I woke up to find out that another bout of drama had occurred on the Atlas RMB last night as I slumbered. The cause? This RMB post, containing mention of 'Adolf Kitler' and a 'Feline Reich'.
Longtime user Zerinfriom was banned for that post, though it was not made immediately clear why to anyone and the post itself was not suppressed. What is odd is that this comes only days after I received this message from an unnamed mod, after asking what it was about one of MY posts that was 'obscene':
NationStates Moderators wrote:Seriously, you think national socialism is obscene, or that we think it?'
No.
Not only is this a fairly unwarranted bit of snark in response to a simple request for information (which I was forced to make since the original Mod message did not make clear which post was being discussed, the post had been deleted, and I cannot remember every post I make on every internet forum), but it makes it fairly clear that when I joked about a Fourth German Reich (though I was talking about historic German expansionism, not Hitler), the mods did not find offense in any National Socialist implications. Yet several days later, Zerinfriom makes a joke about Nazis and his nation is wiped out.
Which leads us to my next point. In the same message mentioned above, I was told the following:
NationStates Moderators wrote:You and your regionmates seem to think that the rules don't apply to Atlas and its rmb.
This would seem to explain the attitude certain of the mod staff have towards our region. Requests and messages to the mod team from Atlas region members are often treated with instant derision and attitude, regardless of how polite or reasonable the message was. Users are targeted for seemingly arbitrary 'offenses' one day that were not a problem a week ago. This issue is exacerbated by the fact that we are rarely told what the offense in question was.
I recently sent a message asking for a repeal of my one-week RMB ban, on the grounds that the phrase I was banned for meant 'hold onto your butts', not some kind of 'obscene' sexual threat, and that the ruling was in effect the same as deciding that a phrase like 'oh man, you're screwed' would also be "obscene". In that message, I also stressed to the moderation team that, due to the continued efforts of successive regional council members, words such as 'rape, or ghey, or fgt,' (all of which the anonymous moderator complained about in their most recent message to me) have all dropped to a 0% incidence rate on the Atlas RMB over the last six months or so. I also stressed that, contrary to the seemingly entrenched moderation belief that Atlas is some kind of hive of scum and villainy, we are actually not trying to be 'problematic'. I received no reply.
TL;DR - it's hard to cooperate when elements of the moderation team display overt hostility, issue conflicting and contradictory rulings and warnings, refuse to communicate properly or even tell us what the offenses they've found are, and then ignore any messages or attempts to open dialogues. I'm not some conspiracy theorist who thinks someone is looking to win the MODlympics or whatever, but it does feel like certain mods are on the warpath against Atlas. Please can we talk about this, and can we get answers to messages that went unanswered?
and it's also not worth it IMO), my specific situation might not be THAT much of a problem on this.
