Over the past 24 hours can be best described as the addage, Hanlon's razor:

Never attribute malice that which is adequately explained by ignorance. Or in this case, malice for lack of transparency.

Obviously since the "second largest" post on /r/eve was the removal of this mod, I don't expect this post to live long but I want the opportunity for dialogue, and most importantly an appeal for Aradon.

So in the last few days we've had "interesting" things happening in EVE. Mostly just big alliances/coalitions dunking it out in Provi, everyone's favorite nullsec vacation spot. So of course, when fights become blue balling, shit talking starts. First its in local, then it spills over to /r/eve. Mostly in the form of fancy propaganda, then battle reports, then commissioned art and then photoshop, etc. etc.

Propaganda is one of the things that makes the game interesting. Most of the time they're funny! But sometimes it gets too much

And that's just a small sample from the overpiling posts of "hurrdurr, test bad" or "lol more like pansy legion" but if we're going to resort to spamming image macros, then moderation has to step in.

So that happened without a memo.

And just like in any other subreddit, when moderation happens, users kick into overdrive. Godwin is invoked. "Muh freedom" is cried for. Pitchforks are passed out and hippy circles are formed. Petitions for removal of mods. Usually mods backpedel and go "mistakes were made." And then are never heard from again.

And now you know why the default subreddits are shitty, because mods said "fuck it" and left them to rot, only removing things that break reddit rules.

What is subreddit did was a mistake. What Aradon did was also a mistake. But this did not warrant his removal without some sort of intelligent conversation.

But before we go to the removal, lets go to what happens before that, this happened.

The authors of the 5 highest voted comments in this thread will be added as mods. /eve Reddit founder

Without clicking on the thread, I guessed 2 out of 5 correctly on who would be upvoted as moderator: DHD and Chribba while a half guess was someone from CFC.

Why? Because these people have a fanbase to back them up and upvote them. Basically a popularity contest to be a moderator. Wow. With this much nepotism, lets just get all the coalitions puppet heads on the moderation team. THERE JUST WONT BE A PROBLEM WITH THAT AT ALL

So lets get a break down of our new moderators..

Chribba! Everyones favorite eve person.

If your definition of neutral is allow everything, then you are very right - I'm not neutral. But then no mods are needed if everything is always allowed :) It's not the first time I've removed threads that CCP has removed from EVE-O and won't be the last I'm sure. It's called moderation I think...

If this skewed perception of moderation was part of his application for his modship and I was the founder, I'd decline it. He even says he's not neutral despite his first comment in the thread was the subreddit needs a neutral mod. But that comment got upvoted for high heaven, which I think was in favor of his opinion NOT because it was a moderation application. But /u/simonvc shot him an application anyway. I don't even think the founder reads, just looks at numbers and shoots applications.

Then our lovable DHD..

Realtalk I'm the de-facto head mod of /r/borderlands[1] , which is an active game-specific subreddit with a population similar to this one, so I have ~experience~ EDIT: I also mod the TEST forums so I'm not a thin-skinned shitwit, and I used to mod Kugu so I know how to watch someone update the site's theme and lose most of the content, get it back, then watch a German kill the site months later.

While he has moderation experience I don't think he'll take this seriously. He's upvoted because he's everyones favorite and lovable test talking head. He's known for this

Meanwhile he's the head of TEST, that's part of the Brave conglomerate and has considerable backing, not because he'd be a good moderator, but because he's funny. He runs /r/evedreddit, they have their own fucking subreddit, why does he have to run here too?

Then you have in the opposite corner. Jeff Raider:

I WILL REGULATE EDIT: I'M ACTUALLY UPVOTED HERE OKAY HERE'S MY PLATFORM: I'LL JUST CLOSE DUPLICATE THREADS, EXTRANEOUS THREADS AND WHATEVER ISN'T GOOD. I HATE HEAVY MODERATION AND I'D JUST DO MY PART TO MAKE R/EVE A FREE CHAT ZONE UNLESS IT'S REALLY BAD, LIKE IT WAS LAST 2-3 DAYS OF BNI VS PL BADPOSTING. I LOVE THE BADPOSTING BUT LET'S KEEP IT IN LIKE 2-4 POSTS, NOT 20-40 POSTS. OK O7

Yes, you were upvoted, it doesn't take long for a link to be posted in everyone respective alliance chats and upvote their favorite people. And you're going to clean up the propaganda posts so its 2-3 a day instead of 20? Isnt that what Aradon was doing?

We have two people from opposite camps of the propaganda shitposting. Anyone with brains cells enough to power a led can tell this is fucking terrible.

Then we have Gorski:

Hello friends I am gorski car. CSM member, eve addict and top poster Edit: shit is this thread a downvote trap?

Not sure about this, no experience of moderation listed, just someone who became CSM over a week ago. But I find him more qualified than the previous three mentioned.

And last but certainly not least, nuadi:

I've already been handling flair, and I'm a relatively young mod. I'd be happy to help with additional permissions. Not really sure what else to say. It's early, haven't had my coffee... As my app for mod said, I'm mainly a hands off kind of mod. Edit to add: Yes, I'm neutral. My only bias is mainly toward helping new players and theorycrafting, as even bad ideas can be good discussions to show people the right path of thinking. Edit to add more Well, try to convince them of the right path. Some humans have deeply engrained beliefs or axioms and they can be very hard to decouple from their sense of identity. Okay, that's enough I think. Now I'm just typing for the fun of it.

This is probably the greatest choice for someone to be added as a mod for /r/eve. The application is fucking perfect and this person contributed actual stuff for the subreddit vs the shitposting the other contenders have as contribution.

And this comment only has 13 upvotes out of the 80, 130, 500 upvotes the others have as of this writing. It's a miracle this person became a mod.

So those people became mods thanks to votegroups and party wagons. So /u/simonvc shoot mod applications without reading their names or knowing who the hell these people are it seems and didn't let the other moderator know what was going on.

So you get shit like this

I removed the mods that were not added by simon himself. Since he was non-existent in mod mail and responding to pms, I took it as a sign of a takeover. I removed all the mods that simon did not add and readded the mods he did add with limited permissions.

And of course there was no further communication between mods or mods to the community. And thus pitchforks were sharpened, hippy drum circles were formed. Relations to hitler were mentioned... Then hours later..

I personal haven't seen him do any wrong, but as the second highest voted thread of all time was to remove him, I guess that seems fair. Fly safe.

The fact that this is the logic is so baffling, that it actually slightly hurt my frontal lobe.

We removed someone that was doing the job of moderating and making sure this place was clean. Remember when funny gifs and shit from /r/gifs and /r/funny would go front page? Then someone would take those same posts and just reflavor the title with something eve related and also get upvotes? Remember how shitty that was? Do you want to go back to that shit? Sounds like it and if that was the case I'd probably stop going to /r/eve.

This is the post that made me write this

The problem is there is no dialogue, only "whoever is right is the one with the most upvotes." Which is fucking bad and stupid.

/u/simonvc I implore you to talk to /u/Aradon, there is a handy thing on a users profile where you can send them a Private message. Do that and talk this over, make a decision that isn't based on the votes of emotionally sensitive internet spaceship pilots and then come to us. I think you removed Aradon unfairly especially since there was no discussion or dialogue. Just because the petition was highly upvoted doesn't mean that petition is law. The fact that you said you found nothing wrong with that he did was disturbing.

If things continue the way they are now we're just going to have more flairs (yay for nuadi!) and a bunch of immature and biased moderators (boo). Can you imagine the amount of conspiracy and accusation threads that will be made blaming one moderator or another about removal of propaganda or any other posts? We don't need this.

Please, talk to Aradon, rethink, and reverse.

I wonder if any of the new moderators will block this, lol.