I personally am not surprised by Flytape, he made some issues blow out of proportion and got called out by the entire sub at some point. He learned, and does a great job now.

I fucking love this sub, don't get me wrong, I'm on here daily. I have seen a big impact on the amount of OK material coming out lately; slim to none, basically. The amount of downvotes dosen't make any sense half the time.

The worst is seeing an insult in a thread not even an hour old, with something like 10|1 votes. If the word brigade can't be used to talk about that, well I'll shut up one more time.

Last point; I spent hours on /r/ conspifuckers tagging the mass. People that seemed to be "part of it" and had something to say. Well, they are showing up here on a daily bases. Don't believe it? If you are a mod reading this, and you think you do your job right, you don't... and it's obvious.

Good luck tagging them.

I'm too lazy to log on my alt account to post on r/conspiracy.

I myself was just observing how many posts are coming out and wondering if it isn't meant to make it hard to catch everything by browsing the 'new' catagory. Maybe it's just a busy day or something, but I am here non stop and have been for years and it certainly seems like posts are coming fast.

Aaannnd this post got brigaded. 15 upvotes 10 downvotes in less than an hour.

It's more likely that a group of people are out to destabilize the sub while creating drama and argument through obfuscation. I've mentioned this before but remember /r/atheism's fall from grace? That happened due to posts like this one. It turned into a giant circle jerk while solving absolutely nothing.

Why do you need to use the word "shill" to make a point? There's thousands of words and word combinations that can be used to describe a situation that shills are involved. Use those words instead.

Be creative and explain exactly what you believe to be happening. I'm sure this would be a lot more beneficial to your argument as well as to your listeners.

I would like to believe this. I have always had faith in our mods and I would like that faith to continue. However, many threads have been posted about the events in the last few days and the only ban I know of was one of our regular users. Meanwhile, the person who he had called out (who by the way has been the subject of many accusations by a large number of this sub and who had been warned on at least 2 other occasions) is still here as far as I know.

On the subject of the word shill. I don't believe I've ever used it before today, as I too have always found it annoying. However, I am using it in this instance because it's simply an easy word to type and everyone will know what I am referring to when I say it. It is a simple, non-harmful word to describe "the bad guy".

[deleted]

I would like a mod to explain why that post was removed.

Which post?

http://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/1xpqfh/warning_shills_may_be_attempting_to_hijack_the/

It doesn't look removed to me. The log shows it was approved 8 hours ago by mr_dong. I would assume it had been reported prior to that. Being reported doesn't remove anything but it lets the mods know it needs attention.

[deleted]

From your link and our mod log it looks like he removed it then immediately re-approved it. I've done the same thing occasionally by accidentally hitting 'remove' instead of 'approve' in the reported list. If you need a better explanation you'll have to PM him because I have no way of knowing for sure.

That's good enough for me. thanks

Great. Have a good evening. Well, it's evening here.

Hi Sovereign! Have any actions been taken against any of the people who invaded the thread I linked to up top? And if so, why not?

The only link I see is the solidwhetstone conspiracy one and it's only got five comments with none of them being trollish.

I apologize, I didn't post it here. http://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/1xosrd/looks_like_rconspiratard_is_the_subreddit_of_the/ in on mobile so nothing fancy.

I can see that 6 comments have been removed but don't know if any have been banned. Do you realize how long it would take to go through all 195 comments and compare the users to the banned list?

The best I can do for you is to keep suggesting that rule violations should be reported. When encountering trolls/shills, just downvote and move on. Don't feed them. I realize it sometimes takes a lot of self-restraint and I occasionally get sucked in too, but not for very long.

Sure sounds like "too big to fail".

Well as it turns out he and I are from the same area...maybe I'll hit the next meetup up and see if I can get to the bottom of this.

Wish I would have went to the last one...it was right around when the shit hit the fan.

in my opinion, a lot of fine work for naught is done attempting to defend the sub against its detractors. the issue is with reddit's form - its anonymous structure, its ease of account creation and management, and its vulnerability to bots and brigades that exploit the form.

we're essentially trying to have open conversation about, say, the history and actions of the Cartels on an anonymous forum that relies heavily on the honor system and selective moderation by people who are also only known to us only by the honor system and comment history. i just don't see how we should expect that to work at all in this field. it's bollocks.

I agree, with this system it would be impossible to keep them all out. However, when we have a list of a dozen people who are without a doubt undeniably attacking our sub I don't see why we wouldn't ban them, even if it doesn't do anything but slow them down.

<whine>but they don't break the rools</whine> :c

well i certainly won't defend them.

i just wonder about the amount of good that would really come of it, and about the way it will be used as evidence of authoritarianism against the sub's members.

the s word is used to deny evidence and to stop anyone arguing in a different way. It's effectively censorship from one person to another.

The "s" are the ones who deny evidence. We call out trolls and MSM parrots. Saying it's used to silence is ridiculous.

they counter evidence in most cases I've seen and are shut down immediately

it is now against our rules to use the word "shill".

The other day I made a self post expressing my concerns with the use of the word shill.

I wasn't saying that it shouldn't be used, but I was trying to asset that without a decent standard of proof it's just being used as an insult.

Considering how controversial the post was I doubt it's actually against the rules to call someone a shill.

Post's have been removed over it. If posts are being removed then it must be against the rules, otherwise there's no reason to remove them.

/u/serfnomics who unfortunately won't be joining me due to a ban he received today after he called out someone who many in this sub think is a shill.

There was a lot more to it than that. He was warned of Rule 10 violations and continued the same pattern after being warned.

Edit: As for the rest, I personally think the currently group of mods are the best we've ever had.

Sovereign, I have said the same thing many times as you said I your edit. I just don't understand why our users are being banned but 100% undeniable trolls haven't been.

100% undeniable trolls get banned way more than you may think. We've got about 1,000 names on the banned list. They simply create new accounts. It then takes a while for them to become recognizable (if they keep within the rules) and then the process starts over. It's just impossible to keep them all out.

I'd argue the best mods /r/conspiratard has ever had. Never has there been brigading this massive after SWS left.

It started because he double-crossed /r/conspiracy and collaborated with r/conspiratard. They didn't like that and have been at us, even more than previously, ever since.

Can you offer any evidence of this?

Search through his comment history. It's probably all still there. He claimed he was just asking for advice on how to run /r/conspiracy. Then he created a new sub that quickly became a carbon copy of r/conspiratard.

Double-crossed? I didn't sign a loyalty pledge when I subscribed, correct?

You haven't been a mod here yet either. Correct?

Nope, nor would I ever. This place is too confused by personalities over principles. There's no consistency, despite the rules.

I myself was just observing how many posts are coming out and wondering if it isn't meant to make it hard to catch everything by browsing the 'new' catagory. Maybe it's just a busy day or something, but I am here non stop and have been for years and it certainly seems like posts are coming fast.

Good luck tagging them.

I'm too lazy to log on my alt account to post on r/conspiracy.

It started because he double-crossed /r/conspiracy and collaborated with r/conspiratard. They didn't like that and have been at us, even more than previously, ever since.