TenForward: Where Every Vulcan Knows Your Name @lemmy.world Stamets @lemmy.world 9 mo. ago

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

cross-posted from: https://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:

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.

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.

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.

At this point I sent a message to Corgana.

He never responded. Value continued to message.

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

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.

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.

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.

From here on is just the conversation with Value.

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....

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

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.

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:

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

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.

301

301 comments

Upvoted because Nerd Drama...🖖

Also, appreciated the work you put in to outlining everything. Was a good read over ☕️.

Edit: Last thing, a lot of us left Reddit in the first place because of Mod power tripping. I was a 14+ year Redditor. After getting Perma-Banned from r/politics for hurting one of the Mods fee fee's I had enough. Fuck that noise. Politics is contentious, and life is about challenging your viewpoints. If you want to ban people who are inside the rules, but who disagree with you personally then fuck you.
Lol. They tell stamets to stop making drama. Stamets says "baby, I'll show you drama."
I can’t see this post on my startrek.website account. I guess that’s all the confirmation I need
I'm really sorry this happened to all of you, Stamets. Somehow I almost never get involved in this sort of thing and somehow USS BT didn't remove any of my posts, but I was fine leaving Risa because you and others who I liked were leaving and I came along with you. I was flattered when you asked me to be a mod and I'm glad I can help out here.

Honestly, I was only slightly aware of any of this. It's the sort of thing I generally steer clear of and don't want to be a part of, but let me know if there's anything I can do to help in this situation because it really leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
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.
Damn, that is insane! I'm sorry you're having to deal with that, what the hell is wrong with some people?

For what it's worth, I'm Team Stamets all the way, and I'm sure plenty of us would agree.
Well... This certainly explains why my account over there got banned for criticizing Discovery lol
I'm sorry, this is all just a big misunderstanding. When the Risa mods said "no rules', they meant for themselves. Not for the rest of us.

Hope that clears it all up.
This sucks, I'm sorry all this happened to you! It was cathartic to read because I've also been on the receiving end of this shit. This guy is a piece of work.

Just wanted to share my experience with what I now realise was the same person (Value) all along. I'd noticed that they were removing a lot of comments quite arbitrarily on r/startrek, and basically tried to ask why. I tried in the thread with the deletions, but they said "no meta" and deleted it. I tried to ask via dm and was temporarily banned. Happened again after I was allowed back. Total asshole the whole time, pointlessly combative, sarcastic, and seriously power tripping. There was basically no discussion of the moderation allowed under any circumstances. I tried to ask on the monthly kind-of meta thread and was banned outright.

Then I moved over to r/star_trek and while there were many issues (a lot of people very bitter about experiences like mine), it was nice to have a place to be open about the new shows. Just like your story, someone said that the community was leading to a lot of harassment of r/startrek, as if it was some kind of troll farm and not just a refuge for people who had crossed him.

And in the end he won. He went to the reddit admins and complained. For a while, the subreddit could only exist if they never mentioned the main sub (which actually improved things content wise). The moderation got a little lax after some months and in the end it was taken down.

So you have control of the main community and use it to unfairly ban people. Then the people you did this to make their own community instead. And rather than just ignoring it, to each their own etc, you just have to insert yourself and make this impossible. Not only do you have to rule "your" community with an iron fist, you also have to stop anybody from having an alternative.

I jokingly asked about this overall issue in the c/startrek intro post, during the exodus from reddit, and he hit me straight away with the same attitude. My first openly hostile experience on Lemmy. A couple of people dmed me, horrified to see the same problems starting already, and suggested some alternatives. But they are really all quite dead.

I saw someone comment here asking where we can go on Lemmy to avoid this bullshit and actually talk about Trek. Honestly this is the best place I've found and it's a meme community.

This person has apparently single handedly created this problem. I just want to talk about Star Trek, why in the name of Picard would you go out of your way to so consistently ruin that for me?
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.
Massive props for not just saying “fuck it” and walking away. Stay sane my guy.
I want very, very badly for the Fediverse to be made up of primarily interest group focused websites. Smaller, topic of community focused sites that people can claim as their home base and primary interest community, but with thr ability to look over the fence at everyone else's yard, as is were, and not a handful of these large, general purpose sites that suck all of the air out of the room.

So, to see this bullshit being pulled not only by moderators and admins of Star Trek focused subcommunities, but also a website that's acting out my hopes for the social web as a whole.

Fuck the lot of them. I hope they moderate over the bitter, bitter ashes.
Drama sucks but I actually really appreciate this post. I'm not a huge Trekkie, but a lot of your content on Risa gave me a laugh. Honestly was why I 'subbed' to Risa and got me into watching some more Trek stuff. When I saw TenForward pop up I subbed right away because the memes were from people who had made me laugh. Now that I know what is up I can 'unsub' to Risa. So I appreciate knowing what is up.
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?
I'm a Trekkie, but only a consumer of Trek memes. So I don't contribute much but I've been around, upvoted, commented. Seen a lot of what's been going on, but also stayed out of it. I have my own communities to bring alive.

But from what I've seen, Stamets and you guys here on tenforward, are the real ones.
I bet they are the same scumbags who moderate /r/StarTrek on Reddit. They are childish drunk assholes who I wish all the worst. I've never been treated this rudely in my life. Ironically the opposite of what StarTrek stands for in my eyes.
I'm not even a Trekkie and I feel pissed off reading this. Reddit's biggest problem was tyrannical power mods that were in cahoots with the admins. It's unfortunate that r/startrek suffered from such rot and that their mod team had resurfaced here.
Star Trek?... Where men wear dresses, and they have a whole episode where Riker falls in love with a non-binary person?

...well, at least now I know the "forward" in Ten Forward (as well as being a TNG reference), can also be read as being more progress (forward thinking) than other Star Trek subs.
Damn a whole book about drama on a StarTrek forum
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.
Despite being a Star Trek fan all my life, I generally stay out of the fandoms online. This kind of shit is why.

Also, I don't really care why someone might think Next Gen, or Voyager, or Enterprise, or Discovery, or Picard... (and yes I've heard all of those) or whatever - there's always someone - is terrible. And I especially don't care when that person feels the need to trash others over liking it. I found it better to just enjoy the shows and movies on my own and not have edgelords trying to be first in hating the new thing. (That's not to say each show doesn't have weak points, but it's just television, who really cares?)

As they say, no one hates Star Trek more than Star Trek fans.
Thanks for taking the time for making this post, Stamets. I'm sorry you've had to go through all of this. I still don't think Disco is good, but you've never been anything less than civil and fun to talk to whenever we've interacted. I look forward to more of your content and discussions.
Fuuuuuuck anyone who fucks with Stamets 🖕

🖖 Stamets
Heh.

I was an anonymous admin for a massive website for two years. I read all this, and it's so, so familiar. The petty power-grabbing, high drama scrabblings of tiny, unimaginative people.

Let them rot, I say, and well done for exposing the entire conversation to sunlight, warts and all. It's the only way to prove you tell the truth.
Okidoke. Leaving that instance. Lol tbh, I already had, because for some reason all the fun content went away. Such a shame though. I really liked the idea of having my account live on a niche interest instance and traveling out from there.

<3 stamets, you don't even know how much your memes have done for me getting through some very hard times of my own this last year.
I gotta say, Stamets, your content has brightened my life. You set out to make people smile, well it worked. I noticed when you were around, and I noticed when you weren't. You do good work, and I'm here for it, and for you. Live long and Prosper.
I'm sure it was exhaustive and cathartic to get that all out. Thanks for all you and the other mods here do. I had to go through some of their bullshit myself and am glad to be rid of it.
I'm glad you found a safe haven stamets. You're always welcome in my instance FYI
Those folks sound like real pieces of work.

Why are they power-tripping? It's clown behavior. They're mods, for fucks sake, not company CEOs or some nonsense! LOL

Good on ya' for getting out and speaking up!
Damn this is wild. I have never seen someone so ridiculously petty and unhinged. VS sounds like someone who might go to far with things and starts being dangerous.

But You did good! Is there any way I can support or help you? I am now somewhat rooting for you and want to help!
I was following this drama when it first happened. I'm not a super trek fan but I've seen almost all the movies and most of the shows. TNG is something special to me. I liked that you broke away and made this place.

Your cool with me. Sorry you have had to deal with all this and feel the need to put it all out here. Totally understandable.

Anyways, I like this place better anyway.
Thanks for sharing. Any time some petty tyrant rises up, it's all in our best interest to cut ties with them and let them fizzle out. It's a shame it had to happen within a Trek fandom but now that we know more about what happened we can all make more informed (better) choices.

I'm not sure why this kind of tea time isn't more common. It would go a long way towards stopping this kind of behavior from admins and mods. Value abused the report system across many platforms and will never see any kind of punishment for what they put you through. It's frustrating to see this kind of thing go unanswered. At least now we can avoid them and the places they haunt.
I just want to say that I love your work. Never fails to elicit at least a sensible chuckle if not a socially unacceptable guffaw. And IMMEDIATELY gets shared with my Trek-centric friends :)
It looks like the decentralised approach of Lemmy is working.

That’s real nice to see.

The internet is healing!
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.
God damn, stamets, you have a legendary tolerance for bullshit, sorry you've been dealing with those dickholes so long
I'm surprised it took you this long to get it out.
Hearts, my friend.
I’m sorry you’ve had to deal with this bullying. I’m very glad that you created this place for everyone to be free of it.

I very much hope this person finds the peace to leave you and others alone.
Live long and prosper my friend. You know how I feel about the subject.
Thanks for everything you do! You've succeeded in creating a wonderful corner of the internet :)
Keep up the good work Stamets, your memes bring light to us all in the cold darkness of space.
Sorry you have to deal with the stupid drama. Humans gonna human, I guess. It was useful for me to know what kinds of people these names I recognize are, so thanks for letting us know! Unsubbed from StarTrek.
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 😬 I am but a lowly freighter captain trying to make a living.
Well, I don't really know what to say. I'm sorry this has happened to you. Similar drama from mods is one thing that started making reddit really shitty, and here we all are.

I appreciate that TenForward exists! Thanks for documenting all this. 🖖
I hope a lot of people see this. Fuck people that abuse their power, petty or otherwise.
Thank you for taking the time and mental energy to make this post and call out this abusive bullshit. That can't have been fun to re-live while you were organizing and writing all this out, but I'm really glad this warning is here for other community members to see.
Sorry you're caught up in some BS internet drama. Hopefully everyone just leaves startrek.website

Which is a touch sad because I really like the ST content!
I like Star Trek. Haven't seen all the spin offs and a lot of times the message is lost on me. The few times I have engaged all have been pleasant. I enjoy the silliness and who doesn't like a good laugh?

Harassment sucks in any form. Sorry you have had to deal with it, not sorry we get this community because of it.

Death to the opposition, Honor is more important than life, and all that. Scotty...beam me up!
So... any story on why startrek@lemmy.world was set up?
I'm not an active Star Trek fan anymore but I'm always happy to block idiots that cause drama on the Internet. Good riddance to that user and the entire instance. Hope the dude can find something fulfilling to do with his life.

Also they're congratulating themselves on 10k subs but Sync says they have just over 3000??
I don't have time to read all of that, I just want to say I wish you success with creating this community
Reading all of this in depth while silently sipping across my leaf-green cup of hot 3-in-1 coffee in the morning, I'm now seeing almost the whole picture with the new TenForward online hub-raft and the reasons for its founding. ValSub, as evidenced by the screenshots and credible anecdotes by others experiencing the ire at the supposed mod overreach on that particular instance, has come off to me as bespoke of a too passionate fan enthusiast, much like that of Dream SMP of a few years prior, while exhibiting multiple instances of verified victim complex. Even though the original intent of said instance is to have a fair ground for all to discuss and meme their watched Star Trek content, including fanworks (Happy International Fanworks Day, after all!) of every type.

In the end, as a fellow recent Fediversian myself, I take sympathy towards not only you, Stamets, but also to the countless others who have been fed up with the sudden debauchery of such a rogue, highly-agitated mod person for weeks on end.
May the Federation prosper, even through understandable disagreements and hardships, as well as triumphs and camaderie, both large and small.
BRB adding startrek.website to my account's instance block list.
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!
Love your content and hope you keep going, sorry you have to deal with this inane bullshit.

MRW my mind melts from seeing the same crap percolating through to Lemmy:

https://i.imgur.com/Kays9kl.gif
I just realized I commented in one of your crossposted posts, not here. I was just kidding around about the pizza, then I saw something else you posted...ok for real, man, have you not been eating?
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.
The story sounds like bipolar behavior. They should probably get checked for that. There are meds that can mellow out extreme reactions.
Hello my alter ego. Glad to see you’re doing well
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).
I got about half way through and ended up skipping a lot of the drama. I appreciate what you do and am happy to be part of this community.

I just want a place to shit post about star trek without people coming in and being hateful bigots.
Anyone have TL:DR?
Did you smoke some meth before this post cos it is probs the longest post I've ever seen?
Just post an opinion that they don’t like over there and they’ll censor you.

Discovery sucks and Michael Burnham is a shit character, there’s too much overt woke shit that undermines Trek’s historic success in tackling these issues.
please re read your own words. literally everything that follows the initial “problem” of the risa mod asking you not to bait a transphobe is escalated by you. now you are going further and trying to encourage a brigade and you will inevitably play the victim again when the lemmy.world admins inevitably ban you all because you cant control yourself.

To anyone unfamiliar this is the Stamets playbook:

Bait people into arguments Make them angry and report them Delete/edit any comments that make him look bad

This entire post is CLASSIC stamets bait and I would implore the startrek people mentioned here to not take it. reported to the admins.

EDIT: YES THIS IS NOT MY ORIGINAL ACCOUNT I LITERALLY WAS GETTING HARASSING DMS FROM STAMETS
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.

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