Flying squid is probably the most pathetic human being I've ever encountered. They've hid behind having a supposed terminal illness for no reason when I criticised their modding practices, and claimed I was mocking their self proclaimed Jewish heritage when I wished them a merry Christmas. Just a sad sad human being.

Look my take on it is if you’re a mod, you shouldn’t get involved in spicy discussions. There’s just no way to avoid the conflict of interest, and it makes you look like shit no matter how you slice it

Hexbear and .ml have the same problem of mods/admins getting involved in political discussions, then deleting comments that disagree with them. It’s just a bad look.

New drinking game, take a drink every time flying squid ends up on this community. He and Jordan Lund are absolute shit stains.

There's no genocide of russians or russia sympathizers going on in Ukraine. You're such an obvious tankie troll, why are you even bothering here? YDI

I see Flying Squid around a lot. I'm not a fan.

So I ask you, in this context (or any, really), is “…good god, you’re a mod here?” uncivil?

Mildly. I'd not remove it myself, but it also contributes nothing and is provocative.

That being said, FlyingSquid is thinskinned (or sensitive, if one prefers), which is a poor trait for a mod to have.

This is on you... for unblocking worldnews (/s):-P

I like [email protected].

Had a wild "discussion" with FlyingSquid a few days ago which basically ended with him saying "reported because anyone who disagrees with me is a troll". Blocked him after that.

https://lemmy.world/comment/14167451

.World mods are libbed up.

Ehhh, it's kinda borderline, but being snide is definitely incivility, if not egregiously so.

If it had been a ban based on that single comment, yeah, that's over the line. But just a comment removal? Nah, that's a mod's job, to mop up the piss so it doesn't spread and stink up the joint.

Is a snide comment enough to increase the chances of a comment section jumping the shark? Kinda situational, but people do love to find an excuse to be dicks.

I would have removed the comment too, though I would have communicated my reasoning since it's a matter of interpretation as to how the removed comment is intended. It could be taken as more of a "oh dear, I am surprised", or more as "how did you manage to be a mod", or even as a "you suck as a mod".

While a mod expects a degree of nastiness, it comes along with the role; you still can't let it go because when people are scrolling, the vibe of a community suffers from such things. The more snarky and snide comments there are, the more likely people are to think it's okay. So removing them prevents future problems to a limited degree.

And that really does work. I've seen it from the user side and the mod side. If you intend to keep a community relaxed and friendly, you can't allow slap fights and petty bullshit to stay up or it snowballs. It isn't a matter of if, it's when and how bad.

Now, there's communities where that kind of thing is okay. If that's the way someone wants to run a C/ or other forum, that's fine. But you'll notice as a user that those communities end up getting very toxic very fast.

See, people think that because they don't curse or directly insult someone, that they're still being civil. That is absolutely not the case. Don't believe me? Well, bless your heart.

You can be very uncivil without telling someone to fuck themselves. And you can be perfectly civil while calling someone a cunt. If you don't thin that's true, well aren't you just adorable.

A mod removing an off topic, probably rude comment is not power tripping, or silencing criticism. It's literally what a moderator is supposed to do. If you have a problem with a mod, having it out inside a thread that isn't about that is a dick move of its own. It's just not the place or time.

Now, ignoring the specifics of your post, that specific comment and action.

Flying squid is a strange case. As a mod, he (they? I can't recall for sure if they're a guy or not, but I think they've specified their gender that way) gets called on the carpet a lot. Which can be an indicator of a problematic mod. I would, however, argue that this is power tripping bastards, not fair and equal moderation evaluation. Nobody posts here unless they disagree with a mod's actions. There's a selection bias inherent to the nature of the place.

The squid seems to err heavily on the side of minimizing disruptive comments, sometimes erring a little too much.

And, there may be some hypocrisy in allowing their own uncivil comments to stay up. But is that power tripping, or is it simply poor judgement? A mod that's going to participate in their own C/ has to follow the same rules, or they're just a dick. But it's really easy to forget that, as a mod, you have your own idea of what is and isn't a rule violation. That idea is not obvious to all users, and if you're going to give your own comments leeway, you damn well need to do so for others. You have to remember that tone is hard to detect in writing, that English isn't everyone's first or best language, and that there are a ton of people that will say things that seem uncivil, but may well be just jocularity (the aforementioned "cunt" as an example).

It's my personal opinion that if you can't do that as a mod, if you can't find that balance, it's time to find a replacement. I've had to do it in the past tbh.

If you interact with squid outside of the hot button issues, they're pretty damn chill. Outright friendly most of the time. So I have trouble believing malice on their part as a mod. I could be wrong, but it doesn't fit their public behavior overall.

I can believe that anyone can exhibit bad judgement as a mod. Largely because I know I have, and I actively work to minimize that. If you're aware of it being a probability, and you try not to, but you still fuck up, then anyone can. It's how you handle fixing it that matters.

This is already longer than the short attention span we've developed online, so I'm going to stop here with a summation.

No power tripping with the specific mod action taken, but there is some questionable behavior overall.

Step 1. Block flyingsquid.

That has saved my sanity and general feelings for Lemmy. Otherwise I would have quit the entire platform due to one person.

No, that's not incivility.

And in case he changes the comment saying "genocide is not all that horrific", here's an archive: https://archive.is/Frsby

Let me see if there's a way to report a mod to the admins.

Edit: yeah, if you message @[email protected] it goes to the admins.

Edit 2: 24 hours later, comments are still up and no response from the admins.

Well I'm glad to see someone else was disgusted by that response.

They were so close to having a valid point about forcibly ending cultures that are horrible (slavery culture of southern US states, nazis, etc.) but missed the mark by ignoring the differences between those aggressively violent cultures and a regular old aspects of culture like language and other facets of a regional identity. Then doubling down on trying to equate forcing the language of an invader on the populace is somehow the same as a language not being available in all public schools because there aren't enough speakers of that language in an area.

Then they ignored all of the replies that explained why the basis of their logic was wrong.

PTB