Hi, everyone. A lot has happened here over the last couple days, and I'll try to explain both what has been happening and what I'm doing to hopefully fix some of the damage that's been done. Hopefully these actions can restore even a fraction of the goodwill that we previously had with the wider Lemmy community.

What's happened

Beaver was recently reinstated as a moderator after finding herself at the center of the recent controversy where Lemmy administrator Rooki unjustly and unilaterally interfered with /c/vegan over a discussion surrounding cat food. I was made a moderator after that same controversy when naeva resigned and went to VeganTheoryClub, an instance defederated from Lemmy.World which is designed to be a haven for discussion of vegan food, activism, art, etc. Things were generally cooling down from that over the last week.

A couple days ago, Beaver began posting to /c/vegan with remarkable frequency (~15 posts/day). Not long after, /u/ccunning contacted me asking about why they had been banned for Rule 5, which is our rule against bad-faith arguments against veganism. ccunning is a member of this community, they might even be vegan, and I've never seen them to be anything but mild-mannered and supportive of veganism here. Because I could find no violation, I assumed it was an accident and unbanned them. Very shortly thereafter, ccunning informed me that they had been banned again, and Beaver messaged me in private stating that ccunning had been banned for downvoting vegan comments but encouraging me not to mention that fact publicly. A post on /c/unpopularopinion soon made it apparent that many people were being banned here for this same reason, and taking a look at the mod log, I saw dozens of bans by Beaver whose only stated reason was "Rule 5".

Beaver continued posting and continued banning, and I messaged them asking if the /c/vegan moderators could have a team-wide discussion and vote concerning this interpretation of Rule 5. I made it clear to them that I felt uncomfortable with their behavior and felt it was doing harm to the community. Beaver ignored this request and simply responded to something else I'd said. 12 hours ago, they stickied a post to the top of /c/vegan daring the admins to interfere, a reference to the previous incident involving Rooki.

What's being done

• Beaver has been removed as a moderator for the community by me with no interference whatsoever from any of the Lemmy.World administrators. I believe her rash, unilateral actions over the last couple of days have done immense damage to the community under the (I believe misguided) pretense that it's effective and disruptive activism. Based on the actions previously summarized, I feel strongly that she cannot presently be trusted to moderate cooperatively, to competently assess what's best for the community, or to be transparent to our users. Although seemingly unlikely at this point, Beaver is encouraged to stay here as a welcome member of the community.
• Anyone who was banned for downvoting will be unbanned effective immediately. This was completely out of line, and to my understanding, the moderation team was not consulted about this rogue interpretation of Rule 5. Because I don't think you can tie specific comments to a ban, this will be something that could happen over a period of hours while I try to pin down the actual justification for each ban, and anyone currently banned is encouraged to appeal. Rule 5 is still in effect as it has always been, so please continue to participate in good faith.
• Individual users will temporarily be limited to creating a certain number of posts per day. I'll have to discuss with the rest of the moderation team if they would like this long-term and if so, what a reasonable limit is, but I think this needs to be done at least right now to cool things off. Beaver's extremely frequent posts have completely drowned out posts made by other users and artificially inflated the activity of this community. The two posts stickied by Beaver will be unstickied, but none of her existing posts will be removed.

I was made a moderator here extremely recently, and so I didn't feel comfortable intervening because I felt I'd be overstepping and betraying trust I'd been given. However, I see widespread distrust of Beaver as a moderator even among vegans (myself included) and feel that this is an emergency that I need to put a stop to.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/28399554

> A judge in the Brazilian state of Rondonia has found two beef slaughterhouses guilty of buying cattle from a protected area of former rainforest in the Amazon and ordered them, along with three cattle ranchers, to pay a total of $764,000 for causing environmental damage, according to the decision issued Wednesday. Cattle raising drives Amazon deforestation. The companies Distriboi and Frigon and the ranchers may appeal. > > It is the first decision in several dozen lawsuits seeking millions of dollars in environmental damages from the slaughterhouses for allegedly trading in cattle raised illegally in a protected area known as Jaci-Parana, which was rainforest but is now mostly converted to pasture. > > Four slaughterhouses are among the many parties charged, including JBS SA, which bills itself as the world’s largest protein producer. The court has not decided on the cases involving JBS.

Hi, everybody! I've recently taken up a moderation position here after naeva moved to vegantheoryclub.org (it's a great all-in-one instance for veganism, and you should check it out!), so logically the first thing I should do is propose an idea with a high moderation burden.

NOTE: this current post is not a trial run of this idea; it is a request for comment to see if this idea should be done at all. Non-vegans are absolutely welcome and encouraged to chime in because this idea is being proposed largely to benefit them, but ultimately, the opinions of vegans will be weighed more heavily simply because this is a community built by vegans for vegans, and if vegans don't want it, then it isn't fair to them to impose it.

The idea is that each week, we'd have a stickied post where anyone – non-vegans and vegans – can ask vegans politely and in good faith about their thoughts on and experiences with veganism. (Questions by vegans are of course still welcome outside of this stickied post, but they're entirely welcome in here too.) Critically, this would not be a debate; it would be a Q&A format. Essentially: "Non-vegans, please don't try to argue with the vegans, and per the format, please don't attempt to answer questions if you aren't vegan. Vegans, please just politely inform a moderator if you see argumentation instead of perpetuating the argument."

This would hopefully 1) provide a healthy medium for non-vegans to ask about veganism and 2) centralize that discussion so that it's not spread out across a community that's supposed to be a space for vegans to connect to their peers.

Examples of good questions:

• "What made you decide to be vegan? If you were raised vegan, why have you stayed vegan?"
• "I'm looking into an alternative for [animal product]; any advice?"
• "My significant other is vegan, but I'm not; what are some meals that I can cook when they come over?"
• "I'm trying to cut meat out of my diet, but I'm finding it difficult to stick to it because of [budget/peer pressure/nutrition/etc.]. Can anyone tell me what they did when they had this problem?"
• "I'm struggling to understand why vegans think that eggs from my friend's backyard are unethical; they treat the chickens really well, so what's the problem?"
• "I'm a new vegan. Are there any tips or tricks you wished you knew earlier?"
• "What is dating like as a vegan?"
• "I've been a vegan for a while now, and I want to get involved with activism. Does anyone know a good place to get started?"
• "Vegans who used to be anti-vegan, what changed your mind?"
• Asking for clarification on a point that a vegan has made in response to your or someone else's initial question.

Examples of bad questions:

• Setting up a convoluted hypothetical scenario to own the vegans ("My great uncle owns an ethical dairy farm on a desert island. If I were to accidentally fall into a trolley switch and roadkill one of the cows, why would it be unethical to drink its milk so it doesn't go to waste?")
• Just stating an opinion on veganism without actually asking a question or technically asking a question but in a way that's clearly JAQing off.
• "Why are so many vegans [very obviously pejorative and overgeneralized statement]?"
• "I have [rare/serious disorder affected by my diet]; how can I still be vegan?" (this is definitely a good-faith question, but the answer here should be "consult a medical professional".)
• Sealioning.
• Questions very obviously not related to veganism.

Since per-community flairs aren't a thing on Lemmy, all we can really ask you to do is use one of the four tags below before your comment so that it's easy to identify where you're coming from.

[VG] for vegan, [PBD] for plant-based dieter, [VT] for vegetarian, and [NVV] for non-vegan/vegetarian. These labels are defined as follows:

• A vegan is somebody who fits the definition from the Vegan Society quoted in the sidebar.
• A plant-based dieter is one who is a strict vegetarian, i.e. one who does not eat meat and also does not eat animal products. However, they consume animal products outside of their diet.
• A vegetarian is somebody who does not consume meat but nonetheless consumes animal products such as dairy and eggs.
• A non-vegan/vegetarian is somebody who does not fit any of these definitions. This includes pescetarians and self-identified "flexitarians".

This idea would be subject to change or discontinuation at any time per the wishes of the community or if the moderation team sees it becoming too much of a burden, but hopefully it can make the community just a bit better. 🙂

Ingredients are:

• Pita bread
• Black beans
• Chao creamy original cheese shreds
• Mexican red chile sauce
• Optionally mashed avocado (didn't try this one yet because I didn't have one on me, but sounds good)
• Garlic powder, onion powder, cumin powder, jalapeño flakes, allspice, and chipotle powder

---

• Place pita bread on a plate inner side facing upward, then add black beans, chile sauce, cheese, and spices in that order.
• Toast in a microwave oven/air fryer until it looks good to you (I just set it about 1/3 of the way between light and dark toast on my air fryer, but your device will vary enough that I don't feel comfortable recommending a specific setting).
• Remove from the oven and fold over.

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/16532768

> Sly - Bentley

Image credit is Kitten_of_fire on Reddit.

That was pretty wild, right?