TLDR?

There has been some drama here on midwest.social, and those troubled by it have made a sister community at !lotrmemes@lemmy.dbzer0.com. I’m looking for your input on how to move forward.

Where have you been?

This started unfolding at the end of 2024, unfortunately along with a pretty scary decline in my partner’s health, which has resulted in Lemmy taking a backseat in my life. This is ongoing, and highlights the immediate issue of !lotrmemes@midwest.social being largely unmoderated, which I’ll address below.

What exactly happened?

It feels irresponsible for me to give my own take on something that happened in my absence, but here’s a timeline as I understand it:

  • Luigi shoots a CEO.
  • User A comments something to the effect of “someone please kill this other person” on a midwest.social community.
  • User B reports the comment.
  • Admin at midwest.social bans User B for being a “Libbety lib lib.”
  • Users start moving away from midwest.social.
  • A new LOTR Memes community is started on lemmy.dbzer0.com.

Please have a look at https://lemmy.cafe/post/10511187 and form your own opinion.

What happens next?

I have seen calls to lock this community and sticky a post redirecting people to the new community, in an effort to consolidate users in one place. I personally agree that the admins behaviour was inappropriate and if I have things to post in the future, they will likely not be going on midwest.social.

That said, there are people still using and enjoying this community. I don’t want to abruptly take that away. One of Lemmy’s major benefits is user choice, including choice of instance, and if people are fine with staying here, who am I to force them out?

I would like to hear from the users here. This is your community. If you want to keep it separate, we will. If you want to fold in with the new one, we will. If we do keep this one open, we immediately need more mods, so please PM me if you’re interested in helping out. My partner has another hospital stay for a pretty major surgery at the end of this week and I will likely be dropping off the earth for awhile after that.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Zoidsberg

  • The Picard Maneuver@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    1 day ago

    Life comes first, and I hope everything goes well with the upcoming surgery @Zoidsberg@lemmy.ca. Please don’t add a single bit of stress regarding anything on lemmy to your life right now.

    I didn’t catch this drama live, but someone linked it to me after the fact, and I was honestly pretty disappointed to see an admin talk to users this way. I don’t think the reporter was wrong to notify the admins that someone was advocating murder on their instance, and they certainly didn’t deserve to be banned and mocked for it.

    Then I started seeing other similar posts (like the one Blaze linked in a different comment) showing that this wasn’t an isolated thing, and I was a bit disheartened because I love sharing memes here, but it’s really hard to build a community when users are worried about an admin lashing out at them. I’ve lost some trust. =(