognize if there’s even a tiny hint of toxicity that is tolerated, it spreads.

The bad apple in a barrel analogy, if you will. One bad apple will eventually spoil the entire barrel. It’s up to the mods to ensure that doesn’t happen, but too often they become or already were the bad apple.

I have honestly enjoyed my time in 10-F, even if most of my engagement is upvoting the memes for making me laugh.

I saw when Stamets took a break, and knew there was some tea to be had but I can respect when a mod or admin needs a break.

Take care of yourself, Stamets. A healthy community is becoming rare these days.

Stamets,
@Stamets@lemmy.world avatar

Thanks buddy. And take care of yourself too! We need good people just as much as we need good mods <3

Astronaut_M_Dexter, (edited )

Man, sorry you went through that drama, but thanks for airing it; I was definitely curious as to what happened.

It’s also the first time I read a post about ‘power tripping mods’ where I didn’t want to immediately side with the mods (usually those posts highlight exactly why they were banned rather than show fault with the mods). In this case, wow. Just wow. The harassment was insane and completely uncalled for.

In an ideal world, VS would reflect on this and we would have peace between the two. Until then, I’ll consider TenForward Vulcan and Risa as Romulus. Please don’t judge me for maintaining trade agreements with both civilizations 😬

samus12345,
@samus12345@lemmy.world avatar

So Risa blew up in this timeline?

pinkdrunkenelephants,

Shit like this is why Lemmy is garbage and why you all need to take better care in vetting who gets to participate in your websites. It should not have been possible for Reddit powermods to infiltrate and take over Lemmy in the first place.

I am sorry you are bearing the brunt of abuse on this platform too. Lemmy clearly doesn’t hold up to its promise.

Stamets,
@Stamets@lemmy.world avatar

You don’t seem to understand what Lemmy actually is. Literally anyone can create a website. That is Lemmys promise so yeah. Holds up to it pretty well. They also didn’t “take over lemmy”. They have one site.

pinkdrunkenelephants,

Nah, I do, and Lemmy’s promise was to serve as a meaningful alternative to Reddit where powermodding like what you experienced wouldn’t happen, and it failed miserably. You’re also not the only person to see how terrible Lemmy has turned out to be or who has suffered because of it. It’s not just your former instance crap like this has happened on, you see.

I hope TenForward turns out to be a better place and that you have a better experience.

GrayBackgroundMusic,

Lemmy’s promise was to serve as a meaningful alternative to Reddit where powermodding like what you experienced wouldn’t happen,

Eh. Disagree. I saw Lemmy’s promise as being an alternative to Reddit where central corruption wouldn’t drag the community down. There is no Huffman to screw everything up. There are more distributed things.

Also, I think this situation explicitly counters the narrative where powermodding happens, because Stamets made a new community on a different server and is thriving.

pinkdrunkenelephants,

I’m not knocking on what Stamets is doing. In fact, it’s clearly the best thing he could have done.

That doesn’t change the fact that the way Lemmy is as a community and as a platform is one of the main reasons why shit like this keeps happening.

troyunrau,
@troyunrau@lemmy.ca avatar

Federated networks route around the damage. You’re seeing that in action here.

pinkdrunkenelephants,

Not always. Say Ten Forward has a problem with .world in the future, for example. If Ten Forward defederates, they would cut out a large part of their userbase because most Lemmy users are .world users, and won’t move for any reason. And, if Ten Forward stays federated with .world, that means their feed will be inundated with .world crap all the time instead of what they want: Star Trek stuff. People can’t and won’t just switch to a local feed; that’s not the way people work and Lemmy doesn’t work with the way people use the site, breaking it.

Meaning one instance will always dominate the others, and that’s wrong.

Stamets,
@Stamets@lemmy.world avatar

If Ten Forward defederates

This isn’t possible. We’re a community, not an instance.

pinkdrunkenelephants,

I thought you made your own instance.

Stamets,
@Stamets@lemmy.world avatar

No. Community. The one you’re commenting in.

pinkdrunkenelephants,

Well, I suppose that’s just as well. Lemmy’s way too buggy and ill-conceived to really be worthwhile for hosting anyway.

I wish you the best of luck regardless. And be careful: there are some really, really terrible people on .world – I really wouldn’t stay long if I were you.

Stamets,
@Stamets@lemmy.world avatar

Dude, you’ve repeatedly demonstrated you have no idea what you’re talking about and that you’re not paying attention to anything happening. Your opinions on people simply aren’t trustworthy.

pinkdrunkenelephants,

My guy, you’re not paying attention. I’m wishing you the best of luck in your endeavors, and your response is, as is typical of Lemmy, to find a reason to start a fight over it. Who even does that?

I’m not gonna give you the fight that you want.

Good luck in the future.

Stamets,
@Stamets@lemmy.world avatar

https://media2.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExN2M4NjV2cm4yMWF6OHhjY3Mxc3pxNW5vbmwzdnNxZXNtdjQybzV3aSZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/J5dnUnvAyCc8cHqcJB/giphy.gif

verity_kindle,
@verity_kindle@lemmy.world avatar

That escalated quickly into confused screaming. With friends like that, who needs enemies? Keep your chin up, things will get better, Stamets. There is a steady hand at the wheel.

GuyFleegman,

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.

FlyingSquid,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

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!

GuyFleegman,

Fleegman with the finger guns

Stamets,
@Stamets@lemmy.world avatar

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?

NMS,

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.

FlyingSquid,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

Very true. And before that local BBSes.

GratefullyGodless,
@GratefullyGodless@lemmy.world avatar

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.

FlyingSquid,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

That must have been very slow drama.

GratefullyGodless,
@GratefullyGodless@lemmy.world avatar

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.

GuyFleegman,

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.

Stamets,
@Stamets@lemmy.world avatar

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.

GuyFleegman,

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?

FlyingSquid,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

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.

Stamets,
@Stamets@lemmy.world avatar

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.

GuyFleegman,

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.

Stamets,
@Stamets@lemmy.world avatar

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.

GuyFleegman,

I’d definitely be willing to help this team do something with it! I think Discovery season 5 is a good opportunity to try and reboot it into something that compliments /c/TenForward.

echodot,

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.

nilaus,

Not a question just a statement: what a name! Mmmm… Guy🦑. You and Stamets rock! Grade A community builders!

troyunrau,
@troyunrau@lemmy.ca avatar

Why is Discovery just Doctor Who level of “chosen one” plotlines that make no sense?

GuyFleegman,

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.

troyunrau,
@troyunrau@lemmy.ca avatar

Hypothesis tested: critique of Discovery is back on the menu! ;)

Stamets,
@Stamets@lemmy.world avatar

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.

pixeltree,
@pixeltree@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

God damn, stamets, you have a legendary tolerance for bullshit, sorry you’ve been dealing with those dickholes so long

Stamets,
@Stamets@lemmy.world avatar

I was raised by a narcissistic psychopath who was considerably more effective and impressive with their actions. This is childs play in comparison. Seriously. It’s the difference between being stabbed or being lightly slapped with a dainty little feather.

If I didn’t pity him so much I’d be laughing a lot harder.

samus12345,
@samus12345@lemmy.world avatar

https://y.yarn.co/05b41965-9ab0-4b7b-9c70-01a46672f071_text.gif

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