I wont let y'all down. Thank you!

Good choices all around, especially the "runners up"...this is a great step forward for /r/conspiracy.

You have always been one of the more gifted r/cons. You have a lot to give. I know we made a great choice here. Welcome aboard.

The very name of that sub is disturbing. TBH

[deleted]

Page not found? Who up voted this comment?

[deleted]

Who is that? And why are tons of users asking about him?

Some very sketchy characters are showing up in these comment threads and seem to be trying to sway public opinion...

I vaguely recognize their user name. Why do i know it? Couldn't tell you TBH. Google cache or /r/undelete might shed some info. The fact that i know the name alone implies an aura of "significance", although not sure if that is good or bad, as i don't recall the details.

Keep drinking that Victory Gin.

Congrats.

Do you think it would be possible to start a sticky thread where we can discuss changes we would like to see in conspiracy for the new year.

I think this whole /u/solidwhetstone fiasco has shown that there is a lot of discontent amongst the users, so it would be good to bring any grievances we still have to bear.

Also the fact that /r/conspiratard/ is engaged in a heavy circlejerk right now about how the quality of /r/conspiracy is only going to go down since /u/solidwhetstone is gone is quite irksome, I'd like to show them otherwise and I think a community effort would be the best way to do that.

Sounds like a great idea for the next sticky: 2014 new year's resolutions for /r/conspiracy...

I like you already.

[deleted]

Three sounds like a lot, but two doesn't seem unreasonable. I could see a really good post lasting a week or more in the "top" sticky spot, and perhaps announcements or something else for the second spot to last just a few days or so.

As for /u/letsownthenwo, what can you tell me? What have you heard?

Was he shadowbanned? Did he delete his account? How long has it been?

I noticed it when he stopped posting, and I've even seen a few people here and there ask what happened to him, but I never seriously thought about it until this moment, and you're not the only person to ask that question ITT.

If anyone has any further thoughts or wants to add to the timeline of events here, I'd appreciate it.

This is a sticky thread. Why not discuss it here :)

I want to clean up the sidebar a bit to make a few things more prominent.

For example; I don't think it's clear enough what /r/uncensorship is and that it is operating on this sub.

We should link directly to a search for the sub:

http://www.reddit.com/r/uncensorship/search?q=conspiracy&sort=new&restrict_sr=on

Probably in big bold text directly under the rules; something like All post removals documented at /r/uncensorship

I think instead of a "Moderator Transparency" category that it would be better to have some sort of "Meta/Reddit" category for things like uncensorship, undelete, ModerationLog PoliticalModeration etc..

Can we do more to contact mods of other subreddits and let them know /r/uncensorship exists? It probably won't fly with the /r/politics crowd :), but I'd guess there are a lot of smaller subreddits out there that would adopt it if they knew it exists.

I try to spread word of it whenever I can. The biggest sub-reedit to date to adopt it is /r/TrueReddit

I think the best way to get people interested in it is to lead by example.

But people have to know what it is and that it exists; which is why I suggest making it a bit more prominent in the sidebar nearer the Rules.

I was just thinking, about the moderator transparency topic. Im not familiar with the protocol mods follow when banning a user, and if i am iterating what the actual protocol is, i apologize.

But i was thinking maybe having a way to announce publicly to the community when one is banned. Of course, this would be following PMs directed at the soon-to-be banned, but i think public warnings would help with transparency issues some may have, and would offer the mods a means to explain to the community exactly why a certain user was banned. Possibly, it could allow a soon-to-be-banned user a chance to redeem themselves.

It was just a thought..

It would certainly be possible to publicly report on bans; and I don't really see a downside to it given that the user is already notified of such bans.

This would likely be best as an (optional?) /r/uncensorship feature but it could be rolled into it's own bot as well.

I agree. There seems to be a lot of confusion about both regular bans and shadowbans.

"Shadowbans" are useless, IMO, and serve no purpose other than to give moderators a way to fuck with users. If you are going to "shadowban" someone, you might as well just ban them.

I'm glad you made mod! :)

Great idea, seconded.

Ehh...

http://www.reddit.com/r/uncensorship/comments/1ttbk9/rconspiracy_20131227t162551_mr_dong_removed_spam/

Sounds like you should stop giving a shit about the conspiritards and just keep spreading information. This place just needs to spread information. Don't lose sight.

Counter their foolish attempts at disinfo with more redily available info. It sounds ideal.

They aren't worth the time or effort. "Arguing with fools..."

I personally would rather like to see the sidebar prominently populated with step by step instructions for disabling vote based comment censorship. This would remove any possible group/shill/puppet vote brigading. Forcing those who wish to silence opinion into debate. Thoughts?

Congrats bud, now lets make this place even better.

Congrats man!

Happy to have you as a mod.

Congrats man!

Congrats old pal! I knew we'd get there one day!!

Yes you will you Palestinian shilll. We know you hate Israel. We know you are a modern Hitler, that you want death to all jews. We, with several other people, will ensure that you do not succeed!!

WAKE UP R/CONSPIRACY!!!

∆No

They are on the ropes when bullshit like this is used. I've yet to see rampamt racism in this forum, yet many cries that there is. And as you've proven here, the fools come out of the woodwork to create a problem that doesn't exist. Pretty lame attempt, buddy.

wait what about that post today about Jews and how they are forcing multiculturalism onto the rest of the world that was posted in by multiple /r/whiterights posters?

Oh, but this one guy is trolling so that thread doesn't exist I guess.

Get out shill

Its kind of like swatting a gnat off your balls. No threat, no teeth, just mild annoyance at best. Do you have any other tricks? Ones that actually work? Or is this it?

Thank you very kindly for adding me to the mod team on this trial basis.

I'm very happy to be tasked with "troll hunting" and removing abusive content. Please feel free to PM me directly (or send a message to modmail) if you feel you are encountering any attempts to derail, slide and/or abuse our users and posts.

Really looking forward to protecting this sub from those who wish to destroy her while also continuing to help move this place forward and continue to grow.

Is this kind of language ok?

We're being raided by the faggots he tried to "engage". It's either he bans anyone who has ever posted in that racist /tard sub or he goes. It's Christmas Eve and this community has to deal with a mod trying to destroy this community from the inside. Not cool.

Fair enough, what if any changes do the new mods intend on making?

Hopefully none atm, as they are being implemented on a trial basis. Down the road? Who knows

what is your official statement regarding /u/letsownthenwo ?

I can't speak for anyone else, but my statement is that I want to know why that account was shadowbanned by the admins.

The admins answer only to the owners.

Not entirely true:

http://www.reddit.com/r/EnoughPaulSpam/comments/t05op/was_crackduck_the_libertarian_bot/c4ihakc

[deleted]

No.

From what I understand, since 2011 this is how it goes down.

Reddit inc has a board. It has three members. Some President of Codne Naste (I think their original stake was 11 million at the time of the split), the CEO of reddit inc Yishan, and Alexis one of (along with Spez and (a bit later) Aaron) the original founders of this platform.

There are some angel investors. Jedberg is one of them. They made a blog post where they detailed all the angel investors. Although that blog post was inflammatory and full of PR nonsense so I won't link it.

Reddit inc staff also own shares in the company as well.

The last valuation of reddit I saw was 230,000,000. Probably a bit higher now. Reddit inc herself may not be profitable. But someone's making money ;).

New mods are good. Please don't turn into assholes. But you guys seems like bad asses. Good luck!

Congrats!

Makes me think of that movie troll hunter.

That used to be the theme of /r/NolibsWatch before we switched to ASOIAF.

Yesterday, when I first saw the post looking for nominations, I was surprised and flattered that others would nominate me. Thank you all. I thought about it for a while and then PMd mr_dong that I respectfully declined the nomination.

Now comes this post and I also received the PM invitation to be a mod. I had thought my name had been removed from whatever list was to be voted on. Apparently not.

So, after a little more thought I've decided to accept and give it a try.

Again, thank you all for your support and kind words.

Thanks again.

Congratulations! I can't think of a better man for the job.

Just yesterday, and this morning, I was seriously debating whether or not to unsubscribe from /r/conspiracy for good.

I have now decided to stay.

Thank you.

[deleted]

what

Out of all the recently selected mods, /u/SovereignMan is the one I worry about being corrupt. It figures that a few questionable contributors would come out and voice their support.

You're vetted. People trust you.

Even if you don't particularly want to be a moderator, we want you to. I just don't think you're corruptable.

There's a saying that the best cops would be the people who would never want to be cops.

Thank you.

Generally speaking, those who do not actively seek roles of leadership do the best jobs when placed in that role. Its those who seek it out that you must watch closely.

Go for it. You'll do well.

You deserve it

Thanks.

[deleted]

can we try to limit some of the anti-jew posts on here that are blantantly hateful and unfactual?

Rules #1 and #3 in the sidebar cover that issue appropriately.

I don't approve of true hate speech.

I also don't approve of undeserved accusations of hate speech.

Goddamn, excellent work folks.

I am very happy about the new mod situation, and in particular that there don't seem to be any shady choices.

I am also quite happy about /u/AssuredlyAThrowAway being appointed to troll hunt, great appointment, he's a user I've seen post very insightful stuff many times.

Congratulations! This ending was better than I could have ever imagined. I know that regardless of what happens, I can trust your actions wholeheartedly now.

And thank you senior mods like mr_dong for listening to the community.

good choices all around, congratulations !

you did well, am impressed

great move for this subreddit.

Congrats, all! I'm really glad to see a slate of people with a good posting history. /u/go1dfish, you've been doing a lot of great stuff for years with your other subs.

I wonder if anyone is interested in expanding /r/conspiracy with a little bit of organization? A few things I've been wondering about:

• "Corruption-proofing" the discussion. Most importantly, creating alternative sites to fall back on if an admin or a mod goes censor-happy again.

• Archiving information so that it doesn't get lost if somebody (admin or mod) gets overzealous with deletions. It's two years to the next big USA elections, and shills crave a memory hole.

• Reaching out to a few trusted internet / alternative journalists to share information and strategies

• Cooperation with coders / designers (such as /r/darknetplan just to name one) investigating alternative methods of distributing information in case somebody decides that they own the intertubes and want it back

• Indexing the net. Not the whole net, but retaining copies of information that get deleted, modified, or removed by government / corporate request over time.

And so forth.

Imagine spawning off a few subcommittees and reporting back regularly.

TL;DR: We will ALWAYS be infested with shills, spammers, and scammers. Here's a great opportunity to learn new ways to make progress even while they are making noise.

I'd add that I'd love to see an initiative by programmers here to try and index "invisible web" sources.

This quote I found was interesting, dunno about how they determined the numbers, but regardless it's interesting:

“ the size of the open web is 167 terabytes. The Invisible Web is estimated at 91,000 terabytes.

91k TB of data that is unindexed and waiting to be gathered and analysed.

Interesting... even indexing the "visible web" is important. I don't trust Google and co. to give me an accurate view when I search for something like "NSA scandal."

Lots of stuff disappears down the memory hole due to search engines, or it gets outright removed.

Absolutely, though I sort of trust DuckDuckGo for to be the non-Google search.

I think going after invisible web sources is more juicy because it's largely untapped and unexplored, which is great territory for the stuff the sub is about.

I believe that /u/GrippinThaGrain would be excellent for the future, and I have faith in /u/axolotl_peyotl.

However I'm glad to see that the blogger mod did not make the cut, and he will never make the cut if I can help it. /u/Orangutan has been a mod for years at 911blogger, which was exposed in the November 2010 issue of the Rock Creek Free Press as a disinfo site. The link goes to a PDF of the hard copy of the paper; the article titled "Is Leading 9/11 Truth Site Working for the Other Side?" is on the front page, below the fold, in the middle.

Below is an excerpt from that article:

A little more than a month after Zwicker’s endorsement of CIT was rejected, the situation repeated itself, when retired NASA aeronautical engineer Dwain Deets recorded a video endorsement of CIT on August 30, 2010 and submitted it to 911blogger. Once again, 911blogger refused, without explanation, to post the endorsement of a highly qualified professional.

Prior to 911blogger rejecting these video endorsements from Zwicker and Deets, nearly all users at 911blogger who were vocal in their support of CIT had been banned. An informal poll easily came up with 25 former users of 911blogger who had been banned without explanation—about half of whom are CIT supporters.

Three of the most well-informed, articulate and prolific CIT supporters were banned simultaneously on May 24, 2010, while in the midst of a heated online debate with 911blogger moderator Erik Larson (aka Loose Nuke). Truth activist Stefan S. of London, England explains it:

“The exact moment that Adam Syed, Adam Ruff and I were banned, we were in mid-debate with Erik Larson. Nothing remotely offensive or rule breaking was being said by any one of us, let alone all three of us at the exact same time.

“What was happening was that Larson had been backed into a corner over a blog entry of his, which was a listing of what he claimed were witnesses to the plane flying south of the Citgo station prior to it striking the Pentagon.

“Not a single one of those witnesses even mentioned Citgo, it was just a collection of laughably tenuous arguments for why ambiguous witness statements must be supportive of the official story. The list was submitted to an intensive analysis and it was shown conclusively that none of the witnesses supported the official flight path, that the list included several witnesses who stated that the plane flew to the north of Citgo, and most strikingly, several who explicitly stated that they were not even in the vicinity at the time of the attack.

“The discussion was drifting into increasingly embarrassing territory for Larson when — presto — all three of us were banned and Larson, in a completely childish fashion, proceeded to have the “last word” in full knowledge that he had just stopped the people he was addressing from being able to respond.

“Larson’s articles are disinformation; the information he puts out there is deliberately false with a motive to undermine genuine research. 911blogger is no longer a 9/11 truth site, that much is clear.”

Edit: added excerpt for those who hate to click links

The two you named, i have [+] marks for (from RES). The third i'll have too look into. Good call mate.

Response:

"This article is a response to “Is Leading 9/11 Truth Site Working For The Other Side?”, credited to “staff writers” at the Rock Creek Free Press, November 2010 edition, available at:

http://www.rockcreekfreepress.com/CreekV4No11-Web.pdf

The “leading 9/11 Truth site” being referred to is 911Blogger.com. The authors of the article critiqued here chose to remain anonymous, and the article’s title doesn’t lend itself to an easily pronounceable acronym. Therefore I will refer to the article’s authors, along with their vocal message board sympathizers and Barrie Zwicker, as The Complainers. We will abbreviate Citizen Investigation Team as “CIT” and their video National Security Alert as “NSA” (noting the irony).

I normally prefer the high ground when it comes to accusations regarding intentions. However, since the Complainers routinely impute sinister motives to their critics, the reader must consider whether that behavior is more consistent with an intention to support or subvert the overall agenda of the 9/11 Truth Movement."

http://911blogger.com/news/2010-12-28/debating-what-hit-pentagon-exaggeration-namecalling-and-threats

This is a great day for /r/conspiracy. These are all amazing choices.

I think these are excellent picks. I wish you all well and feel free to PM me for advice or information about old stuff you see in the mod logs.

Congrats to all you guys! I look forward to 2014!!!

To be honest, I clicked this thread expected to be extremely disappointed. Just observing all of the crap that has been happening in the last couple days made it certain in my head that I was going to find something wrong with the nominations.

I guess I was wrong and it appears that we might have our sub back? Wow. Unless the CIA handed all 4 of them million dollar paychecks or Mossad assassinated all 4 of them and replaced each one with an actual clone of Solidwhetstone, I think I'm actually happy.

What happens when you add ChapStick to water?

Some of the chapstick gets on your lips and it lowers slightly the statistical likelihood of you getting lip cancer from the sun, but it's gotta be the SPF variety. Since the dosage is so low in the water, scientists have decided it's ok to just add to the public drinking water.

I also advocate sunscreen water. If you shower in sunscreen water, the sunscreen gets on your skin and lowers slightly the statistical likelihood of skin cancer from the sun's rays. Again, scientists have said it's ok in low doses.

It's the same with fluoride.

See here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15153698

The reason it's still added to water is because we know that some of that water touches the teeth when you drink it.

Epic. I love it.

You might like this: http://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/1tr9vh/cops_detain_man_for_suspicion_of_smoking_tobacco/ceaw49h?context=3

I try really hard to make little gold nugget posts like that in case one or two people read it, understand it's a joke, and spill coffee everywhere.

i feel the fluoride conspiracy is the key to waking the majority up

regardless of its effects on teeth the fact is the take away your choice to ingest it

love your username

I would like to share some of my fav links.

http://www.redditinvestigator.com/

http://www.redditgraphs.com/

I used to have a third along these lines, but it was lost in a reformat.

Edit: Double negative-ish

http://www.stattit.com is also good.

Thanks mate. Was not the third i had, but it seems worthwhile. Will gladly add to my "arsenal"

http://stattit.com/r/conspiracy/

metareddit.com

I, for one, would like to welcome our new Moderating Overlords.

Welcome!

We tremble in fear before their greatness.

It's never too early to start kissing ass.

;-)

/sarcasm

Can you guys work to keep the /r/conspiratard bunch out?

For what reason?

Those seem to be some good choices, and many of the "runners-up" have certainly brought quality material to this sub as well. Since many users of this sub are in an understandable uproar over transparency lately, would you mind stating for the record how these final selections were made? Thanks!

I think this is readily apparent (the popular choices in the recruiting thread are represented here).

Great work guys!

They are all trusted users/posters.

Oh, I agree. Just for clarity, were these three the ones who got the most upvotes in that thread yesterday?

/r/conspiracy is one of the most transparent sub-reddits there is when it comes to removals at least.

More subs ought to use /r/uncensorship

Thanks for taking care of shot, Dong.

More moderation is not good, ok. I really hope that every single one of these new individuals know that they cannot diminish free speech under a just conscience. But we've already seen the faltering of that everywhere else on reddit, and eventually the ego balloons.

All that needs to be done here is removing spam and checking to make sure that the natural exchange of debate and discussion is running smoothly.

What we really need is a statement of ethics. What do the mods even stand for when they have power over deleting content? Guess it doesn't matter?

Eventually all of reddit will become like facebook, that is its trajectory, the more conservative we can be, the better.

Downvote brigade on the post right now?

This sub has been getting hit hard lately, it's cute. The babies over at /tard didn't get their bottle, and we have mods that won't tolerate their shit. Fuck them.

Go1dfish is an excellent choice. As well as axolotl_peyotl. Not so familiar with SovereignMan but wish him well.

Although I tried to get go1dfish to program a whole new reddit. But... too expensive.

too expensive.

That sounds like a challenge to me ;).

Congratulations guys! I hope ya'll remember to still have fun while youre workin it!

EDIT: word.. y'all*

I just hope they are not the same racist cocksuckers with different names...

I feel like I'm watching a beauty pageant here.

Awesome. axo and sovereign are good guys.

congrats guys!

=( I'm glad for the new mods, but I'm gonna go make my own conspiracy place with blackjack and hookers.

Are you going to keep AutoModerator around?

huhehuhe ones a secret NWO spy....You will never figure it out....muahahahah

Can we get rid if upvoting and downvoting?

Removing the arrows does not disable peoples ability to up and downvote.

How long until one of these guys ban me just because they don't like me?

My suggestion for any mod who feels like a user deserves to be banned, that they also have a history of personal squabbles with, is to hand it off to another mod who doesn't have a history or to issue a warning and walk away.

I cannot agree more with this approach.

/u/SovereignMan hates me for no reason. Can't wait to see how long it takes him to let the power go to his head...

/u/SovereignMan hates me for no reason.

No, I don't hate you. And I'll guarantee that if you get banned it won't be by me. See rule #6. How's that?

Rule number 6 is shit. It's actually just simply an incorrect statement. Any mod can ban somebody. The unban is done by mod consensus, not the ban. So if you want someone banned, just ban and then don't consent to an unban. Not that hard to figure out.

I find it pretty weird that I keep on bringing this up and they don't change the "rule." It's just a lie sitting there on the sidebar.

Any mod can ban somebody.

I'm sure that's true. However, I'll make an effort make sure that bans are agreed upon by at least by a majority of mods available at the time. It's important that the mods follow the rules too.

What about the sidebar? Kinda weird that the claim is "bans are made by mod consensus." I mean, shouldn't somebody just change it? Why does it have to stay there? It's not even kinda true. It's just a false statement that everyone wants to keep there.

You already said all of that in your other comment and I responded the best way I know how. I'm not going to change the rule and I don't think anyone else should either.

Hey, why are you so involved in the politics of this sub when you've only been a redditor less than a month?

Half your posts are in /tard, half in /conspiracy. What you're doing isn't helpful.

Is there anything wrong with the post you're quoting? Do you want to know why they posted a lie to the sidebar, or do you just simply not care? r/conspiratard just called me a shill earlier. One of you will need to make up your minds. Either I'm a shill for r/conspiratard, or a shill for r/conspiracy, or I'm not shilling for anybody. My posts over there today are freely available for reading. Please click my name and read my history. I asked them why they like to make fun of retarded people.

This is why people like you and me are not allowed to be mods.

Nah, that's not why.

We all have known /u/sovereignman for a long time. I straight up don't believe he hates anyone here for no reason.

Oh Jesus, here we go...(eyeroll)

Who knows, Pm me, or post when they do, for said reason.

Every one of these mods were selected because they're against Israel. EVERY NEW MOD IN HERE IS A CONFIRMED PALENSTINIAN SHILL!!!!! Dont believe in them, they're anti Semites!!! They want all Jews deaf I tell you!!!

WAKE UP r/conspiracy!!!!

[deleted]

Hahaha

I'm convinced your also a Palestinian shill, you nutjob

You here at /r/conspiracy are a bunch of Mc Carthians. You had a moderator willing to listen to criticism, actually fucking listening to criticism and because of that you dropped him off and gave him the finger all because you thought that he may be a shill or something like that. You accuse others of censorship and authoritarianism yet all you do is reveal yourselves as a bunch of hypocritical witch hunters. Grow the fuck up.

We're McCarthyist? Wow, the irony.

Considering you demoded someone for asking for criticism yes you are. Remember the McCarthian witch hunts were do to a fear of communism. This is highly comparable with /r/conspiracies fear of conspiracies. Both were/are wrong.

We weren't mad he was asking for constructive criticism, we were mad he was asking for constructive criticism from tards.

Edit: and for the record he demodded himself

And not just asking for constructive criticism from them. He was sort of getting into bed with them and sucking them off.

he was asking for constructive criticism from tards.

He wasn't asking criticism from conspiracy retards, mate. Maybe you are thinking of some different accident?

So? Isn't that good? Isn't the best people to ask are your detractors? Stop being cynical bastards.

Ah. You mean that mod that went to our troll's sub and started removing their bans without moderator consensus? The guy that claimed to not know that /r/conspriatard is a troll sub? The one that wanted to move reddit related conspiracies to a sub of 200 members, the one that made our background look like an illuminati recruiting board? The one that started banning accounts that were critical of him? That guy?

The one that had a lunch date with Robotevil, a mod known for censorship and trolling in /r/conspiracy? The one that said he wasn't 'into' conspiracy theories, the one that admitted he'd never bothered to read the comments here?

That's just off the top of my head, I'm sure there are many more issues that users of this sub had with solidwhetstone.

But don't let me stop you, that's a lovely straw man you're building there.

First of /r/conspiratard is not a troll sub. It is a sub for pointing out flaws with conspiracy theories especially crazy ones like this. Second who cares if he ate lunch with someone? So? Presidents of the US used to meet with terrorists. Ah the classic "Strawman! Strawman!" argument. You fail to see that you are committing the fallacy fallacy.

There is far more to this than just that one post he made in another sub. You're going off half-cocked.

Its kind of like swatting a gnat off your balls. No threat, no teeth, just mild annoyance at best. Do you have any other tricks? Ones that actually work? Or is this it?