Iām probably an asshole sometimes. When people act like bullies or Nazis, I tell them to fuck off. Iām no saint. I do try to be fair, and also brutally honest. Hereās my personal modlog. I have nothing to hide.
A defense of my modlog...
OpinionHavers was a place for trolls and right wingers to spout shitty opinions.
Raccoon is a Lemmy app. Someone posted a screenshot of their search, saying they couldnāt find the app on F-Droid. I pointed out that they spelled āRaccoonā wrond since it has two Cs, and got my comment removed by the mod for being āannoyingā. LOL! I was literally pointing out the problem with their search. š¤¦āāļø I still canāt believe this one! They also removed another comment where I asked someone why they didnāt just edit their original comment to correct an error instead of only doing so in a reply to a reply, since it was confusing people. That one got removed too. Thatās when I said āFuck this communityā because the mod and app author was just so heavy-handed.
Iām certain the āhot glueā thing was a joke and not an attack, Although I donāt remember the context. I sure it was posted as a joke question, and not a suggestion that someone do it like an insult. It only got removed as āgrossā.
That SPH sub was some kind of roleplaying sub. Or maybe theyāre taking themselves seriously. I donāt know. But I gave a roleplaying answer that said, ādonāt click this linkā that op had posted and I got banned.
In c/technology, someone said I sounded like in āadā when I listed what I liked about YouTube Premium, and they said I triggered their āuncanny valley responseā and then said ānever do that againā. Which was kind of weird and ticked me off a little. So to prove I wasnāt a bot, I said, āWould it help if I said, āfuck offā?ā
That picture towards the end was because someone kept posting the same insult over and over again, so I screenshotted their profile and shared it as a reply saying they need to come up with a new insult. Hereās the picture. 
At any rate, I donāt think Iām a real asshole. Not usually.
Trying to be fair and brutally honest is why I got banned.
ITAP on Lemmy.world is modded exclusively by Stamets. Heās a mod of several communities and heavy user of Lemmy. Heās really active.
He created the community and named it āITAPā after the subreddit of the same name. The point of that original subreddit is to post OC photos. Itās right in the name. But his community rules specifically say that you can post non-OC. I find that a little weird, but itās okay. His community, his rules.
Here are the rules for his ITAP:
ITAP Sidebar rules
Welcome to /c/ITAP, a place to share any photos you may have taken or seen that you think others would enjoy! It does not need to be OC, it just needs to be a photo that you think is beautiful and worth sharing.
Rule 1: No bigotry or discrimination.
Rule 2: No photos of politicians or political rallies.
Rule 3: Keep it civil.
Rule 4: Add OC or Not OC to the title.
Rule 5: NSFW posts are allowed provided theyāre marked as such.
Rule 6: AI generated art isnāt allowed but a low level of digital touching/enhancing is fine
Rule 7: You donāt like the name. I donāt care. The community is called the way it is because I decided to do so. It is almost as if the word took could be used in different ways, such as physically taking the image yourself or storing a copy of the image that you found pleasing. If you have a problem with this, feel free to set up your own community. You may not feel free to openly whine and insult the community or the mods simply because you disagree with it.
Wow, rule 7 is new, and I feel like itās specifically calling me out. Thatās funny! I didnāt insult him. Rule 4 must be new, too because Stamets hasnāt been following it, which is the whole point of this post.
Stamets posts a photo about every day and none of them are his and none are tagged āNot OCā. Invariably, he gets comments like āWow, gorgeous photo! How did you take that?ā. Or āBeautiful! Whatās the story behind this [abandoned] boat?ā He doesnāt reply to any of them that Iāve ever seen.
That last one was an actual comment, almost verbatim, and after seeing so many of these comments day after day, I finally decided to say something. I wish I could copy my comment, but Lemmy doesnāt let me see it because Stamets didnāt technically remove it. I think banning me merely hides all of my comments, and I canāt copy it from the modlog because it isnāt there. Iāll try to summarize. It was like 3 paragraphs.
Stamets only posts photos he didnāt take. He gets a lot of comments like yours and never replies. I donāt understand why itās called ITAP. I posted some OC here to try to encourage other people to do the same, but Iām going to delete it and just block the community. Just use c/pics for non-OC, Stamets, and let ITAP be ITAP. Posting non-OC while not saying soāin a community called āI took a pictureāāfeels something akin to stolen valor.
I used a lot more words, but that was it. He banned me, saying I was creating unnecessary drama. Then he changed the title to say ānot OCā. It wasnāt there originally. Hereās the post: https://lemmy.world/post/25565845
Turns out, he made just a sticky post about this: https://lemmy.world/post/25582946 trying to defend himself and his communityās name. āI made /c/ITAP for myself and by myself.ā Well, thatās a really weird reason to make a public internet community. š¤·
I donāt really buy the whole ātookā pun thing. Then again, itās kind of clever, even if really obscure. As for not even acknowledging that he created this communityās name as a direct copy of Redditās communityā¦ Thatās an odd position to take.
Am I an asshole for telling him that posting non-OC in ITAP and not labeling it is like stolen valor? Am I really creating unnecessary drama? Iām definitely creating more by posting here! š
It looks like he edited some of his submissions to say āNot OCā to follow his new Rule #4. Good! Now I feel like Iāve made a positive change and I donāt feel like an asshole at all. I feel like I took one for the team for making that community slightly better. I had seen so many of those kinds of comments praising āhisā photos. I donāt feel like I deserve a ban when he changed to rules to fix exactly what I was talking about. My comment clearly had merit.
I donāt need or want any remedy. Although, if he gave up moderating ITAP and let it be a community in the spirit of the one he copied, the spirit that seemingly everyone thinks it has, thatād be great. Itās never gonna happen, though. He could apologize for taking criticism so badly, but I doubt heād ever do that, either. If you look at some of the comments heās made in defense of the Star Trek show heās named after, and comments heās removed for spurious reasons, I think youād come to the same conclusion that heās just your average PTB.
Yeah, this is a pure PTB situation.
Which is kinda strange, since stamets is usually not that thin skinned. Which would be fine if they took a step back, cooled off and set things right instead of grudgingly and pettyly (is that a word? Doing thing in a petty manner) changing the rules. Everyone has bad days and bad moments, Iāve had more than my fair share for damn sure.
Stamets, Iām not going to ping you because that gets annoying as fuck, Iām sure. But if you run across this, I get it (or I think I do). You created a community and did the usual thing of seeding it. Thatās a good thing.
What isnāt good is using the name of an established subreddit where oc content used to be the expected content, and where the name implies that the āIā in question is the person posting having actually been present to have operated the camera. When you do that, and then get upset to the point of banning people for being confused and talking about it (and, since the comments arenāt visible to us, we canāt verify anything other than that the comments were about that subject), youāre screwing up.
My advice? Fix it. Just change the rules again so that they arenāt so petty, undo the ban until and unless the same people do something else that violates the corrected rules. It would help to acknowledge that it was an overreaction, but thatās less about being a mod, so isnāt necessary. Weāre all human, and we all fuck up, so fixing the mistake is what really matters, not a mea culpa.
For real, Iāve done way worse back in my days in the early internet moderating forums. Fucking up is easy. Itās human. And itās okay. Itās how you handle it afterwards that really matters.