Ye Power Trippin' Bastards @lemmy.dbzer0.com

10mo ago

This a new one: Banned for abbreviating New York Times to NYT in a comment.

https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/29191692

I don't even know what to think about this one. I'm not angry, more confused than anything. There's only one mod there so i asked them, and they said "It's against policy. It's the abbreviations policy."

I see no such policy anywhere, so who knows what's going on. Is it only the NYT that can't be abbreviated? What about the US? Is LOL forbidden too? And if so, why are we forbidden from laughing there!

They didn't even remove the comment.
The mod is user qrstuv. Maybe the only abbreviation allowed is when they say one? That's a power trip!

228 comments

no abbreviations? that is the single most idiotic rule ive ever seen. what a fucking idiot.
- ikr wtf jk
  
  fr smh

Oh no, saying "the US" is also a bannable abbreviation! Lol! What in the world
- Lol
  6 day ban! You must type "laughing out loud"
  
  jfc smh

A pet peeve of mine is when people randomly throw acronyms around expecting everyone to just know what it means, but this is taking the piss.
- Is it? I know what the NYT is because Im American. Im not sure if that acronym is universal.
  
  Not American, but NYT is a media source acknowledged internationally. Most people would know the acronym, even if they are not americans, and for those who don't, it's the first result on Google.
  
  I mean their reaction to acronyms are over the top, not specifically "NYT" itself. It's certainly not worth banning anyone over.
  What they could do is encourage people to define the acronym the first time they use ie, e.g. "The New York Times (NYT) reports that..."
  
  In a post about an article from the NYT, I think you should be able to figure it out.
- Yeah, I'm okay with discouraging abbreviations. But a blanket ban is silly.
  Comments on a post about a New York Times article regarding the United States should probably be fine to use NYT & US.
  Comments talking about the best computer role playing game going on and on about PoE2 deserve a ban however.
  
  Power over Ethernet 2 when??
- I work in marketing and it's not fun anymore please take me off this ride
- That's where you need to use AI acronym explanation browser extension! Only $3.99! /s

What happens if you write GNU since that's a recursive acronym?

I'm a member of the SDF instance and I've reported this. I hope it gets attention and action. I don't appreciate someone making us look like clowns.
- Isn’t SDF an abbreviation too ?
- I blocked the entire instance because of this. Why would i want to read posts i can't even take part in, you know.
  Thank you for letting us know that person isn't the entire instance. I'll unblock it.
  
  I mean, it should be general knowledge at this point that instance admins and comm mods are not the same thing.
  
  Thank you for letting us know that person isn't the entire instance. I'll unblock it.
  Glad to hear it. We've got some fantastic retrotech and FOSS rabbit holes for you to get stuck in, if that's your kind of thing.
- yea I don't know what's going on with that comm and/or moderation. In general sdf seems to be one of the lightest-touch-moderated instances out there so this is really surprising
  
  People don't seem to differentiate much between an instance and its individual communities, even if the instance has a really light touch with mods.
  
  After unblocking it I realized I recognize a bunch of people on SDF. You guys and gals are pretty solid. Except for this one person.
- You forgot the /s this is the Internet and some people like OP will take you seriously..
  
  He's just some guy, why would anybody take it seriously?
  
  I did not.

I wonder if using the word taxi, instead of taximeter cabriolet, will prompt a ban.
- "taximeter cabriolet"
  Today, I learned!
  
  That must be where "taxi cab" and "cab" came from too
- If I were a mod, I'd ban anyone who used "taximeter cabriolet" on sight. /s
  
  You are banned, you should have used "I would" instead of "I'd"
  
  Excuse me, my name is also Taximeter Cabriolet
- Wait.. Taxi Cab is short for something?
  
  Depends how long the ride is.
  
  The short version of Limousine ofc
- Before we know it, people will be calling the popular public conveyance a 'bus', rather than the proper name of 'Omnibus'.
  Shock. Horror.

Am I the only one that finds this fucking hilarious?
- Not at all!

There’s been another post about the same community (or was it same instance?) a week or two ago.
I remember the bans were because of NYT, USAID and probably others.
I don’t know if we had any explanation of what the fuck (sorry, meant to write ‘WTF’) is happening over there.
- And before that, weren’t they having problems with some white supremacist running coms over there and then they couldn’t find an admin available to instance ban them? smh
  
  For like 24 hours. As internet things go, that's not a long time. A much bigger deal was made out of it than it deserved.

I recall commenting last time this community came up that it was weird that NYT was allowed when other abbreviations were not. I guess their mod caught up. It’s a dumb rule, but even ignoring that, it’s not listed in the community!
- Yeah and they're refusing to explain where the policy is, or even what the policy is.
  
  where the policy is, what the policy is.
  And most of all, why the policy is.
  
  its the abbreviations policy
  
  its the abbreviations policy

They've locked every post so I guess they don't really want any community whatsoever.

their instance's own fucking domain name is not.... "lemmy.superdimensionfortress.org"

That isn't even power tripping, it's stupidity.
Which, it is power tripping, and grossly over reacting, but the stupidity is piled so much higher that the PTB part is miniscule in comparison
- It's extremely weird.

You really want a laugh, go look at the mod log on any community on dubvee.org
It’s like that instance was created for the sole purpose of scale testing high volumes of bans.
It’s like they have a whole system for synchronizing instance wide bans from comments made in other communities on other instances in the fediverse.
- Having been inspired by the Core Wars at an impressionable age, I just thought of a truly perverted version that could be enacted on a dedicated Lemmy "shitpost" community. The community would have a committee-designed list of moderation rules (including that nonsense, irrelevant or data-flooding posts/comments are ban-worthy), and teams would develop LLM-based agents as the Lemmy-bot equivalent of Core War "redcode". The two bots would be simultaneously unleashed on the channel as the only posters, commenters, and mods, armed with internet-access to find links for posting and commenting on. Every time a bot does a ban on the opposing bot the game is paused for the human adjudicators to decide if the ban is valid based on conversational context. A bot wins a round when it achieves 3 valid bans, or when the opposing bot reaches 3 invalid bans. A yearly tournament could be held. The winning team's bot would have to be exceptionally good at finding & posting links, and reading & commenting on them, and replying to opposition comments in ways that induce the opposing bot into footgunning in bannable ways. I think it would be critically important to not give the bots access to the Dark Web when finding links to post, otherwise things would get harrowingly nasty really fast.
  
  I don’t remember Core Wars. But dubvee.org very much reminds me of SRS on Reddit.
  
  Dude, it sucks that we can't drop analogies to Core Wars in casual conversation. I feel that pain.

@qrstuv@lemmy.sdf.org this you?
- You see, it's different when they do it.

You didn't even break that rule, because an abbreviation is when you shortened a word to its first few letters, like 'Inc.' for 'Incorporated'.
NYT is an initialism. NASA is an acronym. Neither are abbreviations.
- Being a pedant is fun but you need to get your shit straight. Abbreviation is an umbrella term that includes shortening of words or phrases in various ways including acronyms and initialisms.
  
  It is if you don't give a fuck about precise communication.
  Usually this is what people who are too lazy or stupid to figure out how to be better people will act.
  I'm sometimes lazy and/or stupid so i can confirm this with my own experience
- Akshually

Honestly, SDF is becoming the home of the bad weirdos. There's constant examples like this one coming from them, not to mention CSAM staying up for way too long without them handling it etc. They really need to get their shit together before the threadiverse has enough and just summarily defeds them.
PTB
- What does SDF even mean? These abbreviations are getting out of hand and should be banned.
  
  Super Dimensional Fortress. It's an old public unix server and BBS. We've had some bad actors recently and insufficient admin coverage.

What is SDF?
Also, since the rules aren't written down, I wonder if they would object to defined acronyms. Like if I wrote "laughing out loud (lol)" in a comment, could I use the acronym later in the same comment? Could I use it in a subsequent comment? Could other people?
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SDF_Public_Access_Unix_System
  It's a pretty old internet nonprofit, and I don't think they're involved in this community but it's the moderator?
  I saw a previous post about this community and I still don't know what's going on
  
  "Super Dimension Fortress" that's an abbreviation, bud. Straight to jail.
  
  Ok see, that's pretty cool. Im down with that. It's too bad this one mod had made SDF look bad.
  
  I was making a joke, but that's really informative, thank you!
- I looked around and the closest thing I could figure out is SDF has something to do with linux. And they also ask for donations every chance they get.
  Edit. The provided wiki link explains them

That place is eerie. Their sidebar has zero rules for me. But more importantly, who uses Corporate Memphis art? Feels like an outsider set it up.
- The mod keeps replying to me in DM, but has repeatedly refused to answer any questions about thier supposed policy.
  They're also aware of this post, but won't say a word here.
  
  Trolling and then watching the chaos from afar?
  
  ~~Which mod is this?~~ We had a bad actor recently posting all kinds of nazi shit.

Sounds like the mod had some kinda mental episode where they imagined some non existent rules. Maybe they were sleep walking and happened to open their phone lol.
- I wasn't the only one banned for it haha

"qrstuv" isn't an abbreviation. It's the alphabet dawg
- I figured it was "queer Stu + V", but yours makes more sense.
  
  I thought it was just a spam name made by mashing the keyboard randomly lol
- Lmao so it is! Good catch

Told you not to use the N word

What a clown show.

news@sdf is ran by a crazy right wing lunatic. I am banned from there and I do not recall posting on it. SDF is nice because it federates with everything but the communities here are wild west.
- That explains a lot actually.
  Yeah i read a post about wanting SDF at large to put effort into the lemmy and mastodon branches. I see the pain you guys are going though.
  
  I do not take the local front page very seriously but we do have some funny smaller communities like bun_alert. My favorite post was a stupid rant by the admin on the rant community.

"Where did the acronym touch you?"
- It touched me in my P P
  
  Ok, you know the rules. Get in the box.
  
  omg
  
  Pierre Polievre doesn't belong to you

I think qrstuv is trolling you. They post some surreal stuff on other servers and don't seem to take anything on here seriously :)
To be fair you should have read the abbreviation policy before posting though.
- This is kind of my favorite thing on Lemmy right now.
  I used to be part of forums where like one forum, the mod was a person who demanded sources with every comment. So you'd write everything like you're submitting it to a college professor.
  Then another forum, the mod wants everyone to roleplay as their forest animals.
  Reddit made us forget how to be weird.
  
  If they had simply said at any point "I'm messing around" or taking a piss, I'd have 180'd and laughed. But they won't say anything useful. So it's whatever.

This person is a PTB for sure, I mean seriously? Banning people for abbreviations? That's outright petty. This person strikes me as one of the biggest losers I've seen on here in a while.
Oh and before some whiny asshole who's probably an alt of the mod comes here whining about how they're allowed to make whatever rules they want, they didn't actually. I mean make any rule about it. The sidebar of their community literally says:
undefined

News Stories
So this person is a power tripper because they are banning people for something that isn't actually a rule, nor is it a common decency violation. It's just purely and simply banning for spite.
- I've straight blocked that News channel for this reason for some time. If the content is going to be filtered through the hands of mods this obnoxious, its not worth following.

this sounds just like an enforced jaywalking law

Are they having a psychotic break into bipolar or are they extremely autistic? Focusing on what would appear to be odd details and reacting beyond what everyone else does, does occur, but it’s not typical behavior for people outside certain diagnosable zones. This feels almost arbitrary, otherwise.
Unless it’s a weird Elon thing to try to never say USAID on social media and using a broad rule to do it and hide it at the same time. Even that idea is stretching and should belong in the tinfoil hat club. Maybe not on this timeline, it’s hard to say.
- What's weird is that they've allowed other people to comment with acronyms, and they themselves have used acronyms elsewhere on other posts.
  
  If you look into those other peoples modlog you'll see theve been banned too.
  But yeah, the mod themselves has no problem using acronyms.
- Extremely autistic is something i considered. I can't think of any other reason, really. They won't explain any of it, so we have to guess and assume.
  
  Considering the special interest nature of a pubnix instance, I think that those who are there for that have a higher chance of neurodivergence.
- It doesn't really matter what they are, it's downright petty, and shows a certain level of incompetency to moderate a community properly and fairly. At the end of the day a person like this should not be moderating a community.

Make up bullshit reasons when people post from or about a certain thing, and people will only think you are nutty instead of actively suppressing content. The fun benefit of doing this is that you can even do it when a community has more members of the type you want to suppress, you just do it occasionally and statistics slowly allow the content to be herded to where you are leading it. Troll factories love this one trick, as it is indistinguishable from actual power tripping mods.
- A very common technique back on Reddit. The political subs loved to ban for petty or "humorous" reasons whenever a particular account got too popular. I remember /r/Libertarian banning an account for having too much accumulated karma. /r/neoliberal had all sorts of "joke" moderation rules they referenced to as posting monetary policy. It was all childish bullshit intended to filter who participated and narrow content down to whatever mods preferred.
  
  whats the point of being a mod if you dont get to do that though

I see no such policy anywhere
It’s there. You just missed it because the rule is abbreviated.
See, in this timeline, the rules about abbreviation can be abbreviated, but not content.

I’m an SDF member and, I want to state openly that @qrstuv@lemmy.sdf.org does not represent me, but is also making my laugh my ass off rn.
- I’m an SDF member and, I want to state openly that @qrstuv@lemmy.sdf.org does not represent me, but is also making my laugh my ass off rn.
  Banned for using “rn” instead of “right now.”

That's a hilarious rule in how stupid it is. Why on earth no abbreviations?

Do they also make people spell out diversity, equity, and inclusion? I might get behind that, because it changes it back from a meme rally point into a meaningful set of moral ideas.

In your next post on sdf, really push the boundaries and use contractions or, yikes, an acronym.

Without the unwritten abbreviations policy we are animals

Lol
- Ikr

this is funny, so YDI

Isn't this the same server with that n4zi guy?
- They took care of that.

Sounds like crazy-making with the way they've got you questioning the obvious... does the sun really rise in the east, will it really hurt if I jump off this bridge, can fish really survive under water 🤪

It gets dumber:

The user was banned for saying "mark my words". And in the context it is clearly not some sort of threat, just an "I'm 100% sure of that".
PTB. [USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST]
- The mod is just a flat out troll. They've proven that for sure during this drama-fest.
  They run a news comm and ban anyone that comments before they can lock the post. It's very strange and, quite frankly, pretty dumb.

Thank you for informing me, as someone who tends to use acronyms quite frequently (usually adding the meaning in parenthesis for the first instance), I've gone ahead and blocked that community. I have zero interest in a news community that is enforcing rules that they are not publicly displaying, especially ones that don't go under "common sense" principles.

An interesting decision from the moderators of the Signed Distance Field Organization
Or maybe from the Syrian Democratic Forces?
- It's Structured Data File, an SQL Compact database. Oh no, I said SQL, please don't ba

Amén to that! Fuck abbreviations and Americanisms, lemmy is for the whole world.

Another instance to block.
The Fediverse gets a little smaller
- Why would you block a whole instance if you don't like the actions in just one of its communities?

228 comments