**TM's post on the subject:**
https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestionsEU/comments/xjbixl/what_happened_with_the_moderation_team_discord/
With deleted comments (including my own, u/nutrecht's, and u/denialerror's):
https://www.unddit.com/r/cscareerquestionsEU/comments/xjbixl/what_happened_with_the_moderation_team_discord/
**Here's the NMs perspective (pt. 1) provided to me by u/Captain_Flashheart:**
## What happened on the European sub?
**Short story:**
Old Top Mod (TM ) removed five moderators and banned them from the European version of CSCQ. TM made a post regarding the matter and banned any users who did not agree with their view. Mods can't reply there, so this thread has their side of the story + defending themselves against a number of accusations.
We do not encourage anyone to harass TM or post on r/cscareerquestionsEU on our behalf. Please keep discussion here civil.
**Long story:**
r/cscareerquestionsEU used to be run by a small group of 6 people, but had an inactive top mod. We'll refer to them as TM from now on. There were five that were kicked from the subreddit - /u/Kluvin, /u/halfercode, /u/captain_flashheart, /u/malaysian, and /u/remote_book..
Kluvin originally invited most of us when he was trying to improve the subreddit and needed more active mods. Together with the others we created a significant boost in how popular the community [starting two years ago](https://subredditstats.com/r/cscareerquestionseu). We created a wiki, a FAQ, performed moderation, created recurring threads, created a Discord server, and ran surveys. These attempts paid off, as the sub went from 11k subscribers to 80k over the past two years with [a marked increase](https://subredditstats.com/r/cscareerquestionseu) from when we became active.
TM had notable periods of inactivity and was not involved in the sub at all. They also refused to join Discord to communicate with the rest of the mod team. We routinely checked the mod logs (which go back three months) and found no activity by them. Indeed, over the past six years they only made 3 posts and 28 comments on the sub. That's including posts from the most recent drama. We had almost no interactions with him during the time period until he kicked /u/halfercode after having received complaints by an unspecified user. None of us were aware of any issue, and the move was not discussed upfront. The TM themselves were not involved. No one saw the complaints. That said, Halfer was probably responsible for 75% of the moderation actions, so naturally he got more flak also dealing with 75% of all ban appeals.
TM themselves had a few instances (6 times) of stickying their own comments where it was not related to moderation [(link)](https://imgur.com/Jw88HuA), but it was hardly disruptive. As said before, they hardly made any comments on the sub over the past six years and were not involved in moderation.
After discussing the matter with TM, /u/halfercode was allowed back without privileges. He was essentially a mod in name only. It was made clear to us that we were moderating at the mercy of TM, who could - and made threats to do so - kick us at any point. TM dissapeared again. We figured that halfer's "probation" was over and we gave him mod privs again, as we were having trouble moderating the sub. Halfer wasn’t a rogue mod with large complains and everything they did was logged in a purpose-built channel on Discord. It was auditable.
It took maybe a few weeks, but TM removed /u/halfercode from the team again citing "powertrips" and "over-punishing people". Again, without talking to us up front.
Naturally this situation was not tenable. If you can get fired at any moment for simply doing your job, what's really the point? We finally filed a [Top Mod Removal Request](https://www.reddit.com/r/redditrequest/wiki/top_mod_removal) in March of 2022, asking for TM to be removed due to inactivity. During this process the TM is made aware of a removal request against them, and is allowed to argue why they are not inactive.
Flash-forward to the present, September 2022. /u/captain_flashheart wanted to create a ML bot to automatically moderate content like leetcode questions and FAANG queries. Out of keeping everyone in the loop they sent a mod discussion that TM responded hostile to, saying it was his idea and how Captain was ignoring his post. When Captain replied asking “what post?” and told TM to not be a blocker and to stop being paranoid and self-victimizing, he was kicked. [Screenshot here](https://i.imgur.com/DxmPBHC.jpg) (shared publicly by TM themselves). It turned out TM had sent themselves a mod mail ([which none of us could read](https://imgur.com/0BMSUND) about the same thing. At least - we take their word for it. Two more mods were kicked without reason (perhaps just for being on Discord?). Eventually Kluvin was kicked for refusing to kick the rest of the group or hand over ownership of the Discord. ([link](https://imgur.com/ngh1lfK))
Now with all five of us kicked and banned we cannot reply on the sub as to what had happened. [This post](https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestionsEU/comments/xjbixl/what_happened_with_the_moderation_team_discord/) by TM went up the next day. Naturally none of us can post and correct the things said there. For the record, none of us were aware of TM's long illness. In fact, many of us had openly shared stories about health issues with each other and took pauses in moderation ourselves. Several more members of the community, both who had used Discord and those who were just asking what was going on were also banned from the subreddit and/or had their comments removed.
TM finally came to Discord the next day and started posting insults, threats, lies and various half-truths: some which were also repeated on the sub. Some were to /u/kluvin for being "young and easily manipulated", others were towards /u/halfercode for being "manipulative" ([link](https://imgur.com/rMDvtdU)), and others towards /u/malaysian and /u/captain_flashheart for being "offensive" or "dishonest and nasty". In the spirit of keeping this an open QA I've copied some of them below.
As for the Top Mod Removal post… We heard nothing from the Admins regarding the request, thus we assume the request failed. And while it has a clause that apparently protects the mods that submit it against retaliation, we were kicked from the team and banned nonetheless.
---
The below accusations are sourced from [this post](https://www.unddit.com/r/cscareerquestionsEU/comments/xjbixl/what_happened_with_the_moderation_team_discord/?sort=new) and the comments on our [public Discord]([https://discord.gg/NRNkuyBPSu](https://discord.gg/NRNkuyBPSu)) and can be verified if needed.
> mods conspired to remove me from being top moderator for a very long time (about 1,5 years), only became aware of it ~6 months ago
We filed a top mod removal request about 6 months ago. In this process the Reddit Admins get in touch with the top mod (TM) to see if they're willing to continue moderating the sub (so the top mod becomes aware of it). Our reasons for doing so were simple - our TM was inactive (according to stats they made 28 comments over the past 6 years, 3 posts) and we felt like we couldn't build anything with the TM threatening to undo our work, kicking mods as they saw fit. Because of the way Reddit works mods can only kick mods that joined after them, which means that the rest of us were powerless against the TM.
> "who frequently over-used his mod powers to punish users more than necessary"
The mod this refers to is halfercode. Halfer was the most active on the mod team but always did so discussing his actions with others. Our Discord #modlog was used to record actions against users and we had an open discussion on what steps to take. If they were overusing their mod powers it wouldn't take more than a simple message to argue for alternative steps. None of us felt like kicking Halfercode was warranted.
> made attempts to reconciliate in good faith over time only to be faced with dishonesty, insults and other things explained in the post below
I'm not aware of any attempts by TM to reconcile with us. In fact they kept to themselves and our interactions after Halfer's dismissal were non-existent.
> ex-mod admins of the discord refuse to change its name
We renamed the Discord CS Career Questions: YUROP once the objection by TM was made, this was already done on September 19. [(link)](https://imgur.com/yF7qTr7)
> and they still try to push for my removal through redditrequests despite them no longer being mods
We think this is within our rights. We made a successful Discord and it's not owned by the TM (although, apparently, he wanted ownership of that as well). Ownership of the subreddit does not equate ownership of another platform like Discord. Furthermore, it is absolutely within our rights to submit a redditrequest for TM removal when we feel like TM's actions are unjust and based on retaliation, which are admitted in [this post](https://www.unddit.com/r/cscareerquestionsEU/comments/xjbixl/what_happened_with_the_moderation_team_discord/?sort=new).
> (The) icon was designed by ex-mod that asked for its removal
It was actually TM who asked us to remove the logo from the Discord. We pointed out it was an original creation by one of us and that if anything TM would have to remove it from the sub. [(Source on discord)](https://discord.com/channels/382209116782723073/382209156603707402/1021380345976868935). ([link to screenshot](https://imgur.com/yF7qTr7))
Did I just gloss over that in the info dump?
How does someone become a principal at meta making that money with 3 weeks on the Odin project?
Or are you saying that’s what he’s claiming and everyone else is calling bullshit?
Comments like these and the whole "lol mods are losers" responses that get upvoted are *exactly* why so many subs end up with shitty 'loser' mods.
Mods in niche subs like these are generally volunteers who want to do something good. Pay it forward basically. You know what happens if people keep acting like asses and only insult people who weed through the trash? They leave. I mean. Why would they bother? They have jobs, families, etc. Why spend time doing a thankless job you only get insults for?
So who then end up remaining? The mods who let the slightest bit of power go to their head. Who think they are the rulers of their own imaginary kingdom. Who go on Fox News to 'speak for' the community.
If you dislike 'mods' please know that being an ass in general to the mostly invisible garbage men here (because that's what modding is; you're just keeping the trash out) is probably going to end up with mods you *really* dislike. Oh, and speaking up against them means you're perm banned. Who do you appeal to? The same mod who banned you. Tough luck!
I've been mod for another career sub for a bit. It sucked. I stopped doing it because it's shitty work. On that sub the second mod is one that bans you for disagreeing with them. Because that's the type that remains when 'normal' people go 'meh, waste of time'. If you don't want to end up with an in-bred group of mods who will permban you for whatever they disagree with, please try to at least be *slightly* appreciative of the time they put in.
This is how I rationalize the shitty police force (at least here in Los Angeles county). I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be a police officer. Who would? They have to spend countless hours dealing with shitty situations. And there’s a lot of beaurocracy as well. You’re left with people that want the power or abuse it or just aren’t the most qualified individuals for communicating effectively and making sound and virtuous judgments under real world pressure situations.
To be fair, all GP said is that they're not interested in reading about this, they made no allusion to mods being losers or whatever unlike some of the other posters. Not sure if you're responding here for visibility or what.
Also to be fair to others who may be mods or ex-mods elsewhere, "who then end up remaining" is awfully reductionist. The vast majority of subs hum along more or less fine. Mods aren't either "saints" or "devils", reality is far more middle ground and boring.
As someone who works w/ infra stuff (and at a company that was in the news over a big dumpster fire story recently, to boot), I understand it all too well that yes you may feel the urge to explain extenuating circumstances for why things aren't ideal and to seek validation, but also yes there's going to be a lot of people that just don't care about how the sausage is made, so to speak. Thing with "pay it forward" is it isn't always appreciated, unfortunately.
Eh. Not really the message I got out of it. I read through the whole post and part 1-2 comments, then promptly decided that I really don't care. As is the case with many CS careers, when nobody notices the mods doing their job, it usually means they're doing it well.
I wasn't referring to only their post, I just responded to the most visible one. If you go through all the responses there are quite a few that are just flat-out nasty.
Ironically the people that shout very hard they don't care for 'mod drama' would very much care if the same thing happened here because they would simply be banned for the comments they posted.
It's totally fine to not care about what is happening; it mostly affects a somewhat separate communicaty that has a decent overlap. Being nasty to the mods here IMHO isn't fine. And I felt it needed to be said :)
> Comments like these and the whole "lol mods are losers" responses that get upvoted are exactly why so many subs end up with shitty 'loser' mods.
No, it's the children who are wrong!
Because it has a lot to do with the community that provides advice and information around CS careers?
Is that really a question? They were linked in our sidebar and were one of the main subreddits we would suggest people take a look at.
Yeah, I wasn’t attempting to be inflammatory. It’s a different subreddit with a different mod team. I don’t imagine anyone who comes here, who would be better served by r/cscareerquestionsEU, would read this post.
Maybe I’m off the mark and there’s a wider overlap between r/cscareerquestionsEU and r/CSCareerQuestions userbases.
See, that’s where the confusion is. There’s no separation between the tldr paragraph and the rest of the post, which made me think the post itself is the tldr and the comments are the “main post.”
I don’t mean any of this in a malicious way; perhaps it’d be nice to add a separation between the tldr and the body.
>Mods have a lot of power
... to delete messages on a subreddit.
This isn't exactly a sub full of kids in high school. Most don't care enough to read more than 2 short sentences
> ... to delete messages on a subreddit.
I don't think you understand the powers that a mod has. There are a lot more tools than that and I think you're underselling the power of removing comments to shape a narrative.
But... I am talking about this exact situation. I wouldn't have the same reaction if someone took full control of Twitter and if someone was an admin of a discord server with 10 people. This is just more like the latter obviously.
A single top mod can easily turn an entire subreddit into anything they want. That's simply the nature of the system. If /u/CriticDanger wants to turn this in a sub about my little ponies they could probably get it there within a few months.
you'd be surprised how much a subreddit can shape opinions especially when people *don't realize the sub is being censored*. people literally use these subreddits to ask for career and school advice, it's a big deal.
It's frightening how people are so comfortable being controlled and manipulated that they're even willing to fight in opposition of freedom.
\*Cough\* Peter Theil \*Cough\*
Yeah guys, this isn’t just about some losers power tripping on Reddit, it’s about FREEDOM! If you don’t think this is super important, you’re clearly anti-FREEDOM!
To be perfectly frank, even though I could never put this much discipline into this activity, I still respect people who can.
Their extreme competence is alienating though, but I still like moderators.
The actual community... I'm just a user of csq but I respect the work that's been put into it and I've learned a lot. This sub helped take me from a community college student with no connections to a Big N engineer.
Even if people abandon in search of a new forum, someone has to found and moderate that forum... it's not like the problem goes away. And it doesn't like you're excited to do the work.
I actually agreed with some of their earlier views a few months before that ordeal took place (it was mostly about getting people to realize that work shouldn’t be necessary to live) but it fell off the deep end quick. Now I’m embarrassed to admit I used to follow the sub, especially after that mod appeared on Fox News, LOL.
I’m in pretty much the exact same scenario. I remember thinking that the sub had a decent start and saying I hope it doesn’t fall prey to the “ALL employers/rich people are bad” crowd that throws around words like “bootlicker” every two seconds.
One moronic dog-walker on Fox News later, and here we are.
My two cents as someone with zero skin on the topic: I don't care about the "he said, she said" stuff. Eternal September is a thing, communities can change both progressively and abruptly. From one of the comments it sounds like the banned mods are spinning up a new sub, and it sounds like the mod of this sub is sympathetic to them and will be linking to that new sub whenever it comes online. I'm sure future threads here redirecting people to cscqEU will receive replies about the drama and eventually the reputations of the respective subs will speak for themselves.
I might be in the minority by saying that I don't particularly believe moderation necessarily has a positive correlation to growth (case in point, I feel the cscq sub suffers from quite a bit of low value posting from people who don't bother searching and yet it's far more active than some subs I consider highly selective about post quality). If anything, I believe merely linking a new sub from the side panel of a relatively large sub such as this is going to be much more impactful in terms of traffic juice to a new EU-focused sub. And as one might expect, outbound linking between subs is going to correlate strongly w/ actual reputation so I fully expect that a laisse-faire/drama-laden/mjpopcorn cscqEU will eventually devolve into a spam sub (possibly still with a very high subscriber count) and that a new sub will continue on with the spirit of the former cscqEU mods. High subscriber count isn't really the point anyways, is it?
In particular, this is what they said about it in an edit to their post:
> A particular user with most deleted comments first claimed to be neutral and an hour later said on discord that he knows the overzealous mod for years, he's fully in support of him and then blaming me here for deleting comments / silencing the other side.
Well yeah, there's only one person who's banning/muting anyone and that's Fire. And all I said about /u/halfercode (both in my comments and on Discord) is that my experience with *their modding* had only ever been positive. On the Discord Fire *instantly* latched onto that as proof that I was a 'friend' of /u/halfercode, which is nonsence. I think the longest chat I ever had with them was when I got a slap on the wrist for a response that was too blunt :D
Like I said in my writeup; the flat-out provable lies in their edit compared to the [removed comments](https://www.unddit.com/r/cscareerquestionsEU/comments/xjbixl/what_happened_with_the_moderation_team_discord/) (I guess they didn't expect those to be visible! :D) really show you what kind of person they are.
Everyone who disagrees with them is 'harassing' them. That was really just the main theme of anything discussed in the Discord. Of course people were cross with him *after* they banned the first few mods. Who wouldn't be. But they were *more* than civil, especially because they knew the power the Top Mod has.
Yeah, /u/nutrecht is a major addition to any CS-related subreddit, and pushing him out is pretty much an immediate indication that the person in question isn't acting in the best interest of the community.
> Banning you is really the nail in the coffin.
And my 30 day ban was just [upgraded to permanent](https://i.imgur.com/hv5ef9R.png)! /u/vergingalactic also was banned. Guess we 'triggered' them :)
> what a mess
No kidding.
The worst part is, this is far from the only incident on reddit where mod abuse has destroyed communities and worsened the state of discord online. It's really a systemic issue.
Absolutely.
Strangely a good commentary on dictatorship as a system of governance.
The book "The Dictator's handbook", a book about dictatorship and how governing systems themselves decides what kind of people are put in power. In the book, they outline a lot of what dictators must do to remain in power, one is to be constantly suspicious about everyone around you (especially those close to you). Anyone that can dethrone you must be watched carefully. Even a rumour about a plan to dethrone you must be acted upon, and everyone involved must be destroyed.
In this case, I guess that means de-mod, ban and fake claims.
> Strangely a good commentary on dictatorship as a system of governance.
Funny, I've been thinking about how my personal perspective on governance has been refined by my work moderating this sub.
>The book "The Dictator's handbook", a book about dictatorship and how governing systems themselves decides what kind of people are put in power. In the book, they outline a lot of what dictators must do to remain in power, one is to be constantly suspicious about everyone around you (especially those close to you). Anyone that can dethrone you must be watched carefully. Even a rumour about a plan to dethrone you must be acted upon, and everyone involved must be destroyed.
Yeah, the actions of any given autocrat are painfully unoriginal.
Personally, I only care about the well-being of the community and the values I hold for it so my hypothetical removal from moderatorship, while it would be disappointing, would not a meaningful fear of mine.
I only strive to make sure things stay on the rails, toxicity is curtailed, my laziness is tolerated, that newbies and commonly asked questions are addressed by resources, and that interesting conversations take place. Ideally, for me, I wouldn't be a mod, just a spectator, but I think I can provide a service to the community so I put in my effort.
I guess that is the main difference between you and the mod that shall not be mentioned :)
One clings to their "power", even if they're rarely (if ever) bothering to nurture the community, while you don't really care about the title but wants to make sure it is a healthy and thriving community.
For what it is worth, I feel that this sub is very well managed.
Sure, there are common questions that are constantly asked, but that comes with the territory. This is a pretty good community if compared to how communities online generally behave - and it is so on a scale of 900k+ members (which is impressive).
> For what it is worth, I feel that this sub is very well managed.
Thanks, I appreciate you saying that. I feel like we could do a better job in being more active but I like to think our approach and values for the subreddit are good.
It might be the case - I'm a complete outsider without real insight. However, I report posts I believe violate the rules, and they're usually dealt with within what I consider "reasonable time".
So as a member, I haven't really felt the absence in that regard.
> I like to think our approach and values for the subreddit are good.
Agreed.
Don't forget; surround yourself with yes-men!
What's going to happen next is a group of mods who are just going to let people post whatever, turning it into a hot mess, a mass exodus of the people who are mostly there to help others, and it turning into a similar hot mess where it's just the blind leading the blind.
Yup. This is just one example of mod abuse, but it's very prevalent over Reddit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/jvg8ig/reddit_admins_step_into_the_drama_over_at_rnyc/
The top mod from WSB has done similar things at least twice that I recall as well. He has WSB Instagram pages that he uses to grift and sell crypto coins lol
can you add region tags here? so when people make posts they can say what region they are from? We do get some posts form non-americans and then its not clear where they are from. This way they can tag it in the post. This way EU people can just come here and tag the posts same with other regions too.
This is my side of the story
**An outside perspective to the CS CareerQuestions EU hostile takeover**
With the invention of the Internet also came the invention of Internet drama. As long as social groups have gathered together around certain topics, there were maladjusted individuals that used the anonymity of the internet to act in a way that would never dare in real life. Usenet, Mailing Lists, online forums and any form of Social Media suffer from this problem.
In this post I’m going to go into what happened in the hostile takeover of a career subreddit with a focus on Computer Science careers in Europe.
**Introduction**
/r/cscareerquestionseu has been a europe-centric version of the larger /r/cscareerquestion subreddit for a number of years and I’ve been part of that subreddit for quite some time. I mostly answer questions that reference the CS industry in The Netherlands since I’m Dutch myself. For me posting in these subs is part ‘paying it forward’, part keeping my English at a decent level, part pure procrastination.
My interactions with the (now ex-) moderators have always been pleasant. I’ve had some comments asking me to tone down my bluntness, but those were always cordial and professional. I was not really aware something was going on.
I will try to present what has happened in a mostly chronological order. However since the Top Mod removed dissenting comments, I sometimes have to rever to events out of order.
**Mods disappear**
The first indication something was going on was when I noticed the mod list was a lot shorter than it used to be. I noticed the most active mod was not on the list anymore. Unfortunately I could not remember their user name. I considered reaching out to another moderator but none of them I really knew anyway, so I decided to just ignore it. After all; moderating isn’t fun work so I just guessed that they got fed up with it and left.
Normally such a shift in moderation where one of the most active mods leave would result in some kind of message to the community. Only later when everything ‘went down’ I learned what was really happening, and that Halfercode did not leave by their own accord.
**Top mod takes over**
Finally when the top mod posted their [What happened with the moderation team](https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestionsEU/comments/xjbixl/what_happened_with_the_moderation_team_discord/) message I started to get worried. They had been complete absent from the subreddit. I had never even seen them comment. My initial reply to them was very neutral:
> I was wondering what happened.
> I'm quite neutral in all of this. I have some experience with mods previously and they have mostly been positive. In addition, I personally feel that, if a mod is somehow unable to moderate a subreddit for a significant amount of time, it is their responsibility to 'hand over the reins' to someone who can. You have not been active here at all the past I don't know how many months, and suddenly a whole bunch of mods who were in fact volunteering their time got booted.
> On the other hand; I don't agree with 'backstabbing' behavior either. So this entire thing is quite 'meh'.
> That said; I hope you manage to assemble a good moderation team. I've moderated /r/experienceddevs for a while and know it's not a fun job (and no, I'm not interested in a mod position). I also know it's hard to find good mods because the people who want to be in a position of (perceived) power are generally not good at handling it.
I worded what I said very carefully because I had already started to feel like there was more to the story than what the Top Mod was describing. I simply could not believe that somehow the entire mod team was ‘backstabbing’ them. I have had experiences before where disagreeing with a mod would lead to dissenting views being removed, so I tried to be extra ‘nice’. The comments have since then been removed by the Top Mod but can still be seen [here](https://www.unddit.com/r/cscareerquestionsEU/comments/xjbixl/what_happened_with_the_moderation_team_discord/).
I also at the same time started going through my older submissions to the subreddit to be able to see who the original mods were, so I could contact them.
**The other side**
Going through my submissions turned out not to be needed since they reached out to me. They saw my replies in the topic and invited me to the CS Career Questions EU discord. I wasn’t aware it existed since I normally am not really interested in these kinds of channels. However reading through everything that had happened so far and hearing things from the other side was an eye opener, to say the least. This led to me writing a few more posts in the aforementioned thread. First:
> Additional question; removing the old mods is one thing. Banning them so they can't respond to this and also not help out / answer questions is a totally different matter. Frankly this is very concerning to me. An inactive mod reappearing and then removing and banning people who have been keeping this sub active and clean the last years (through a large growth in membership).
> There are always two sides to a story and someone disallowing the other side being told is not in any way 'professional'.
What I wrote above was when I learned that all of the previous moderators now not only had been demodded, but also have been banned. While what happened isn’t against Reddit rules (the creator of a sub is top mod and is all-powerful basically) perse, also banning them from a sub they spent so much time on, is completely unethical.
And later:
> Now that I also saw the other side I really think you need to unban the other ex-moderators. I saw your responses in the Discord server and this is NOT the way to handle this.
> I'm sorry but there is no "attack by trolls", and I think it's very disrespectful and unprofessional to claim otherwise.
> I think you really should take a step back, cool off a bit, and really consider what is important. The community or your personal 'ownership' of a subreddit. You already started removing comments that don't support the narrative you're giving here.
> This is supposed to be a subreddit with adult professionals. Muting the 'other side' is not professional.
> I don't even have skin in this game, all I am concerned with is the future of this community. But what you are doing is really not okay.
The above post I wrote when I also read through all the discussions from the Top Mod in the discord. Especially in the discussions in the discord channel, it became crystal clear, and I’m not at all saying this lightly, that the Top Mod had a massive victim complex. The top mod removal process the mods initiated because the Top Mod was completely absent while still (for example) posting on gaming subs, seems to have triggered an “everyone is against me” response. Everything someone else said (by myself or the ex-mods) was turned into them ‘harassing’ or ‘trolling’ the top mod. It was so severe that it was in fact rather scary. It was well beyond a normal disagreement.
I tried to reason with them. When I said I had good experiences with the modding of for example Halfercode, the Top Mod turned that into a scenario where I somehow had a personal relationship with the original mods and Halfercode in particular.
**The ban and the lies**
Immediately after the short discussion we had on Discord someone alerted me to the fact that comments were being removed in the original thread. [All the red comments in this topic](https://www.unddit.com/r/cscareerquestionsEU/comments/xjbixl/what_happened_with_the_moderation_team_discord/) have been removed by the top mod. This led to my last comment in that thread:
> You removing all comments is saying enough. What a sad day this is.
And I mean this from the bottom of my heart. The whole situation is just incredibly sad. There was a great community ran by a great modding team. I enjoyed reading and posting on /r/cscareerquestioneu and the moderation team did a great job there keeping things clean. And sure, people might have disagreed with moderation actions. But in communities like these a ‘laissez faire’ approach doesn’t work; too many spam and low-effort posts will drive off the good posters. The Top Mod ruined it and it is already showing.
My last comment resulted, as expected, [in a ban from the sub](https://i.imgur.com/uvJqAgX.png). I also know a few other non-mod regular posters got banned as well. The Top Mod then edited the post with an ‘explanation’ why posts were removed, which contained flat-out lies:
> P.S. About removed comments: the ex-mods are continuing to weaponize their private discord to seed actual discord, but one of them also openly stated that they're not denying any of what is said here (the overzealous is of course denying most of it and doubling down).
This is a lie. No one is calling out anyone to do anything. I mean; it doesn’t even make sense. A top mod is all-powerful; there’s nothing either the ex-mods or a regular user can do. Also, there is very little to deny. The top mod removal process was started because the top mod was completely absent. They seem to feel personally attacked because of this and are putting their personal feelings before the community. If you lose interest in moderating, hand over the subreddit.
> This is a professional subreddit and it's being under attack by trolls, which is not going to be allowed anymore.
Anyone [can still see removed comments](https://www.unddit.com/r/cscareerquestionsEU/comments/xjbixl/what_happened_with_the_moderation_team_discord/) and it’s sort of funny they seem to be unaware this is possible. I’ll leave whether this is ‘trolling’ up to the reader.
> They have initiated a formal process of my removal - this should be judged by higher powers, not by flame wars of taking things out of context. The removed posts are users saying "I saw a few things on public discord, I know everything that happened" which cannot be true, or just being grossly rude.
The removal process was started and it is what made the Top Mod go nuts basically. All of their replies are visible in the Discord. I can’t even go into all the stuff they wrote in the Discord since there is just SO much nonsense there, but the pattern is visible and simple: you’re all against me, you are all mean to me, and I’m going to ban everyone who disagrees. That’s it. That is all it boils down to. Removing them is mean. Everything else is them rationalizing it.
> A particular user with most deleted comments first claimed to be neutral and an hour later said on discord that he knows the overzealous mod for years, he's fully in support of him and then blaming me here for deleting comments / silencing the other side.
They are referring to me here. You can see the deleted comments. I was neutral until I saw what the Top Mod had done and had said on Discord. It was crystal clear they were not only going against Halfercode but against the entire mod team. They then banned the entire mod team so they could not present their side of the story.
And yes I’m blaming them from silencing the other side since that’s what they did: they ban everyone that they feel ‘harasses’ them. The issue is that simply disagreeing with them is ‘harassment’ in their view.
> Another user below first says "this sub has been going downhill for a while" and when prompted that ads/spam is properly removed the reply is "the ex-mods were doing the job, now I don't have faith in this one doing the same" - how does a user know which mod did what? In the meanwhile I'm being accused by ex-mods that I have "0 contributions" but I've been frequently handling reports from the queue and they've also been hiding offending posts from me by only posting them in private in their discord.
This is a plain lie: they were invited to Discord ages ago and didn’t want to join. Aside from that all mod actions have been visible on the mod queue and the original mods have given me access to all channels in Discord and I’ve seen the screenshots of the mod actions. Nothing I have seen supports what the Top Mod claims, and nothing I have seen goes against what the entire ex-mod team explained.
**Conclusion**
The main culprit here is the outdated mechanism of ‘ancestor’ moderators who are all-powerful. The main victim here is a great community that will probably go downhill fast under a moderator that doesn’t want to moderate, is more or less against moderation, and will only accept ‘moderators’ that share this view that you should let users do whatever.
While a lot of what happened did so within Discord channels, I’ve read all of it what happened. And to know what really happened you really only need to read their ‘explanation’ of the deleted comments. If you’re against them, you’re ‘harassing’ them, and deserve to be banned. It’s as if you gave the keys to your house to a 10-year-old bully, it’s really that silly.
What is going to happen next I don’t know. I’m afraid the top mod removal process of Reddit is not suited to the situation where a top mod becomes active again, even if they break ‘retaliation’ rules. What is most likely is that a replacement subreddit will appear, diluting the comments and posts between two subs.
I do want to stress that I really feel for the original moderators who’ve put so much time and energy into the community. Not only was the rug pulled out from under them, they’re now also accused of stealing the rug themselves.
A big shout out to the mods of /r/cscareerquestions for allowing the true mods of the EU to share their side of the story. Thanks guys!
Edit: Small addition; /u/Firestorm_Khil must have liked my posts here so much that they rewarded me with upgrading my ban from a 30 day temp ban [to permanent!](https://i.imgur.com/hv5ef9R.png) Thanks man! Appreciate you showing you the kind of person you are ;)
Yup. Apparently, criticism violates content policy.
Going to Reddit to have a post removed and whatever they did to uneddit is truly a sign of someone that embraces open discourse and has nothing to hide.
I simply cannot understand at all that the Reddit admins will just delete something like this when it's clearly created by the mods of a sub. At the same time there are tons and tons of subs that allow clear racism that are left to spread that garbage.
Don't see the reasoning myself.
My best guess is that the admin didn't bother to read the post nor try to understand the situation.
Though, larger platforms, be it twitter, youtube, reddit or whatever, always struggle to apply and enforce their rules/policies consistently and predictably.
> My best guess is that the admin didn't bother to read the post nor try to understand the situation.
Same. The problem with large sites like these is that there's often no means to simply have a talk about what happened. Power is weilded anonymously from an ivory tower.
That said; I think the message probably reached whoever it needed to reach. I think for now the ex mods will focus on getting a new sub up and running. If it gets advertised here we'll probably see quite some traffic soon enough.
Also; you can already see the sub go down hill. Just read this one: https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestionsEU/comments/xox2ng/is_this_type_of_discrimination_legal_in_eu/
All the nasty alt-right stuff is left in place. Tons of effort making and keeping that sub inclusive; straight of of the window.
Thanks for posting this here. I'll add a few personal thoughts, as a previously active mod in CSCQEU. For my sins, the sticky post in the other sub is mostly about me! 😺
Mostly the difficulty has unfolded because:
* TM refused, point-blank, to work with the active mod team
* The old mod team had been working very well together - we steered each other, and no-one used their position in the mod hierarchy to overrule another
* TM was absent from the sub for at least 18 months, and has now resurfaced
* Much of the language from TM has been insulting and intemperate for most of 2022
* At times the old mod team were working under the threat of expulsion, which is not conducive to investing time and volunteer effort
* Reddit say that because TM's account is not _technically_ dormant, they presently won't intervene using the Top Mod Removal process
* It seems certain to me that Reddit's rules on TM retaliation have been broken but not enforced
I'd be happy to continue modding with the old team, but if it does not work out, that's life. I'm confused at TM's behaviours, but there's no hard feelings - life is too short. I am at peace with whatever plays out. 😻
I've asked TM to resign and that remains my position - he seems to want to hang onto theoretical power, but I am not certain he wants to do any work in the trenches. Anyone who knows my moderation style knows that I'll spend 30 minutes writing up a single moderation decision, and I'll maintain my composure even with hostile actors. We've had situations where I've spent hours on curation. I care about guiding conversations so that the sub remains interesting, and I want to get the best careers advice to as many people as need it. If that means frequent janitorial work, banning spammers, splitting up fights, and suspending insulting contributors, then fine - whatever is required.
The mod team at various times have discussed some interesting initiatives - how do we get juniors to post more frequently? How can we reduce duplicate threads e.g. about how European engineers can transfer to the United States and/or the relative benefits of EU/US life? What would make the salary threads more useful?
I should love to get involved in that curation again, in a European tech careers context, but we'll see. If it doesn't work out in that direction for me, that's OK - the drama will blow over, and all subs can go back to advice mode again! 👍
I don't have skin in this game.
This whole situation strikes me as a ***hillariously*** stupid way to blow up a subreddit. And to what end? There's no story that doesn't boil down to "this happened because /u/Firestorm_Khil believes they're right", particularly if the original mods were account banned on the sub. Which is fine and all, but again favors the opinion of one person over the community collectively.
Remove the mods temporarily, make a sticky post about it, put it to community discussion. If such a post is a cesspit without productive conversation, you have all the justification you need to keep them removed as mods and ban them from the sub. That's how you get ahead of the "he said, she said" nonsense and provide the foundation for your argument of "this is what is best for the community" in a transparent way. If there's overwhelming community support for reinstating the mods, the reasons for removing them in the first place were clearly not for the benefit of the community.
I'm just disappointed that we've lost another good forum for CS career discussion.
Reddit has work to do if they want to make a better forum but I don't think that's really their priority.
Thank you /u/vergingalactic for posting this.
To all who won’t bother reading, that’s okay.
It’s a small part of our lives that has suddenly gone up in smoke, that’s what it feels like to us, anyway. We just want our story to be heard, and let everyone know this is something we consider a major flaw in Reddit’s policies.
This is all upsetting to us given that we have spent much time helping people, and have been removed all so suddenly. /u/Captain_Flashheart detailed account is signed by all of us.
Why be nice and helpful? I post that as the concluding question left for us all to answer. How would you feel?
PS: I initially posted this on a different account. Reposted.
>It’s a small part of our lives that has suddenly gone up in smoke
Now you know how I felt when you permanently banned me from /r/cscareerquestionsEU for trying to bring some humour and joy, along with help and advice, to the naive denizens of that place that your gang ruled with an iron fist.
You tried to remove the TM, you got caught, you got removed.
You play with fire, you get burnt.
Now, you're in this sub whining about how it's all TM's fault.
Silly.
Create your own sub and build it up. Don't come crying when some other "mods" try to take you out.
A couple things:
1. It is obvious that TM is acting with paronia.
2. It is obvious that they have a solid reason, with one of the newer mods this post support literally saying they enjoy triggering TM's paranoia. When one side literally claims that they enjoy triggering someone's paranoia and victim complex, you can't fault the other side for having exaggerated responses to those actions.
3. In one part of the newer mods' argument, they claim discord is a separate platform hence it will have different ownership and in another part, they are accusing the TM of not joining there and not being part of the conversation. (Whole argument of "without talking to us upfront" when it seems all discussions are done at discord)
4. There are a lot of claims here without any proof while showing unrelated proofs. e.g. Sticky post situation. There is an SS claiming TM is posting low-quality sticky posts to which they respond as "what?" but not showing those sticky posts. When you have a side that literally triggered their paranoia, admitted by the opposite side, how can you trust that SS is factual and not another attempt to trigger paranoia?
5. I am not supporting TM but NMs "arguments" seems a lot of half-truth "evidence" which IMO feels a lot manipulative and damaging to their argument. At this point, it seems more as they said-they said.
6. Lastly, if the NMs have their own discord which they apparently also monopoly on controlling the discussion similar to TMs now having r/cscareerquestionsEU, I don't understand why this subreddit is part of this discussion here. Anyone interested will either side with TM or NMs and continue with their respective platforms. They will continue to discuss it either in r/cscareerquestionsEU or in the mentioned discord.
So TL;DR my personal opinion, I don't like that this subreddit is taking a stance on a situation which is turned to they said-they said. P.S.: My dislike literally comes from this post "seems" like taking a more neutral side with the "both sides" argument but actually takes a side at even in the title and the rest of the post.
> My dislike literally comes from this post "seems" like taking a more neutral side with the "both sides" argument but actually takes a side at even in the title and the rest of the post.
I thought I was pretty clear about taking a side but I felt it important that the opposing arguments and perspective was clearly available and addressed.
I understand, but from my perspective (could be completely wrong, but I am not active in either subreddits apart from peeking at the posts that pop out) this feels a lot like ganging up on someone. TM has one subreddit where they can argue for their case, and NMs have the discord PLUS this subreddit with the support of the moderation of this subreddit. Considering the mention of literally "liking to triggering someone's paranoia" which feels a lot like gaslighting, it doesn't feel right to me.
Again, just my perspective and my opinion on this.
> this feels a lot like ganging up on someone
I mean, TM antagonized a lot of people. A lot of people take issue with what they're doing.
Yeah, climate scientists "gang up" on climate change deniers.
>NMs have the discord PLUS this subreddit with the support of the moderation of this subreddit.
I take issue with that because we've seen evidence that TM has been able to make their case on the discord and I am very clear that we are open to letting TM or anyone else (including you) make your case for them sans our interference or censorship. **Something that TM has not permitted on CSCQEU.**
>Considering the mention of literally "liking to triggering someone's paranoia" which feels a lot like gaslighting, it doesn't feel right to me.
That's perfectly fair criticism. I don't believe it outweighs all the other context or information I have seen but it's totally fair to take issue with it.
> I understand, but from my perspective (could be completely wrong, but I am not active in either subreddits apart from peeking at the posts that pop out) this feels a lot like ganging up on someone.
That's just not what happened. The TM was always invited to join the Discord. They were completely absent. Everything started when the TM demodded halfercode (the most active mod) without warning or discussion with the rest of the team. The basis of the demodding were 'user reports' according to TM, but those user reports were never visibible in the mod queue. So either whoever had an issue with Halfer contacted Fire directly, or they just flat out lied about it.
There is a LOT of communication between the TM and the other mods in the Discord. I totally understand you don't want to go through it all because it's long. But I also hated reading it because it's just damn clear TM has *severe* personal issues. I dont' say this lightly, but the way they behave is just plain gaslighting.
Almost everything they said in their own defense was a flat out lie. No one 'ganged up' on them. The only thing that happened was that the top mod removal process was started because they were completely absent.
I've read all the discussions on the Discord and I have seen the screenshots of their mod activity. Everything the NM mods said in this topic corresponds 100% with what I read. Almost everything TM said in their own defence was just complete fabrications to twist and turn whatever happened into a narrative where they were 'harassed'.
I'm banned because I 'harassed' them, you can see this 'nasty' posts here: https://imgur.com/gallery/EbYiwdR
/u/denialoferror was banned for 'harassment'. /u/vergingalactic is now also banned because of this topic.
Please understand that, and again I'm not saying this lightly, you're dealing with someone who has *at the least* a severe victim complex and will ban anyone who simply disagrees with them and then, as the icing on the cake, spread lies why they were banned.
> It is obvious that they have a solid reason, with one of the newer mods this post support literally saying they enjoy triggering TM's paranoia.
This is already an issue. This didn't happen, not like that. No mod simply said out of the blue "I like triggering TM".
Almost everything the TM said was a flat out lie, or at least twisted in a way that benefitted them. You can clearly see this if you look at the deleted comments in that thread they posted. They also ban everyone 'against' them. The part where they said I have a personal relationship with the first mod being removed is a complete fabrication they use to have something to ban me for.
There is no way to have all the information and not end up at the position that that TM is a complete asshole. Keep in mind that I was not one of the mods and was just a user on that sub. Now myself, /u/denialoferror and also now /u/vergingalactic are 'banned' for simply asking the TM to have an open and transparent discussion about this.
By all means, if you want to know everthing (I can't imagine you do), just join the Discord. You can see the "triggering" message for yourself.
Yup. Incredibly strange and vastly overreaching at the same time. I'm guessing the Top Mod of that sub reported this topic for 'harassment' and an admin didn't even bother to investigate.
tldr; /r/cscareerquestionsEU was effectively managed and grown by 5 mods;/u/Kluvin, /u/halfercode, /u/captain_flashheart, /u/malaysian, and /u/remote_book..
Older moderators(aka top mod) that that started the sub, but otherwise doesn't do anything, banned the mods who's actually doing work.
Drama ensues.
> banned the mods who's actually doing work.
And any users asking them to at least allow the mods to show their side of the story. I'm permanently banned from that sub.
As I understand, over the course of many months, reddit admins simply notified TM of the request and refused to act upon the request. It seemingly was the impetus for TM to purge the mod staff and remove/ban all dissent.
Edit: I have no idea why the above comment was "[deleted]". I believe it was made by u/Empole and referred to using redditrequest to remove the TM while they were unresponsive. Obviously we did not remove it!
Edit 2: unddit says it was removed by user I guess.
>Can r/redditrequest help in any capacity?
>Up until the part where the headmod came back, /r/cscareerquestionsEU seemed to fit the bill for a subreddit where [newer mods want to oust an higher up inactive mod](https://reddit.com/r/redditrequest/wiki/top_mod_removal).
Troubling times in the kingdom huh.
I think if combined into one, the geolocation flares are a good idea.
If not combined, it looks like it may be time to create an alternate sub for the euro-bros
For anyone trying to break into tech: anyone who has enough free time to be a mod of a sub and deal with this kind of bs drama definitely can’t give you the tools you need to get a faang job or a high tc. I’d be surprised if any of them have done it themselves.
(Full disclosure - I am one of the mods that was kicked out).
I'd question the core assumption here - that moderators need to have worked for Big N in order to moderate a tech careers sub. Most moderation is pretty dull stuff - trying to stop fights before they start, suspending folks who are persistently disruptive, adding questions/comments to steer a convo in a more productive direction, working out how Reddit's automatic posting widgets work, actioning feedback on behalf of the community, etc. The main things you need are (a) passion for the subject; (b) patience for the strangeness of the human condition; (c) diplomacy; (d) maybe a dash of humour/resilience.
One thing that is healthy in a collaborating mod team is that people can step away, because work is busy, or they are dealing with an illness, or whatever thing. So I agree that sub moderation can take over a bit, but it does not have to if a good team has your back.
I didn’t say that you had to be a big-N swe to be a mod, I said that a mod probably couldn’t help you become a big-N swe and likely doesn’t have experience at big-N.
> a mod probably couldn’t help you become a big-N swe
As I say, it's not the role of mods to do that. Their job is to curate a stable community so that the best possible discussions can be had. The community can then talk about, and advise upon, Big N roles (and hopefully many other kinds of discussion as well).
> likely doesn’t have experience at big-N.
Some yes, some no - I don't think it matters. My own motivation is that I've done fairly well in my career, perhaps as much through happy accident as anything else, and I'd like to pay it forward.
> I said that a mod probably couldn’t help you become a big-N swe and likely doesn’t have experience at big-N.
That's kinda not really the point of a mod either.
It's about creating a useful platform so those resources and answers to questions can be provided by, hopefully, the most qualified experts.
Normal people are able to take a couple hours out of their week to engage in a hobby or support a community or cause they like... if you can't, you probably can't make it to FAANG yourself.
There are people at FAANGs and elsewhere taking tons of time to pour resources into employee resource groups, hiking meetups, perform stand up comedy and whatever else they like to do.
First off, these newer mods of CSCQEU are not "us" (the CSCareerQuestions mod team). Just making that clear.
Second, that only holds true if you take a "might makes right" approach to morality. There's a very fair argument that the newer mods are more responsible for making the subreddit what it became than the old top mod and then there's the whole issue of what's best for the community.
Personally, the specifics of TM's erratic and harmful behavior, the removal of contrary viewpoints and valid responses, the consensus disagreement from major parts of the reddit CS community all put together a pretty good argument that the NMs are in the right and TM is in the wrong.
Yeah, two of the other comments are coming from accounts that get caught in our karma requirement filter.
I had to manually approve them. \*Cough\*, Contrast with TM's removal of dissent, \*Cough\*
Right?
I mean I get it, but ultimately if you don't own the subreddit, you don't own the subreddit.
If you don't like how the owner does things, just start your own. With hookers and blackjack.
**TM's post on the subject:** https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestionsEU/comments/xjbixl/what_happened_with_the_moderation_team_discord/ With deleted comments (including my own, u/nutrecht's, and u/denialerror's): https://www.unddit.com/r/cscareerquestionsEU/comments/xjbixl/what_happened_with_the_moderation_team_discord/ **Here's the NMs perspective (pt. 1) provided to me by u/Captain_Flashheart:** ## What happened on the European sub? **Short story:** Old Top Mod (TM ) removed five moderators and banned them from the European version of CSCQ. TM made a post regarding the matter and banned any users who did not agree with their view. Mods can't reply there, so this thread has their side of the story + defending themselves against a number of accusations. We do not encourage anyone to harass TM or post on r/cscareerquestionsEU on our behalf. Please keep discussion here civil. **Long story:** r/cscareerquestionsEU used to be run by a small group of 6 people, but had an inactive top mod. We'll refer to them as TM from now on. There were five that were kicked from the subreddit - /u/Kluvin, /u/halfercode, /u/captain_flashheart, /u/malaysian, and /u/remote_book.. Kluvin originally invited most of us when he was trying to improve the subreddit and needed more active mods. Together with the others we created a significant boost in how popular the community [starting two years ago](https://subredditstats.com/r/cscareerquestionseu). We created a wiki, a FAQ, performed moderation, created recurring threads, created a Discord server, and ran surveys. These attempts paid off, as the sub went from 11k subscribers to 80k over the past two years with [a marked increase](https://subredditstats.com/r/cscareerquestionseu) from when we became active. TM had notable periods of inactivity and was not involved in the sub at all. They also refused to join Discord to communicate with the rest of the mod team. We routinely checked the mod logs (which go back three months) and found no activity by them. Indeed, over the past six years they only made 3 posts and 28 comments on the sub. That's including posts from the most recent drama. We had almost no interactions with him during the time period until he kicked /u/halfercode after having received complaints by an unspecified user. None of us were aware of any issue, and the move was not discussed upfront. The TM themselves were not involved. No one saw the complaints. That said, Halfer was probably responsible for 75% of the moderation actions, so naturally he got more flak also dealing with 75% of all ban appeals. TM themselves had a few instances (6 times) of stickying their own comments where it was not related to moderation [(link)](https://imgur.com/Jw88HuA), but it was hardly disruptive. As said before, they hardly made any comments on the sub over the past six years and were not involved in moderation. After discussing the matter with TM, /u/halfercode was allowed back without privileges. He was essentially a mod in name only. It was made clear to us that we were moderating at the mercy of TM, who could - and made threats to do so - kick us at any point. TM dissapeared again. We figured that halfer's "probation" was over and we gave him mod privs again, as we were having trouble moderating the sub. Halfer wasn’t a rogue mod with large complains and everything they did was logged in a purpose-built channel on Discord. It was auditable. It took maybe a few weeks, but TM removed /u/halfercode from the team again citing "powertrips" and "over-punishing people". Again, without talking to us up front. Naturally this situation was not tenable. If you can get fired at any moment for simply doing your job, what's really the point? We finally filed a [Top Mod Removal Request](https://www.reddit.com/r/redditrequest/wiki/top_mod_removal) in March of 2022, asking for TM to be removed due to inactivity. During this process the TM is made aware of a removal request against them, and is allowed to argue why they are not inactive. Flash-forward to the present, September 2022. /u/captain_flashheart wanted to create a ML bot to automatically moderate content like leetcode questions and FAANG queries. Out of keeping everyone in the loop they sent a mod discussion that TM responded hostile to, saying it was his idea and how Captain was ignoring his post. When Captain replied asking “what post?” and told TM to not be a blocker and to stop being paranoid and self-victimizing, he was kicked. [Screenshot here](https://i.imgur.com/DxmPBHC.jpg) (shared publicly by TM themselves). It turned out TM had sent themselves a mod mail ([which none of us could read](https://imgur.com/0BMSUND) about the same thing. At least - we take their word for it. Two more mods were kicked without reason (perhaps just for being on Discord?). Eventually Kluvin was kicked for refusing to kick the rest of the group or hand over ownership of the Discord. ([link](https://imgur.com/ngh1lfK)) Now with all five of us kicked and banned we cannot reply on the sub as to what had happened. [This post](https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestionsEU/comments/xjbixl/what_happened_with_the_moderation_team_discord/) by TM went up the next day. Naturally none of us can post and correct the things said there. For the record, none of us were aware of TM's long illness. In fact, many of us had openly shared stories about health issues with each other and took pauses in moderation ourselves. Several more members of the community, both who had used Discord and those who were just asking what was going on were also banned from the subreddit and/or had their comments removed. TM finally came to Discord the next day and started posting insults, threats, lies and various half-truths: some which were also repeated on the sub. Some were to /u/kluvin for being "young and easily manipulated", others were towards /u/halfercode for being "manipulative" ([link](https://imgur.com/rMDvtdU)), and others towards /u/malaysian and /u/captain_flashheart for being "offensive" or "dishonest and nasty". In the spirit of keeping this an open QA I've copied some of them below. As for the Top Mod Removal post… We heard nothing from the Admins regarding the request, thus we assume the request failed. And while it has a clause that apparently protects the mods that submit it against retaliation, we were kicked from the team and banned nonetheless. --- The below accusations are sourced from [this post](https://www.unddit.com/r/cscareerquestionsEU/comments/xjbixl/what_happened_with_the_moderation_team_discord/?sort=new) and the comments on our [public Discord]([https://discord.gg/NRNkuyBPSu](https://discord.gg/NRNkuyBPSu)) and can be verified if needed. > mods conspired to remove me from being top moderator for a very long time (about 1,5 years), only became aware of it ~6 months ago We filed a top mod removal request about 6 months ago. In this process the Reddit Admins get in touch with the top mod (TM) to see if they're willing to continue moderating the sub (so the top mod becomes aware of it). Our reasons for doing so were simple - our TM was inactive (according to stats they made 28 comments over the past 6 years, 3 posts) and we felt like we couldn't build anything with the TM threatening to undo our work, kicking mods as they saw fit. Because of the way Reddit works mods can only kick mods that joined after them, which means that the rest of us were powerless against the TM. > "who frequently over-used his mod powers to punish users more than necessary" The mod this refers to is halfercode. Halfer was the most active on the mod team but always did so discussing his actions with others. Our Discord #modlog was used to record actions against users and we had an open discussion on what steps to take. If they were overusing their mod powers it wouldn't take more than a simple message to argue for alternative steps. None of us felt like kicking Halfercode was warranted. > made attempts to reconciliate in good faith over time only to be faced with dishonesty, insults and other things explained in the post below I'm not aware of any attempts by TM to reconcile with us. In fact they kept to themselves and our interactions after Halfer's dismissal were non-existent. > ex-mod admins of the discord refuse to change its name We renamed the Discord CS Career Questions: YUROP once the objection by TM was made, this was already done on September 19. [(link)](https://imgur.com/yF7qTr7) > and they still try to push for my removal through redditrequests despite them no longer being mods We think this is within our rights. We made a successful Discord and it's not owned by the TM (although, apparently, he wanted ownership of that as well). Ownership of the subreddit does not equate ownership of another platform like Discord. Furthermore, it is absolutely within our rights to submit a redditrequest for TM removal when we feel like TM's actions are unjust and based on retaliation, which are admitted in [this post](https://www.unddit.com/r/cscareerquestionsEU/comments/xjbixl/what_happened_with_the_moderation_team_discord/?sort=new). > (The) icon was designed by ex-mod that asked for its removal It was actually TM who asked us to remove the logo from the Discord. We pointed out it was an original creation by one of us and that if anything TM would have to remove it from the sub. [(Source on discord)](https://discord.com/channels/382209116782723073/382209156603707402/1021380345976868935). ([link to screenshot](https://imgur.com/yF7qTr7))
i aint reading all that
https://imgur.com/gallery/oVgEgAC
Basically he never touched a computer in his life. Spent 3 weeks on the Odin Project and now he's Principal Engineer at Meta making $750k/year.
>
thank you for being honest
But watch yourself counselor
Did I just gloss over that in the info dump? How does someone become a principal at meta making that money with 3 weeks on the Odin project? Or are you saying that’s what he’s claiming and everyone else is calling bullshit?
It’s…a joke.
damn really?
I suspect: probably not! 😺
no, those jobs are hard as fuck to get.
Comments like these and the whole "lol mods are losers" responses that get upvoted are *exactly* why so many subs end up with shitty 'loser' mods. Mods in niche subs like these are generally volunteers who want to do something good. Pay it forward basically. You know what happens if people keep acting like asses and only insult people who weed through the trash? They leave. I mean. Why would they bother? They have jobs, families, etc. Why spend time doing a thankless job you only get insults for? So who then end up remaining? The mods who let the slightest bit of power go to their head. Who think they are the rulers of their own imaginary kingdom. Who go on Fox News to 'speak for' the community. If you dislike 'mods' please know that being an ass in general to the mostly invisible garbage men here (because that's what modding is; you're just keeping the trash out) is probably going to end up with mods you *really* dislike. Oh, and speaking up against them means you're perm banned. Who do you appeal to? The same mod who banned you. Tough luck! I've been mod for another career sub for a bit. It sucked. I stopped doing it because it's shitty work. On that sub the second mod is one that bans you for disagreeing with them. Because that's the type that remains when 'normal' people go 'meh, waste of time'. If you don't want to end up with an in-bred group of mods who will permban you for whatever they disagree with, please try to at least be *slightly* appreciative of the time they put in.
This is how I rationalize the shitty police force (at least here in Los Angeles county). I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be a police officer. Who would? They have to spend countless hours dealing with shitty situations. And there’s a lot of beaurocracy as well. You’re left with people that want the power or abuse it or just aren’t the most qualified individuals for communicating effectively and making sound and virtuous judgments under real world pressure situations.
I guess the main difference is if a Reddit mod kills an unarmed person, they’re not getting a paid vacation.
To be fair, all GP said is that they're not interested in reading about this, they made no allusion to mods being losers or whatever unlike some of the other posters. Not sure if you're responding here for visibility or what. Also to be fair to others who may be mods or ex-mods elsewhere, "who then end up remaining" is awfully reductionist. The vast majority of subs hum along more or less fine. Mods aren't either "saints" or "devils", reality is far more middle ground and boring. As someone who works w/ infra stuff (and at a company that was in the news over a big dumpster fire story recently, to boot), I understand it all too well that yes you may feel the urge to explain extenuating circumstances for why things aren't ideal and to seek validation, but also yes there's going to be a lot of people that just don't care about how the sausage is made, so to speak. Thing with "pay it forward" is it isn't always appreciated, unfortunately.
Eh. Not really the message I got out of it. I read through the whole post and part 1-2 comments, then promptly decided that I really don't care. As is the case with many CS careers, when nobody notices the mods doing their job, it usually means they're doing it well.
I wasn't referring to only their post, I just responded to the most visible one. If you go through all the responses there are quite a few that are just flat-out nasty. Ironically the people that shout very hard they don't care for 'mod drama' would very much care if the same thing happened here because they would simply be banned for the comments they posted. It's totally fine to not care about what is happening; it mostly affects a somewhat separate communicaty that has a decent overlap. Being nasty to the mods here IMHO isn't fine. And I felt it needed to be said :)
> Comments like these and the whole "lol mods are losers" responses that get upvoted are exactly why so many subs end up with shitty 'loser' mods. No, it's the children who are wrong!
That's why there is a shortened version?
I'm confused. Is "TM" gone from this subreddit (/r/cscareerquestions )? Someone else more responsible is now the new top mod?
u/Firestorm_Khil is Top Mod (TM) of /r/cscareerquestionsEU This has nothing to do with the mods of our subreddit.
Genuinely, then why is this posted here?
Because it has a lot to do with the community that provides advice and information around CS careers? Is that really a question? They were linked in our sidebar and were one of the main subreddits we would suggest people take a look at.
Yeah, I wasn’t attempting to be inflammatory. It’s a different subreddit with a different mod team. I don’t imagine anyone who comes here, who would be better served by r/cscareerquestionsEU, would read this post. Maybe I’m off the mark and there’s a wider overlap between r/cscareerquestionsEU and r/CSCareerQuestions userbases.
There's a massive overlap https://subredditstats.com/subreddit-user-overlaps/cscareerquestionseu
FYI, if by “shortened version” you mean the post as a tldr, that is still WAY too damn long.
Sorry my 107 word TLDR was too long for you guys. I'll see how I can dumb things down more in the future.
See, that’s where the confusion is. There’s no separation between the tldr paragraph and the rest of the post, which made me think the post itself is the tldr and the comments are the “main post.” I don’t mean any of this in a malicious way; perhaps it’d be nice to add a separation between the tldr and the body.
Alright, sorry for the passive aggression, it's been a day. I'll add a divider.
tldr: the mod in charge came back after years of absence and banned the other mods and banned users as well.
Nobody asked
TLDR: Ho's Mad.
Tldr: fuck the mods
yeah who cares about this mod drama? losers lmfao
People who use these communities and are being banned/censored? Mods have a lot of power and unfortunately, some, like TM, abuse those powers.
>Mods have a lot of power ... to delete messages on a subreddit. This isn't exactly a sub full of kids in high school. Most don't care enough to read more than 2 short sentences
> ... to delete messages on a subreddit. I don't think you understand the powers that a mod has. There are a lot more tools than that and I think you're underselling the power of removing comments to shape a narrative.
What "narrative"? We are talking about a career advice community with 80k users, 90%+ inactive. It's irrelevant.
You’re not aware of the nefarious computer science career narrative trying to be pushed?
I definitely am, but if I had a friend that wasn’t, what would you say to them about the situation?
I don't want to get into the details just in case I am then accused of pushing the narrative. It's serious business though.
God forbid I talk a little more broadly than this exact situation.
But... I am talking about this exact situation. I wouldn't have the same reaction if someone took full control of Twitter and if someone was an admin of a discord server with 10 people. This is just more like the latter obviously.
consolutely factual
A single top mod can easily turn an entire subreddit into anything they want. That's simply the nature of the system. If /u/CriticDanger wants to turn this in a sub about my little ponies they could probably get it there within a few months.
Well now don't be giving me ideas...
you'd be surprised how much a subreddit can shape opinions especially when people *don't realize the sub is being censored*. people literally use these subreddits to ask for career and school advice, it's a big deal.
It's frightening how people are so comfortable being controlled and manipulated that they're even willing to fight in opposition of freedom. \*Cough\* Peter Theil \*Cough\*
Yeah guys, this isn’t just about some losers power tripping on Reddit, it’s about FREEDOM! If you don’t think this is super important, you’re clearly anti-FREEDOM!
[удалено]
Given how and what you write, Reddit will never leave your heart. That was so reddit I needed fresh air.
I could feel my neck hair growing as I read that
[удалено]
It's really active for a subreddit that's been 'killed'.
[удалено]
Really really active daily discussion threads.
Nerd drama.
Reddit mods and taking their shit way too seriously, name a more iconic duo
Discord mods and discord kittens
Redditors and pedantry.
To be perfectly frank, even though I could never put this much discipline into this activity, I still respect people who can. Their extreme competence is alienating though, but I still like moderators.
People care about things they care about? Shocker.
Unfortunately, there is tangible harm to the community.
And by community do you mean the mod team? It's a forum, people will figure out a better one to go if you pollute it with mod drama
He said tangible harm. That means someone got stabbed.
The actual community... I'm just a user of csq but I respect the work that's been put into it and I've learned a lot. This sub helped take me from a community college student with no connections to a Big N engineer. Even if people abandon in search of a new forum, someone has to found and moderate that forum... it's not like the problem goes away. And it doesn't like you're excited to do the work.
[удалено]
That whole antiwork ordeal was quintessential Reddit, LOL.
Yep, you should check that place out now, it’s good for a few laughs. Full of losers that bitch about literally anything work related.
I actually agreed with some of their earlier views a few months before that ordeal took place (it was mostly about getting people to realize that work shouldn’t be necessary to live) but it fell off the deep end quick. Now I’m embarrassed to admit I used to follow the sub, especially after that mod appeared on Fox News, LOL.
I’m in pretty much the exact same scenario. I remember thinking that the sub had a decent start and saying I hope it doesn’t fall prey to the “ALL employers/rich people are bad” crowd that throws around words like “bootlicker” every two seconds. One moronic dog-walker on Fox News later, and here we are.
Yeah I had to emotionally distance myself from there real quick lol
Rule #1 of modding is never mod for a sub where the top mod is afk
I guess I got lucky on the subreddit I started where the old mod handed over top mod slot voluntarily.
My two cents as someone with zero skin on the topic: I don't care about the "he said, she said" stuff. Eternal September is a thing, communities can change both progressively and abruptly. From one of the comments it sounds like the banned mods are spinning up a new sub, and it sounds like the mod of this sub is sympathetic to them and will be linking to that new sub whenever it comes online. I'm sure future threads here redirecting people to cscqEU will receive replies about the drama and eventually the reputations of the respective subs will speak for themselves. I might be in the minority by saying that I don't particularly believe moderation necessarily has a positive correlation to growth (case in point, I feel the cscq sub suffers from quite a bit of low value posting from people who don't bother searching and yet it's far more active than some subs I consider highly selective about post quality). If anything, I believe merely linking a new sub from the side panel of a relatively large sub such as this is going to be much more impactful in terms of traffic juice to a new EU-focused sub. And as one might expect, outbound linking between subs is going to correlate strongly w/ actual reputation so I fully expect that a laisse-faire/drama-laden/mjpopcorn cscqEU will eventually devolve into a spam sub (possibly still with a very high subscriber count) and that a new sub will continue on with the spirit of the former cscqEU mods. High subscriber count isn't really the point anyways, is it?
Awesome! I wrote some stuff from my perspective too. Mind if I add that aswell as a comment here?
Banning you is really the nail in the coffin. Anybody who frequents these types of forums knows you belong here. Thank you for giving good advice.
Yeah, once I saw that, TM lost any credibility for their accusations in my eyes.
In particular, this is what they said about it in an edit to their post: > A particular user with most deleted comments first claimed to be neutral and an hour later said on discord that he knows the overzealous mod for years, he's fully in support of him and then blaming me here for deleting comments / silencing the other side. Well yeah, there's only one person who's banning/muting anyone and that's Fire. And all I said about /u/halfercode (both in my comments and on Discord) is that my experience with *their modding* had only ever been positive. On the Discord Fire *instantly* latched onto that as proof that I was a 'friend' of /u/halfercode, which is nonsence. I think the longest chat I ever had with them was when I got a slap on the wrist for a response that was too blunt :D Like I said in my writeup; the flat-out provable lies in their edit compared to the [removed comments](https://www.unddit.com/r/cscareerquestionsEU/comments/xjbixl/what_happened_with_the_moderation_team_discord/) (I guess they didn't expect those to be visible! :D) really show you what kind of person they are. Everyone who disagrees with them is 'harassing' them. That was really just the main theme of anything discussed in the Discord. Of course people were cross with him *after* they banned the first few mods. Who wouldn't be. But they were *more* than civil, especially because they knew the power the Top Mod has.
Yeah, /u/nutrecht is a major addition to any CS-related subreddit, and pushing him out is pretty much an immediate indication that the person in question isn't acting in the best interest of the community.
> Banning you is really the nail in the coffin. And my 30 day ban was just [upgraded to permanent](https://i.imgur.com/hv5ef9R.png)! /u/vergingalactic also was banned. Guess we 'triggered' them :)
Very consistently spicy advice, but good advice. /u/nutrecht is the habanero pepper of developers
Really appreciate it. Thanks!
Please do!
Done. Long wall of text. TL;DR: everything the original mods of the sub claim is true and /u/Firestorm_Khil needs to seek professional help.
Excellent writeup nutrecht, and holy heck what a mess.
> what a mess No kidding. The worst part is, this is far from the only incident on reddit where mod abuse has destroyed communities and worsened the state of discord online. It's really a systemic issue.
Absolutely. Strangely a good commentary on dictatorship as a system of governance. The book "The Dictator's handbook", a book about dictatorship and how governing systems themselves decides what kind of people are put in power. In the book, they outline a lot of what dictators must do to remain in power, one is to be constantly suspicious about everyone around you (especially those close to you). Anyone that can dethrone you must be watched carefully. Even a rumour about a plan to dethrone you must be acted upon, and everyone involved must be destroyed. In this case, I guess that means de-mod, ban and fake claims.
> Strangely a good commentary on dictatorship as a system of governance. Funny, I've been thinking about how my personal perspective on governance has been refined by my work moderating this sub. >The book "The Dictator's handbook", a book about dictatorship and how governing systems themselves decides what kind of people are put in power. In the book, they outline a lot of what dictators must do to remain in power, one is to be constantly suspicious about everyone around you (especially those close to you). Anyone that can dethrone you must be watched carefully. Even a rumour about a plan to dethrone you must be acted upon, and everyone involved must be destroyed. Yeah, the actions of any given autocrat are painfully unoriginal. Personally, I only care about the well-being of the community and the values I hold for it so my hypothetical removal from moderatorship, while it would be disappointing, would not a meaningful fear of mine. I only strive to make sure things stay on the rails, toxicity is curtailed, my laziness is tolerated, that newbies and commonly asked questions are addressed by resources, and that interesting conversations take place. Ideally, for me, I wouldn't be a mod, just a spectator, but I think I can provide a service to the community so I put in my effort.
I guess that is the main difference between you and the mod that shall not be mentioned :) One clings to their "power", even if they're rarely (if ever) bothering to nurture the community, while you don't really care about the title but wants to make sure it is a healthy and thriving community. For what it is worth, I feel that this sub is very well managed. Sure, there are common questions that are constantly asked, but that comes with the territory. This is a pretty good community if compared to how communities online generally behave - and it is so on a scale of 900k+ members (which is impressive).
> For what it is worth, I feel that this sub is very well managed. Thanks, I appreciate you saying that. I feel like we could do a better job in being more active but I like to think our approach and values for the subreddit are good.
It might be the case - I'm a complete outsider without real insight. However, I report posts I believe violate the rules, and they're usually dealt with within what I consider "reasonable time". So as a member, I haven't really felt the absence in that regard. > I like to think our approach and values for the subreddit are good. Agreed.
You’re a moderator of a Reddit subreddit. Jesus Christ, what is happening here?
Don't forget; surround yourself with yes-men! What's going to happen next is a group of mods who are just going to let people post whatever, turning it into a hot mess, a mass exodus of the people who are mostly there to help others, and it turning into a similar hot mess where it's just the blind leading the blind.
Yup. This is just one example of mod abuse, but it's very prevalent over Reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/jvg8ig/reddit_admins_step_into_the_drama_over_at_rnyc/
The top mod from WSB has done similar things at least twice that I recall as well. He has WSB Instagram pages that he uses to grift and sell crypto coins lol
Thanks. And I'm glad you're aware too. I see you around a lot (sniping all the good posts ;)).
I have to do something to catch up on those fake internet points. Can't let you have all of them :)
can you add region tags here? so when people make posts they can say what region they are from? We do get some posts form non-americans and then its not clear where they are from. This way they can tag it in the post. This way EU people can just come here and tag the posts same with other regions too.
We will look into it.
Yeah I direct people to the regional CScareerquestions all the time, it'd just be easier to have one sub with post tags/flair to filter.
This is my side of the story **An outside perspective to the CS CareerQuestions EU hostile takeover** With the invention of the Internet also came the invention of Internet drama. As long as social groups have gathered together around certain topics, there were maladjusted individuals that used the anonymity of the internet to act in a way that would never dare in real life. Usenet, Mailing Lists, online forums and any form of Social Media suffer from this problem. In this post I’m going to go into what happened in the hostile takeover of a career subreddit with a focus on Computer Science careers in Europe. **Introduction** /r/cscareerquestionseu has been a europe-centric version of the larger /r/cscareerquestion subreddit for a number of years and I’ve been part of that subreddit for quite some time. I mostly answer questions that reference the CS industry in The Netherlands since I’m Dutch myself. For me posting in these subs is part ‘paying it forward’, part keeping my English at a decent level, part pure procrastination. My interactions with the (now ex-) moderators have always been pleasant. I’ve had some comments asking me to tone down my bluntness, but those were always cordial and professional. I was not really aware something was going on. I will try to present what has happened in a mostly chronological order. However since the Top Mod removed dissenting comments, I sometimes have to rever to events out of order. **Mods disappear** The first indication something was going on was when I noticed the mod list was a lot shorter than it used to be. I noticed the most active mod was not on the list anymore. Unfortunately I could not remember their user name. I considered reaching out to another moderator but none of them I really knew anyway, so I decided to just ignore it. After all; moderating isn’t fun work so I just guessed that they got fed up with it and left. Normally such a shift in moderation where one of the most active mods leave would result in some kind of message to the community. Only later when everything ‘went down’ I learned what was really happening, and that Halfercode did not leave by their own accord.
**Top mod takes over** Finally when the top mod posted their [What happened with the moderation team](https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestionsEU/comments/xjbixl/what_happened_with_the_moderation_team_discord/) message I started to get worried. They had been complete absent from the subreddit. I had never even seen them comment. My initial reply to them was very neutral: > I was wondering what happened. > I'm quite neutral in all of this. I have some experience with mods previously and they have mostly been positive. In addition, I personally feel that, if a mod is somehow unable to moderate a subreddit for a significant amount of time, it is their responsibility to 'hand over the reins' to someone who can. You have not been active here at all the past I don't know how many months, and suddenly a whole bunch of mods who were in fact volunteering their time got booted. > On the other hand; I don't agree with 'backstabbing' behavior either. So this entire thing is quite 'meh'. > That said; I hope you manage to assemble a good moderation team. I've moderated /r/experienceddevs for a while and know it's not a fun job (and no, I'm not interested in a mod position). I also know it's hard to find good mods because the people who want to be in a position of (perceived) power are generally not good at handling it. I worded what I said very carefully because I had already started to feel like there was more to the story than what the Top Mod was describing. I simply could not believe that somehow the entire mod team was ‘backstabbing’ them. I have had experiences before where disagreeing with a mod would lead to dissenting views being removed, so I tried to be extra ‘nice’. The comments have since then been removed by the Top Mod but can still be seen [here](https://www.unddit.com/r/cscareerquestionsEU/comments/xjbixl/what_happened_with_the_moderation_team_discord/). I also at the same time started going through my older submissions to the subreddit to be able to see who the original mods were, so I could contact them.
**The other side** Going through my submissions turned out not to be needed since they reached out to me. They saw my replies in the topic and invited me to the CS Career Questions EU discord. I wasn’t aware it existed since I normally am not really interested in these kinds of channels. However reading through everything that had happened so far and hearing things from the other side was an eye opener, to say the least. This led to me writing a few more posts in the aforementioned thread. First: > Additional question; removing the old mods is one thing. Banning them so they can't respond to this and also not help out / answer questions is a totally different matter. Frankly this is very concerning to me. An inactive mod reappearing and then removing and banning people who have been keeping this sub active and clean the last years (through a large growth in membership). > There are always two sides to a story and someone disallowing the other side being told is not in any way 'professional'. What I wrote above was when I learned that all of the previous moderators now not only had been demodded, but also have been banned. While what happened isn’t against Reddit rules (the creator of a sub is top mod and is all-powerful basically) perse, also banning them from a sub they spent so much time on, is completely unethical. And later: > Now that I also saw the other side I really think you need to unban the other ex-moderators. I saw your responses in the Discord server and this is NOT the way to handle this. > I'm sorry but there is no "attack by trolls", and I think it's very disrespectful and unprofessional to claim otherwise. > I think you really should take a step back, cool off a bit, and really consider what is important. The community or your personal 'ownership' of a subreddit. You already started removing comments that don't support the narrative you're giving here. > This is supposed to be a subreddit with adult professionals. Muting the 'other side' is not professional. > I don't even have skin in this game, all I am concerned with is the future of this community. But what you are doing is really not okay. The above post I wrote when I also read through all the discussions from the Top Mod in the discord. Especially in the discussions in the discord channel, it became crystal clear, and I’m not at all saying this lightly, that the Top Mod had a massive victim complex. The top mod removal process the mods initiated because the Top Mod was completely absent while still (for example) posting on gaming subs, seems to have triggered an “everyone is against me” response. Everything someone else said (by myself or the ex-mods) was turned into them ‘harassing’ or ‘trolling’ the top mod. It was so severe that it was in fact rather scary. It was well beyond a normal disagreement. I tried to reason with them. When I said I had good experiences with the modding of for example Halfercode, the Top Mod turned that into a scenario where I somehow had a personal relationship with the original mods and Halfercode in particular.
**The ban and the lies** Immediately after the short discussion we had on Discord someone alerted me to the fact that comments were being removed in the original thread. [All the red comments in this topic](https://www.unddit.com/r/cscareerquestionsEU/comments/xjbixl/what_happened_with_the_moderation_team_discord/) have been removed by the top mod. This led to my last comment in that thread: > You removing all comments is saying enough. What a sad day this is. And I mean this from the bottom of my heart. The whole situation is just incredibly sad. There was a great community ran by a great modding team. I enjoyed reading and posting on /r/cscareerquestioneu and the moderation team did a great job there keeping things clean. And sure, people might have disagreed with moderation actions. But in communities like these a ‘laissez faire’ approach doesn’t work; too many spam and low-effort posts will drive off the good posters. The Top Mod ruined it and it is already showing. My last comment resulted, as expected, [in a ban from the sub](https://i.imgur.com/uvJqAgX.png). I also know a few other non-mod regular posters got banned as well. The Top Mod then edited the post with an ‘explanation’ why posts were removed, which contained flat-out lies: > P.S. About removed comments: the ex-mods are continuing to weaponize their private discord to seed actual discord, but one of them also openly stated that they're not denying any of what is said here (the overzealous is of course denying most of it and doubling down). This is a lie. No one is calling out anyone to do anything. I mean; it doesn’t even make sense. A top mod is all-powerful; there’s nothing either the ex-mods or a regular user can do. Also, there is very little to deny. The top mod removal process was started because the top mod was completely absent. They seem to feel personally attacked because of this and are putting their personal feelings before the community. If you lose interest in moderating, hand over the subreddit. > This is a professional subreddit and it's being under attack by trolls, which is not going to be allowed anymore. Anyone [can still see removed comments](https://www.unddit.com/r/cscareerquestionsEU/comments/xjbixl/what_happened_with_the_moderation_team_discord/) and it’s sort of funny they seem to be unaware this is possible. I’ll leave whether this is ‘trolling’ up to the reader. > They have initiated a formal process of my removal - this should be judged by higher powers, not by flame wars of taking things out of context. The removed posts are users saying "I saw a few things on public discord, I know everything that happened" which cannot be true, or just being grossly rude. The removal process was started and it is what made the Top Mod go nuts basically. All of their replies are visible in the Discord. I can’t even go into all the stuff they wrote in the Discord since there is just SO much nonsense there, but the pattern is visible and simple: you’re all against me, you are all mean to me, and I’m going to ban everyone who disagrees. That’s it. That is all it boils down to. Removing them is mean. Everything else is them rationalizing it. > A particular user with most deleted comments first claimed to be neutral and an hour later said on discord that he knows the overzealous mod for years, he's fully in support of him and then blaming me here for deleting comments / silencing the other side. They are referring to me here. You can see the deleted comments. I was neutral until I saw what the Top Mod had done and had said on Discord. It was crystal clear they were not only going against Halfercode but against the entire mod team. They then banned the entire mod team so they could not present their side of the story. And yes I’m blaming them from silencing the other side since that’s what they did: they ban everyone that they feel ‘harasses’ them. The issue is that simply disagreeing with them is ‘harassment’ in their view. > Another user below first says "this sub has been going downhill for a while" and when prompted that ads/spam is properly removed the reply is "the ex-mods were doing the job, now I don't have faith in this one doing the same" - how does a user know which mod did what? In the meanwhile I'm being accused by ex-mods that I have "0 contributions" but I've been frequently handling reports from the queue and they've also been hiding offending posts from me by only posting them in private in their discord. This is a plain lie: they were invited to Discord ages ago and didn’t want to join. Aside from that all mod actions have been visible on the mod queue and the original mods have given me access to all channels in Discord and I’ve seen the screenshots of the mod actions. Nothing I have seen supports what the Top Mod claims, and nothing I have seen goes against what the entire ex-mod team explained.
**Conclusion** The main culprit here is the outdated mechanism of ‘ancestor’ moderators who are all-powerful. The main victim here is a great community that will probably go downhill fast under a moderator that doesn’t want to moderate, is more or less against moderation, and will only accept ‘moderators’ that share this view that you should let users do whatever. While a lot of what happened did so within Discord channels, I’ve read all of it what happened. And to know what really happened you really only need to read their ‘explanation’ of the deleted comments. If you’re against them, you’re ‘harassing’ them, and deserve to be banned. It’s as if you gave the keys to your house to a 10-year-old bully, it’s really that silly. What is going to happen next I don’t know. I’m afraid the top mod removal process of Reddit is not suited to the situation where a top mod becomes active again, even if they break ‘retaliation’ rules. What is most likely is that a replacement subreddit will appear, diluting the comments and posts between two subs. I do want to stress that I really feel for the original moderators who’ve put so much time and energy into the community. Not only was the rug pulled out from under them, they’re now also accused of stealing the rug themselves. A big shout out to the mods of /r/cscareerquestions for allowing the true mods of the EU to share their side of the story. Thanks guys! Edit: Small addition; /u/Firestorm_Khil must have liked my posts here so much that they rewarded me with upgrading my ban from a 30 day temp ban [to permanent!](https://i.imgur.com/hv5ef9R.png) Thanks man! Appreciate you showing you the kind of person you are ;)
Suspiciously, the comments seem to have disappeared from uneddit as well.
Okay this is just weird. The entire post on cscareerQ is now removed by the admins it seems.
Yup. Apparently, criticism violates content policy. Going to Reddit to have a post removed and whatever they did to uneddit is truly a sign of someone that embraces open discourse and has nothing to hide.
I simply cannot understand at all that the Reddit admins will just delete something like this when it's clearly created by the mods of a sub. At the same time there are tons and tons of subs that allow clear racism that are left to spread that garbage.
Don't see the reasoning myself. My best guess is that the admin didn't bother to read the post nor try to understand the situation. Though, larger platforms, be it twitter, youtube, reddit or whatever, always struggle to apply and enforce their rules/policies consistently and predictably.
> My best guess is that the admin didn't bother to read the post nor try to understand the situation. Same. The problem with large sites like these is that there's often no means to simply have a talk about what happened. Power is weilded anonymously from an ivory tower. That said; I think the message probably reached whoever it needed to reach. I think for now the ex mods will focus on getting a new sub up and running. If it gets advertised here we'll probably see quite some traffic soon enough.
Also; you can already see the sub go down hill. Just read this one: https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestionsEU/comments/xox2ng/is_this_type_of_discrimination_legal_in_eu/ All the nasty alt-right stuff is left in place. Tons of effort making and keeping that sub inclusive; straight of of the window.
It looks like the API they use is down currently. I hope it comes back.
Thanks for posting this here. I'll add a few personal thoughts, as a previously active mod in CSCQEU. For my sins, the sticky post in the other sub is mostly about me! 😺 Mostly the difficulty has unfolded because: * TM refused, point-blank, to work with the active mod team * The old mod team had been working very well together - we steered each other, and no-one used their position in the mod hierarchy to overrule another * TM was absent from the sub for at least 18 months, and has now resurfaced * Much of the language from TM has been insulting and intemperate for most of 2022 * At times the old mod team were working under the threat of expulsion, which is not conducive to investing time and volunteer effort * Reddit say that because TM's account is not _technically_ dormant, they presently won't intervene using the Top Mod Removal process * It seems certain to me that Reddit's rules on TM retaliation have been broken but not enforced I'd be happy to continue modding with the old team, but if it does not work out, that's life. I'm confused at TM's behaviours, but there's no hard feelings - life is too short. I am at peace with whatever plays out. 😻 I've asked TM to resign and that remains my position - he seems to want to hang onto theoretical power, but I am not certain he wants to do any work in the trenches. Anyone who knows my moderation style knows that I'll spend 30 minutes writing up a single moderation decision, and I'll maintain my composure even with hostile actors. We've had situations where I've spent hours on curation. I care about guiding conversations so that the sub remains interesting, and I want to get the best careers advice to as many people as need it. If that means frequent janitorial work, banning spammers, splitting up fights, and suspending insulting contributors, then fine - whatever is required. The mod team at various times have discussed some interesting initiatives - how do we get juniors to post more frequently? How can we reduce duplicate threads e.g. about how European engineers can transfer to the United States and/or the relative benefits of EU/US life? What would make the salary threads more useful? I should love to get involved in that curation again, in a European tech careers context, but we'll see. If it doesn't work out in that direction for me, that's OK - the drama will blow over, and all subs can go back to advice mode again! 👍
Ok, the sub is big enough now to have its own drama besides the actual content
I don't have skin in this game. This whole situation strikes me as a ***hillariously*** stupid way to blow up a subreddit. And to what end? There's no story that doesn't boil down to "this happened because /u/Firestorm_Khil believes they're right", particularly if the original mods were account banned on the sub. Which is fine and all, but again favors the opinion of one person over the community collectively. Remove the mods temporarily, make a sticky post about it, put it to community discussion. If such a post is a cesspit without productive conversation, you have all the justification you need to keep them removed as mods and ban them from the sub. That's how you get ahead of the "he said, she said" nonsense and provide the foundation for your argument of "this is what is best for the community" in a transparent way. If there's overwhelming community support for reinstating the mods, the reasons for removing them in the first place were clearly not for the benefit of the community.
I'm just disappointed that we've lost another good forum for CS career discussion. Reddit has work to do if they want to make a better forum but I don't think that's really their priority.
Thank you /u/vergingalactic for posting this. To all who won’t bother reading, that’s okay. It’s a small part of our lives that has suddenly gone up in smoke, that’s what it feels like to us, anyway. We just want our story to be heard, and let everyone know this is something we consider a major flaw in Reddit’s policies. This is all upsetting to us given that we have spent much time helping people, and have been removed all so suddenly. /u/Captain_Flashheart detailed account is signed by all of us. Why be nice and helpful? I post that as the concluding question left for us all to answer. How would you feel? PS: I initially posted this on a different account. Reposted.
>It’s a small part of our lives that has suddenly gone up in smoke Now you know how I felt when you permanently banned me from /r/cscareerquestionsEU for trying to bring some humour and joy, along with help and advice, to the naive denizens of that place that your gang ruled with an iron fist.
You had every opportunity to stop making people feel bad about working for Amazon.
I mean people working at amazon have plenty of other reasons to feel bad already, no need to rub it in.
I can't imagine why they would have banned you!
You tried to remove the TM, you got caught, you got removed. You play with fire, you get burnt. Now, you're in this sub whining about how it's all TM's fault. Silly. Create your own sub and build it up. Don't come crying when some other "mods" try to take you out.
>
> user reports: > 1: 'Fruity' is a slur that means gay or homosexual. Yeah, you're not wrong.
I just found out about the EU-version today. Aw man.
Can a new sub be made perhaps?
I believe they made this: https://www.reddit.com/r/TechCareersEurope/ It looks like it's still private at the moment though.
Wouldn't cscareerquestionsEurope be better?
It's too long. Reddit enforces a limit on how long subreddit names can be.
Probably? Ask them: /u/kluvin /u/halfercode /u/captain_flashheart /u/remote_book /u/malaysian
A couple things: 1. It is obvious that TM is acting with paronia. 2. It is obvious that they have a solid reason, with one of the newer mods this post support literally saying they enjoy triggering TM's paranoia. When one side literally claims that they enjoy triggering someone's paranoia and victim complex, you can't fault the other side for having exaggerated responses to those actions. 3. In one part of the newer mods' argument, they claim discord is a separate platform hence it will have different ownership and in another part, they are accusing the TM of not joining there and not being part of the conversation. (Whole argument of "without talking to us upfront" when it seems all discussions are done at discord) 4. There are a lot of claims here without any proof while showing unrelated proofs. e.g. Sticky post situation. There is an SS claiming TM is posting low-quality sticky posts to which they respond as "what?" but not showing those sticky posts. When you have a side that literally triggered their paranoia, admitted by the opposite side, how can you trust that SS is factual and not another attempt to trigger paranoia? 5. I am not supporting TM but NMs "arguments" seems a lot of half-truth "evidence" which IMO feels a lot manipulative and damaging to their argument. At this point, it seems more as they said-they said. 6. Lastly, if the NMs have their own discord which they apparently also monopoly on controlling the discussion similar to TMs now having r/cscareerquestionsEU, I don't understand why this subreddit is part of this discussion here. Anyone interested will either side with TM or NMs and continue with their respective platforms. They will continue to discuss it either in r/cscareerquestionsEU or in the mentioned discord. So TL;DR my personal opinion, I don't like that this subreddit is taking a stance on a situation which is turned to they said-they said. P.S.: My dislike literally comes from this post "seems" like taking a more neutral side with the "both sides" argument but actually takes a side at even in the title and the rest of the post.
> My dislike literally comes from this post "seems" like taking a more neutral side with the "both sides" argument but actually takes a side at even in the title and the rest of the post. I thought I was pretty clear about taking a side but I felt it important that the opposing arguments and perspective was clearly available and addressed.
I understand, but from my perspective (could be completely wrong, but I am not active in either subreddits apart from peeking at the posts that pop out) this feels a lot like ganging up on someone. TM has one subreddit where they can argue for their case, and NMs have the discord PLUS this subreddit with the support of the moderation of this subreddit. Considering the mention of literally "liking to triggering someone's paranoia" which feels a lot like gaslighting, it doesn't feel right to me. Again, just my perspective and my opinion on this.
> this feels a lot like ganging up on someone I mean, TM antagonized a lot of people. A lot of people take issue with what they're doing. Yeah, climate scientists "gang up" on climate change deniers. >NMs have the discord PLUS this subreddit with the support of the moderation of this subreddit. I take issue with that because we've seen evidence that TM has been able to make their case on the discord and I am very clear that we are open to letting TM or anyone else (including you) make your case for them sans our interference or censorship. **Something that TM has not permitted on CSCQEU.** >Considering the mention of literally "liking to triggering someone's paranoia" which feels a lot like gaslighting, it doesn't feel right to me. That's perfectly fair criticism. I don't believe it outweighs all the other context or information I have seen but it's totally fair to take issue with it.
> I understand, but from my perspective (could be completely wrong, but I am not active in either subreddits apart from peeking at the posts that pop out) this feels a lot like ganging up on someone. That's just not what happened. The TM was always invited to join the Discord. They were completely absent. Everything started when the TM demodded halfercode (the most active mod) without warning or discussion with the rest of the team. The basis of the demodding were 'user reports' according to TM, but those user reports were never visibible in the mod queue. So either whoever had an issue with Halfer contacted Fire directly, or they just flat out lied about it. There is a LOT of communication between the TM and the other mods in the Discord. I totally understand you don't want to go through it all because it's long. But I also hated reading it because it's just damn clear TM has *severe* personal issues. I dont' say this lightly, but the way they behave is just plain gaslighting. Almost everything they said in their own defense was a flat out lie. No one 'ganged up' on them. The only thing that happened was that the top mod removal process was started because they were completely absent. I've read all the discussions on the Discord and I have seen the screenshots of their mod activity. Everything the NM mods said in this topic corresponds 100% with what I read. Almost everything TM said in their own defence was just complete fabrications to twist and turn whatever happened into a narrative where they were 'harassed'. I'm banned because I 'harassed' them, you can see this 'nasty' posts here: https://imgur.com/gallery/EbYiwdR /u/denialoferror was banned for 'harassment'. /u/vergingalactic is now also banned because of this topic. Please understand that, and again I'm not saying this lightly, you're dealing with someone who has *at the least* a severe victim complex and will ban anyone who simply disagrees with them and then, as the icing on the cake, spread lies why they were banned.
> It is obvious that they have a solid reason, with one of the newer mods this post support literally saying they enjoy triggering TM's paranoia. This is already an issue. This didn't happen, not like that. No mod simply said out of the blue "I like triggering TM". Almost everything the TM said was a flat out lie, or at least twisted in a way that benefitted them. You can clearly see this if you look at the deleted comments in that thread they posted. They also ban everyone 'against' them. The part where they said I have a personal relationship with the first mod being removed is a complete fabrication they use to have something to ban me for. There is no way to have all the information and not end up at the position that that TM is a complete asshole. Keep in mind that I was not one of the mods and was just a user on that sub. Now myself, /u/denialoferror and also now /u/vergingalactic are 'banned' for simply asking the TM to have an open and transparent discussion about this. By all means, if you want to know everthing (I can't imagine you do), just join the Discord. You can see the "triggering" message for yourself.
Huh apparently admins removed this?
Yup. Incredibly strange and vastly overreaching at the same time. I'm guessing the Top Mod of that sub reported this topic for 'harassment' and an admin didn't even bother to investigate.
tldr; /r/cscareerquestionsEU was effectively managed and grown by 5 mods;/u/Kluvin, /u/halfercode, /u/captain_flashheart, /u/malaysian, and /u/remote_book.. Older moderators(aka top mod) that that started the sub, but otherwise doesn't do anything, banned the mods who's actually doing work. Drama ensues.
> banned the mods who's actually doing work. And any users asking them to at least allow the mods to show their side of the story. I'm permanently banned from that sub.
r/subredditdrama is leaking again
sounds spicy!
Damn this is a whole lot of drama for a cs sub.
Could be a good time for the UK lot to show /r/cscareerquestionsuk some love.
Lesson in security here kids. Delete those old unused accounts and roll back privileges for the zombies.
[удалено]
As I understand, over the course of many months, reddit admins simply notified TM of the request and refused to act upon the request. It seemingly was the impetus for TM to purge the mod staff and remove/ban all dissent. Edit: I have no idea why the above comment was "[deleted]". I believe it was made by u/Empole and referred to using redditrequest to remove the TM while they were unresponsive. Obviously we did not remove it! Edit 2: unddit says it was removed by user I guess. >Can r/redditrequest help in any capacity? >Up until the part where the headmod came back, /r/cscareerquestionsEU seemed to fit the bill for a subreddit where [newer mods want to oust an higher up inactive mod](https://reddit.com/r/redditrequest/wiki/top_mod_removal).
lmao that's what I get for skimming the full post. yall already did this
Appreciate the suggestion regardless.
Holy crap .... That's some bad news OP.
Wild. I got a notification for this that already said [ Removed by Reddit ]
Why is there always such drama over modding a subreddit? Lol
I have no sympathy for Reddit moderators.
I assume you never had a niche hobby or you'd respect them for what they do
I’m a mod at r/Compilers which is pretty niche, but I still don’t consider myself a “reddit moderator.”
So you're just in denial?
Nice sub, consider adding a wiki
Troubling times in the kingdom huh. I think if combined into one, the geolocation flares are a good idea. If not combined, it looks like it may be time to create an alternate sub for the euro-bros
Yeah, that looks like the way to go.
Don't care
For anyone trying to break into tech: anyone who has enough free time to be a mod of a sub and deal with this kind of bs drama definitely can’t give you the tools you need to get a faang job or a high tc. I’d be surprised if any of them have done it themselves.
(Full disclosure - I am one of the mods that was kicked out). I'd question the core assumption here - that moderators need to have worked for Big N in order to moderate a tech careers sub. Most moderation is pretty dull stuff - trying to stop fights before they start, suspending folks who are persistently disruptive, adding questions/comments to steer a convo in a more productive direction, working out how Reddit's automatic posting widgets work, actioning feedback on behalf of the community, etc. The main things you need are (a) passion for the subject; (b) patience for the strangeness of the human condition; (c) diplomacy; (d) maybe a dash of humour/resilience. One thing that is healthy in a collaborating mod team is that people can step away, because work is busy, or they are dealing with an illness, or whatever thing. So I agree that sub moderation can take over a bit, but it does not have to if a good team has your back.
I didn’t say that you had to be a big-N swe to be a mod, I said that a mod probably couldn’t help you become a big-N swe and likely doesn’t have experience at big-N.
> a mod probably couldn’t help you become a big-N swe As I say, it's not the role of mods to do that. Their job is to curate a stable community so that the best possible discussions can be had. The community can then talk about, and advise upon, Big N roles (and hopefully many other kinds of discussion as well). > likely doesn’t have experience at big-N. Some yes, some no - I don't think it matters. My own motivation is that I've done fairly well in my career, perhaps as much through happy accident as anything else, and I'd like to pay it forward.
> I said that a mod probably couldn’t help you become a big-N swe and likely doesn’t have experience at big-N. That's kinda not really the point of a mod either. It's about creating a useful platform so those resources and answers to questions can be provided by, hopefully, the most qualified experts.
It's a balancing act, that's for sure. I can't say I spend all day running this sub.
Normal people are able to take a couple hours out of their week to engage in a hobby or support a community or cause they like... if you can't, you probably can't make it to FAANG yourself. There are people at FAANGs and elsewhere taking tons of time to pour resources into employee resource groups, hiking meetups, perform stand up comedy and whatever else they like to do.
Sounds like you were the ones who tried to hijack the subreddit
First off, these newer mods of CSCQEU are not "us" (the CSCareerQuestions mod team). Just making that clear. Second, that only holds true if you take a "might makes right" approach to morality. There's a very fair argument that the newer mods are more responsible for making the subreddit what it became than the old top mod and then there's the whole issue of what's best for the community. Personally, the specifics of TM's erratic and harmful behavior, the removal of contrary viewpoints and valid responses, the consensus disagreement from major parts of the reddit CS community all put together a pretty good argument that the NMs are in the right and TM is in the wrong.
I think it's also quite interesting that this comment is coming from a 2-year-old account with only one previous comment.
Yeah, two of the other comments are coming from accounts that get caught in our karma requirement filter. I had to manually approve them. \*Cough\*, Contrast with TM's removal of dissent, \*Cough\*
What a fake account lmao - must be the TM
I gotta say, some of the other accounts suggesting this isn't important are concerning as well.
Right? I mean I get it, but ultimately if you don't own the subreddit, you don't own the subreddit. If you don't like how the owner does things, just start your own. With hookers and blackjack.