Comment on Asking for moderator Rooki's removal for misconduct

some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

• solrize@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  This seems to be a situation where an instance admin (not a community moderator) stepped into a community (!vegan@lemmy.world), removed a bunch of “disinformation” comments, and de-modded some moderators who were letting the “disinformation” by. At issue was whether it is safe to feed cats a vegan diet. I did have to look into veganism and pet food to make sense of that. If there is universal agreement among scientists, veterinarians, and non-crazy vegans that any cat put on a vegan diet dies within 3 months, that’s one thing, but the actual situation doesn’t seem that severe. Rooki also seems to use non-standard terminology and incomplete descriptions in communicating their side of the issue.

  Wikipedia’s obligate carnivore section says (emphasis added):

  Obligate or “true” carnivores are those whose diet requires nutrients found only in animal flesh in the wild… All wild felids, including feral domestic cats, require a diet of primarily animal flesh and organs… In captivity or domestic settings, obligate carnivores like cats and crocodiles can in principle get all their required nutrients from processed food made from plant and synthetic sources.[4][5]

  Reference 4 above is a Guardian article titled Cats may get health benefits from vegan diet, study suggests and subtitled “Owners who fed their pet a plant-based diet reported fewer visits to the vet and less medication use”.

  Rooki uses the term “obligatory carnivore” (instead of the usual “obligate”) and omits that the definition describes the diet only of wild animals, not captive ones. So Rooki’s familiarity with this topic seems limited, and yet they use their admin flag to shut down discussion doesn’t fit their opinion. Wikipedia’s eponym for this type of editor is "Randy in Boise.

  If this were a dispute between !vegan mods then that would be regular mod drama, but this seems to be from outside the community, not good. While Reddit often has bad moderators on large subs, one of its attractions to many users is unless you’re discussing criminal or near-criminal conduct, you can generally start your own sub and moderate it however you want, with the admins staying out of your hair. The times they banned some subs that didn’t reach that level created significant controversy even by non-supporters of those subs.

  Overall I think it is best that instance admins stop interfering with discussions inside communities, unless there are serious conflicts with site policy. Could we imagine lemmy.world defederating another instance because its vegan community had a comment subthread about feeding a plant diet to your cat? Maybe so, but that doesn’t speak well of lemmy.world, imho. Alternatively, if such discussions get shut down on lemmy.world but wouldn’t get a difference instance defederated, then lemmy.world stops being the “generic Lemmy server for everyone to use” that it advertises itself as. So it should leave those discussions alone, both on the local instance and on remote ones.

  I won’t weigh in on the request for Rooki’s removal but I’d want Rooki and other admins to step away from this type of action, and I’d want the site poilcy (written or unwritten) to generally embrace this non-interference principle.

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  • mozz@mbin.grits.dev ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    an instance admin (not a community moderator) stepped into a community (!vegan), removed a bunch of "disinformation" comments

    Is this true? I thought Rooki just posted a counterpoint, not removed anything. Maybe I am wrong.

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    • Beaver@lemmy.ca ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Check the modlogs before you speak

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      • mozz@mbin.grits.dev ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Quite right.

        • Someone posted that a vegan diet is ok for cats
        • Someone else posted that no the fuck it isn't
        • !vegan mod removed the previous post
        • Admin (presumably Rooki) restored the deleted comment and deleted comments that a vegan diet is ok for cats
        • Mod flipped the polarity of the reversals back again, and banned Rooki
        • Rooki unbanned themselves, flipped the polarity back again (so now it's only the anti-vegan-cat comments)

        So I was wrong, I think. The !vegan mods did delete some of the debunking first, but it wasn't from Rooki. I think.

        Also, it's still going on; the mods are as of a few hours ago still undeleting vegan-cat advocacy comments and banning people who disagree with them.

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    • solrize@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I haven’t checked the logs myself but am going by the initial post, some of the comments, and a similar thread on !vegan itself.

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      • Rose@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        This link allows to see all comments removed specifically by Rooki.

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