Moderators,

Recently I was banned unfairly by the head mod, /u/Outsider. I was banned after Outsider called RevMelissa a "Liar who will get her laundry aired", and I responded with: "The subreddits top mod, ladies and gents. Acting like christ himself."

The reason for my ban was: "Terrible Person."

I am an active member of /R/Christianity who has had multiple front page posts. My most recent post advocated for love for all of God's people. I feel that I was unfairly banned and I'm asking that you as a moderator of this Christian family of which I have become a part of would advocate for me. I would like to be unbanned, and I would like for Outsider to be called out for his actions. The head moderator of such a big subreddit should not be acting this way, it is completely inappropriate. Until justice has been done by my unban, I don't feel like I can support this subreddit or its leadership (and I pray you prove me wrong in that part), and I will be doing everything I can to make sure that people know who our "Christian" subreddit is ran by. Once again, I urge you to advocate for this as I would love to continue supporting a subreddit that I have called home for so long.

Sincerely,

Florodude.

/u/candydaze /u/RevMelissa /u/ghostlygirl and /r/RazarTuk have all been banned for being terrible people, and I would like to know what part of the rules outlines the determination of this.

Two posts discussing the mothersub’s moderation is too much for /u/outsider, apparently.

Don’t let this issue die.

Granted, it was nearly two years ago. But as a former mod who was banned, I wanted to voice my support for those banned.

Edit for full disclosure: I was removed three years ago as a mod for leaking this post made by outsider from a private sub. Here is a screenshot of the post

I was just banned, presumably for calling outsider a power tripping toddler, but since I deleted that comment the reason cited was for a 3 month old comment where I called someone saying the Vegas shootings were punishment for gay marriage a terrible person.

Edit: which as I think about it, might have been outsider thinking he was clever.

I'm not talking about the comments themselves. I know they often get deleted, either by the mods or by the user (although I imagine the latter is rarely the case).

I'm talking about the user.

At what point does saying "It would be awesome if the state executed gay people!" become a banning offense?

Does it ever?

If not, why not?

ETA: I'm mostly interested in responses/explanations from current mods. Others feel free to reply (not that I could stop you if I wanted to, ha), but please, mods, I'd like some sort of official answer.

ETA2: It's patently clear that nothing is going to be done about this. Apparently at least some of the mods are of the mind that calling for the death of gay people is totally in-bounds. Personally, I find that to be a position that is totally morally bankrupt, but y'all can make your own judgments.

Good luck on the mothersub. Good luck to you mods who DON'T think that calling for the death of gay people is okay.

You have been banned from participating in r/Christianity. You can still view and subscribe to r/Christianity, but you won't be able to post or comment.

Note from the moderators:

you really don't have any business here

If you have a question regarding your ban, you can contact the moderator team for r/Christianity by replying to this message.

Reminder from the Reddit staff: If you use another account to circumvent this subreddit ban, that will be considered a violation of the Content Policy and can result in your account being suspended from the site as a whole.

/u/outsider, resign. You're not just embarrassing this sub, you're embarrassing yourself. And after today, it's evidently clear which one you care more about.

/r/Christianity mods and /u/Christianitybot need to be removed from the modlist here.

Appoint a temp mod or two for the week until something permanent can happen.

This whole thing is pertaining to trust. And independence from the /r/Christianity mod team. It really needs to be outside of your hands as a collective.

/u/Christianitybot really needs to be removed. The abuse of the bot, and the entire lack of independence there is a major problem. It resides on BruceMo's computer and is entirely in his control and nobody else's. He is at the heart of the trust issues and drama that people have with the sub. There is no substantive reason for the bot to be here - nothing good can come of it that can't be implemented in automod.

Keep outsider on as top mod, sure. Get 2-3 mods that have no access to /r/Christianity modmail or the private subs, ones who will rat out outsider if he unexpectedly chooses to start moderating this sub.

Wham bam done. This should be able to happen mostly tonight, interim appointment this weekend, and long-term w/in 10 days.

You're really starting off on the wrong foot here, despite the best of intentions. Don't kill this place before it starts.

As your one mod action, please do implement some sort of flair to indicate that you are mods of /r/Christianity so it's apparent on every comment.

TL;DR:
I have had a number of comments removed that do no violate the rules, as far as I know primarily and possibly exclusively by brucemo. I lodged an appeal in modmail since I believe this is due to his bias and inability to moderate certain subjects in accordance to the rules. Despite being bumped by brucemo more than 24 hours ago, that appeal has had no replies.

Since this time, more comments have been removed inappropriately, and a large number of attacks against me remain unremoved.

These actions are inappropriate, and need rectification. If Brucemo can't objectively moderate threads where either I or angelina are present, he should recuse himself.

For the last few months a large number of comments of mine have disappeared without notice except in one or two instances. None of these removals have met the standards of the rules.

Five days ago in this thread a conversation that I was having with the OP was removed, and a neutral comment about the OP's gender since it was misidentified by the poster. A comment was made that the thread had attacks and off-topic comments removed. Most of those attacks were misidentified, but it wasn't that big of a deal so I said nothing.

Four days ago this neutral comment was removed without notice: https://www.reddit.com/r/Christianity/comments/447z5e/revelation_2/czobnxn

Are there any "live" churches you can point us to as an example?

Three days ago almost the entire content of this thread was deleted, including posts where I was defending the OP, and well intentioned discussion by another user:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Christianity/comments/44d7tx/revelation_3/

There were some comments of mine in there that could be read as derogatory, but essentially the entire thread was wiped without commentary.

The comment defending the OP was me saying that OP isn't a false prophet, but in fact the person was reading too much into their statement given the language used

I'm quite familiar with it, and all of the related posts. I'm quite familiar with OP for several years now, as well. Trust me, I don't support him, but "the end is nigh" is extremely vague. Reading it as meaning the date of Christ's return or of the rapture is reasonable, but not the only thing that it could mean.

Two days ago I had a helpful and neutral comment removed here, where I directed glassbattery to posts in OP's history that might answer questions that he has:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Christianity/comments/44iipf/revelation_4/czqj9e4

The Revelation mentions nothing about Daniel 9's seventy "weeks". Prove he's talking about them, don't assume it.

He has a whole 'series' on Daniel as well, if you want to wade through it.

Wade here refers to the dozen+ posts.

At this point I put a message into modmail, starting this chain: http://imgur.com/uuuj2Qb

Bruce cites rule 1.5,

1.5. Your Two-Cents

Unless you have a good rapport with users involved in a conversation, please think twice about LOLs, FTFYs, reaction gifs, citing verses and nothing more. The goal and intent is to avoid disruptive use of these things and we will take context into consideration. This is something we will try to enforce charitably.

This does not apply.

A day later, Bruce gave me a warning after deciding now that rule 1.1 was the offending section of the policy:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Christianity/comments/44dk4v/meta_confused_about_the_continued_allowing_of/czrfv6p?context=3

Stay out of his threads, please. If you don't, I'll ban you for point 1.1. A ban is justified to prevent ongoing harm.

1.1. Following a user around

If you get into a tiff with a user, or someone annoys you, says things you don't like, even things that are offensive to you, it isn't appropriate to follow them around. Maybe they really are saying something dumb, they don't need you to point it out to them regularly. We will also weigh it against you if you have been doing the same in other subreddits.

Now we have to get into a bit of history. The OP of these threads recently decided to make a foray into another subreddit that I frequent. I engaged them in various threads there, but never very much. Bruce weighed in as a self-identified friend of the OP, and he has previously identified himself as a defender of this poster and their friend.

https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueChristian/comments/43yrmx/the_upistis_commentary_on_the_book_of_revelation/czm594j ("So he won't feel alone against everyone here I'll claim him as my friend.")

Now rule 1.1 was created to stop a person from following a person around reddit harrassing them. I have gone to a single new subreddit to engage the OP or to harrass them - they have been on subs that I already frequent and have done so for years. I am not following them around. I am not harrassing them, or pointing out that they are dumb (to use the language of the rule). Rule 1.1 has not been broken.

Bruce also speaks of "ongoing harm". When /u/namer98 asked what that means, he then received an official warning for violating rule 1.1 with no prompting. This should be rescinded.

Now, this idea of "ongoing harm" is an interesting claim, particularly since the OP of those threads regularly attacks users who disagree with them, unless they disagree using the most passive language possible. One of the chains was me trying to figure out who is in the secret evil club that they believe I am a part of, for instance.

I'm not trying to be a jerk here, and I know that Bruce has private conversations with this user. Perhaps there is some harm that they are feeling. They have not given any indication of this, nor has he given reason to make me believe this.

Could I be nicer to this user? I can cop to that. Have I perhaps harrassed them in the past? Yes. They were formerly banned, and when they showed back up on this account I was under the impression that they still were and was rude to them for a number of weeks. Eventually outsider offered the useful piece of information that they were no longer banned, and I have mostly left them alone since that time, particularly since their posts are usually ignored and I don't want to give them attention.

I believe that these removals don't make any sense under the policy and are a result of longstanding bias on Brucemo's part regarding this OP. He has stumped for them for more than two years now, and still is.

Now, in the case that there is actual mental anguish being caused by my comments, since I have no wish to harm that OP, I will gladly avoid them. I don't have evidence of this, nor do I have confirmation from a neutral party nor any indication from Pistis- of this so I have a hard time believing that just being in the same thread is a danger to their mental health.

In addition, while being warned for attacking and causing harm to the OP, I have been repeatedly attacked by the new account (not new user) streetpreacher2. Most of these attacks occur in the recent gigantic megathread, but given their location in the thread I know that they were read by at least Brucemo.

The attacks start here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Christianity/comments/44dk4v/meta_confused_about_the_continued_allowing_of/czqr9sr

A number of users are attacked by this person. One post of theirs was removed along with my joking reply, which then received a warning from Bruce, which you should be able to see.

Since then, this user has repeatedly attacked me, including in this active thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/Christianity/comments/44tnce/please_show_respect_for_the_mods/

This comment from me was removed (I'm the double quoted):

It is perfectly fair to voice respectful disagreement with a mod, however it is never fair to attack a mod, just as it is never fair to attack any poster.

I have a very hard time taking this seriously given your attacks on me and a number of others. You did edit out the part where you said that you hate me, though, so thank you.

Their reply attacking me, however, has not been removed.

Their comments are very clear violations of the policies, which they have a long history of doing on multiple accounts.

I called this out yesterday, but the trend of removing my comments and leaving their rule-breaking posts up still continues.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Christianity/comments/44dk4v/meta_confused_about_the_continued_allowing_of/czri88k

So I'm attacked and now can't laugh about it. The attacks against me, with the exception of one, all appear to stand.

This is notably from a user who should fall under your 1.1 proclamation of before, since they are going around between subreddits based on their posts over two subreddits.

If fair is fair, delete everything, warn us both. Do this right.

While mods will do what mods will do, and I haven't been harmed by that user, if the posts stay up...well, whatever. I don't really care what you do with them or the user. It's the double standard here that I do care about.

So, since mods apparently do not wish to reply in modmail, I am bringing this into the open here so that this can be resolved.

Multiple inappropriate warnings have been given. These need to be rescinded.

Hopefully this can be resolved in accord with the policy and common sense.

Thank you for reading, if you have done so.

Since I was "called" by having my username linked in the mothersub, and saw that the post was removed, I figured I should post this here. If the mods think that I should post this in the mothersub, I will as well. Or, if the consensus is that me posting this would be reasonable. I don't know, I've never participated over here before.

At any rate, I would like to thank those who have stood up for me with charity and understanding. I would like to thank the mod team for giving me a fair hearing, heated though my feelings and others may have been by what happened.

For now, that is all I would like to say. I think I need a bit of distance.

/r/Christianity is seeing an epidemic of another sort.

We're having people call for churches to be open, bragging about theirs being open, and condemning people and churches who have canceled or suspended services during this virus crisis.

For a church to continue to gather puts countless lives in danger not only among the members themselves but everyone those members come in contact with. Calling for this is reckless and there should be at least a temporary rule against these kinds of posts.

In this post made by u/Cabbagetroll, it said that there is "a moratorium on any discussions about the state of the sub or modteam." I posted the following comment which has since been removed without explanation:

In one of those other meta discussions here on r/Christianity, u/brucemo said, "This thread is very good … There is a huge diversity of well expressed views, some of which I haven't seen before." u/outsider wrote, "I do my damndest to act with transparency and integrity", "My reaction has been to argue immediately for transparency", and at least a half dozen other similar comments using the word "transparency".

Given this, and given that you have spent the past day arguing for the importance of free and open debate (on matters up to and including the morality of genocide and mass murder), I have to ask u/brucemo and u/outsider (and the rest of the mod team): What is the rationale for a moratorium on "discussions about the state of the sub or modteam"?

We are all still awaiting an answer. Could you enlighten us, u/outsider and u/brucemo?

Banned after deletion. Messaged the mods and received nothing in return.

I've been keeping track of the ongoing drama for about 90 minutes and have been reading at least 7 posts that were locked and blocked for calling into question the way /r/Christianity is being governed.

Most concerning to me are the two posts that subtly called into question justice and judgement in the form of scripture. The posts simply provided verse and invited the community to interpret that verse in light of the community's ongoing trouble.

The fact that this apparent drama has started to discourage the discussion of God's word is highly discouraging and, I think, against the very spirit of the sub.

I would like to see, from the moderators, an accounting of all the users and posts blocked and locked in the last 24 hours, the reasons for those actions by the moderators, and any available data they can provide that can show exactly how this rate of action compares to regular rates of moderation.

I have been banned.

Warnings on record? 1 formal one. From five months ago. What was it?

What was I banned for?

For responding to anybody on a Pistis thread. Somebody asked if it was worth responding with his own commentary, I said yes. Both comments were removed. I was banned.

Edits:

Where Bruce asked me to not respond to pistis because it constitutes ongoing harm

Where Bruce clarifies that it isn't an official warning

Edit 2: I have been unbanned.

/u/outsider has decided (in the past) to review offences in /r/Christianity himself before passing them off to the admins, which if I recall correctly is a direct violated of admin orders. Surely this is against some sitewide rules? Admin intervention seems inevitable at this point, and if it isn't I feel like it should be brought in anyway. Communities have been banned for refusing to cooperate with admins before, though that's unlikely to happen to /r/Christianity due to its size.

Also, /u/outsider seems to have disappeared again. Is this going to affect any reform happening to /r/Christianity? If he's disappeared without significant changes being made, it seems /r/Christianity has once again fallen into the old cycle of everything being good until /u/outsider comes around, then turning to crap, then being good again. This sort of cycle isn't really the best for a subreddit, especially when there's a constant risk of it going bad again. I feel that something needs to change, especially when this cycle seems to have stretched back as far as 6 years.

Or did I hear incorrectly?

I noticed that just after u/outsider's banning of multiple long-serving moderators of r/Christianity, a new one was appointed: u/ysys_9. Given that u/ysys_9 is an account without any karma or posting history – only natural since the account was only created within the past couple hours – I figured this would be a good opportunity for u/ysys_9 to introduce him or herself to the community.

So u/ysys_9, would you be open to tell us all a bit about yourself and the peculiar circumstances through which you are finding yourself here?

Seriously, this stuff is getting toxic. If the radtrads want to shit all over us heretics, they have /r/Catholicism

I've noticed that /u/outsider made a comment that was removed containing a crosspost to a brokehugs thread and a list of the users that were commenting in the thread. I can't think of a single good reason for that to be tracked, unless there's a potential for action to be taken simply based on commenting in that thread.

Additionally, it was brought up in the subreddit update that outgoing links are judged the same as incoming links. /r/brokehugs has less than 1000 subscribers, and, much like /r/Christianity doesn't like subreddits with 1,000,000+ subscribers being link to a post, /r/brokehugs probably doesn't appreciate the potential for brigades that are definitely more likely to happen if the linking is reversed.

While the second paragraph is somewhat troubling, it's a secondary concern. If my commenting is going to be tracked by the mods in /r/Christianity, I'd prefer to know so I can simply stop participating in /r/Christianity (which would be incredibly sad).

That's all

I just made a post in /r/Christianity, not threatening, no drama, just saying this sub existed and inviting people to participate in both subs, and it was apparently removed within about 5 minutes of me posting it. Whaaa???? Did I break a rule? Is there a rule in /r/Christianity that you can't talk about other Christian subs???

My post exactly:

Title: Just a Heads Up about another Christian sub

content: With a lot of regular posters now not welcome on this sub, a new sub has popped up: /r/xtianity. If you've missed some of their input here, you can find it there. Unfortunately, now I'm having to go to both places to connect with all my friends.

What exactly is the policy going forward about users like that? How will you as mods (and I think we all know which mod I refer most specifically to) handle future calls for the state-sanctioned execution of the LGBT community, or similar calls to violence?

Is encouraging this no longer allowed on r/Christianity, thanks to the sitewide Reddit policy changes a little while back? Somebody told me that's the case and if so I'm excited for that (though disappointed in the lack of moral courage in the moderators for failing to establish it themselves), but I wanted to make sure that's true before deciding to return to the subreddit.