vegan

Hi all, I'm one of the mods that apparently caused lemmy.world to melt down for two weeks. It's a lovely sunny Sunday arvo, and I'd much rather go catch the last rays of sun in my garden than write about mod drama. Alas, I must have sinned in a past life.

Today the lemmy.world admins made a follow up post about the incident where the admin Rooki interfered with moderation of this community in a way which was determined to be against lemmy.world TOS and factually incorrect. Throughout this incident there has been no communication with me, nor to my knowledge any of of the other moderators of this community. Rooki quitely undid his actions and edited his post to admit fault however there was no public acknowledgement of this from him. In fact I wasn't even told I was reinstated as a mod which is quite funny.

The lemmy.world admins' response appears more focused on managing their own reputations and justifying similar actions in the future than providing a good environment for vegans, and other similarly maligned groups. Their statements about wanting to handle misinformation and overreach better in the future ring a bit hollow when they won't take actions to address the anti-vegan circlejerks under their update posts which abound with misinformation and disinformation.

The legalese written basically allows for the same thing to happen, and that if it does the admin decision is to stand while moderators have to quietly resolve the conflict at the admins' leisure. Presumably with a similarly weak public apology and barely visible record correction after the fact.

This community already has a fairly high moderation burden, with many users coming here in bad faith and getting outraged when they are told to take it elsewhere.

I have spoken with /u/[email protected] and /u/[email protected] and we are of the opinion that given the lack of assurance that admins with an axe to grind wont interfere in the future this is no longer a space we are interested in moderating and can't in good faith recommend as a place to host a vegan community. Instead we would recommend that users come to [email protected] (note, not federated with .world, make a local account), additionally [email protected], [email protected], and [email protected] are well moderated and run.

Mods are just glorified internet janitors though, so if any current mods or users want to take over the responsibility of primary management from /u/[email protected] they are welcome to do so and should get in touch. Otherwise I think the consensus is to close this community for now.

Finally I'd just like to express gratitude for the great effort put in by the users here. In particular /u/[email protected] you are a bloody champion for trying to get a better outcome here, we all appreciate it immensely.

Hi, everybody! I've recently taken up a moderation position here after naeva moved to vegantheoryclub.org (it's a great all-in-one instance for veganism, and you should check it out!), so logically the first thing I should do is propose an idea with a high moderation burden.

NOTE: this current post is not a trial run of this idea; it is a request for comment to see if this idea should be done at all. Non-vegans are absolutely welcome and encouraged to chime in because this idea is being proposed largely to benefit them, but ultimately, the opinions of vegans will be weighed more heavily simply because this is a community built by vegans for vegans, and if vegans don't want it, then it isn't fair to them to impose it.

The idea is that each week, we'd have a stickied post where anyone – non-vegans and vegans – can ask vegans politely and in good faith about their thoughts on and experiences with veganism. (Questions by vegans are of course still welcome outside of this stickied post, but they're entirely welcome in here too.) Critically, this would not be a debate; it would be a Q&A format. Essentially: "Non-vegans, please don't try to argue with the vegans, and per the format, please don't attempt to answer questions if you aren't vegan. Vegans, please just politely inform a moderator if you see argumentation instead of perpetuating the argument."

This would hopefully 1) provide a healthy medium for non-vegans to ask about veganism and 2) centralize that discussion so that it's not spread out across a community that's supposed to be a space for vegans to connect to their peers.

Examples of good questions:

• "What made you decide to be vegan? If you were raised vegan, why have you stayed vegan?"
• "I'm looking into an alternative for [animal product]; any advice?"
• "My significant other is vegan, but I'm not; what are some meals that I can cook when they come over?"
• "I'm trying to cut meat out of my diet, but I'm finding it difficult to stick to it because of [budget/peer pressure/nutrition/etc.]. Can anyone tell me what they did when they had this problem?"
• "I'm struggling to understand why vegans think that eggs from my friend's backyard are unethical; they treat the chickens really well, so what's the problem?"
• "I'm a new vegan. Are there any tips or tricks you wished you knew earlier?"
• "What is dating like as a vegan?"
• "I've been a vegan for a while now, and I want to get involved with activism. Does anyone know a good place to get started?"
• "Vegans who used to be anti-vegan, what changed your mind?"
• Asking for clarification on a point that a vegan has made in response to your or someone else's initial question.

Examples of bad questions:

• Setting up a convoluted hypothetical scenario to own the vegans ("My great uncle owns an ethical dairy farm on a desert island. If I were to accidentally fall into a trolley switch and roadkill one of the cows, why would it be unethical to drink its milk so it doesn't go to waste?")
• Just stating an opinion on veganism without actually asking a question or technically asking a question but in a way that's clearly JAQing off.
• "Why are so many vegans [very obviously pejorative and overgeneralized statement]?"
• "I have [rare/serious disorder affected by my diet]; how can I still be vegan?" (this is definitely a good-faith question, but the answer here should be "consult a medical professional".)
• Sealioning.
• Questions very obviously not related to veganism.

Since per-community flairs aren't a thing on Lemmy, all we can really ask you to do is use one of the four tags below before your comment so that it's easy to identify where you're coming from.

[VG] for vegan, [PBD] for plant-based dieter, [VT] for vegetarian, and [NVV] for non-vegan/vegetarian. These labels are defined as follows:

• A vegan is somebody who fits the definition from the Vegan Society quoted in the sidebar.
• A plant-based dieter is one who is a strict vegetarian, i.e. one who does not eat meat and also does not eat animal products. However, they consume animal products outside of their diet.
• A vegetarian is somebody who does not consume meat but nonetheless consumes animal products such as dairy and eggs.
• A non-vegan/vegetarian is somebody who does not fit any of these definitions. This includes pescetarians and self-identified "flexitarians".

This idea would be subject to change or discontinuation at any time per the wishes of the community or if the moderation team sees it becoming too much of a burden, but hopefully it can make the community just a bit better. 🙂

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/26218550

(posting to both communities)

A carnist lemmy world instance admin has stepped in and meatsplained to the mods while restoring comments that violated the community's rules. They deleted comments that they did not agree with, citing 'misinformation', and threatened to demod the mods if those comments were removed again. The comments were deleted and the admin was banned from the community as per violating the rules of the community, that was until they unbanned themselves (admin abuse) and unmodded two of the moderators because of "promoting harmfull actions against pets".

As far as it stands, if the lemmy world community wasn't already not a safe vegan place for you (it really wasn't) it most certainly isn't now as carnists (lemmy world instance admin) currently mod it.

I suggest any vegan who wants a safe and welcoming space to come and interact with vegantheoryclub.org. Sorry for any inconvienance that this may have caused. I am deeply upset at the admins actions today and don't condone them whatsoever.