Moderator bias

I honestly haven't seen this much moderator bias on any forum before.
Most people here will probably know exactly what I'm talking about.
Looking at the "Life Together" PDF, the mod crew—John Hill, Tupelo, and Stemajzl—basically just hand out warnings and bans based on whether a user agrees with their personal opinions.

Take this thread, for example: . The warnings handed out here make zero sense:

Some people are allowed to say whatever they want, while others get constantly shut down, warned, or banned for absolutely no reason.

On that same thread, I pointed out someone insulting me, and nobody did anything about it:

And don't even get me started on how John Hill just goes out of his way to belittle and make things up for no reason:

Then things finally boil over right here:

I did a little digging through the forum, and clearly, I'm not the only one noticing this harassment of anyone who thinks differently:

Also, it seems John Hill has a habit of accusing people of being shills:

If anyone else was complaining, I might actually take these accusations seriously.

John Doe, velvettinker41, and Jane Doe are clearly just one person. Every single time they pop up on any thread, they're insulting people or picking fights, and they even go around giving themselves fake support under different names.
And there's a pretty strong suspicion that Mary Smith is just one of the most tedious trolls popping up over at the FBI too. The IP addresses match up, but since the writing style is slightly different—even if it's just as aggressive—I can't tell if it's the same person or just a family member.

John Hill said:If anyone else was complaining, I might actually take these accusations seriously.

John Doe, velvettinker41, and Jane Doe are clearly just one person. Every single time they pop up on any thread, they're insulting people or picking fights, and they even go around giving themselves fake support under different names.
And there's a pretty strong suspicion that Mary Smith is just one of the most tedious trolls popping up over at the FBI too. The IP addresses match up, but since the writing style is slightly different—even if it's just as aggressive—I can't tell if it's the same person or just a family member.

Here she comes again, making things up. Who confirmed the address match? I don't see any proof regarding addresses anywhere.🤷

PLEASE show some proof for these lies John Hill wrote here.

If I didn't take my frustration seriously, I wouldn't be posting here right now. And trust me, if I can get banned, you can definitely deal with the moderators.

I haven't insulted anyone once, and you're totally making that up. If you think it's true, then show me the proof and quote my "insults." Surely you know how to do that, so let everyone see exactly what those insults are.

I just sent out messages to all the trolls and the loudmouths too—get over here and join the conversation.
Honestly, I am so sick of the unfairness. It’s infuriating how certain people just suck up to the moderators, or maybe they actually know them in real life or something.
This isn't even a forum anymore; it's just a joke.

I just got a DM telling me I'm fighting a losing battle because the mods just cover for each other. One mod even went as far as saying this isn't a Democratic Party forum anyway. Basically, if you have the power, you push everyone else around. That's the rule. I'm not asking for anything special, just fair moderation. I don't need anyone playing favorites or handing out bans unless I actually deserve them. If I get into a spat with someone, then they should get a ban too. You need at least two people to have an argument—I can't fight with myself.

And I'm done with people making up insults when actual insults are being tolerated from other users.

John Hill said:If anyone else was complaining, I might actually take these accusations seriously.

John Doe, velvettinker41, and Jane Doe are clearly just one person. Every single time they pop up on any thread, they're insulting people or picking fights, and they even go around giving themselves fake support under different names.
And there's a pretty strong suspicion that Mary Smith is just one of the most tedious trolls popping up over at the FBI too. The IP addresses match up, but since the writing style is slightly different—even if it's just as aggressive—I can't tell if it's the same person or just a family member.

Look, don't go mentioning my name.
First off, John Hill, there is absolutely no way for you to see the IP addresses behind these handles, so all your little theories about who is cloning whom are nothing more than pure, unadulterated fiction cooked up in your own head.
Actually, I'm fairly certain you don't even know what an IP address is, so here's a link so you can catch up:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_address (I'm assuming you're fluent in English, though I have my doubts)
I get it—this forum is basically your entire existence, and without it, you wouldn't even exist—but since you're a moderator and your main hobby is just refreshing the page, you really ought to grasp the fact that a troll isn't just someone who disagrees with your opinion. A real troll is this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_%28Internet%29
Once you actually read that and understand what a troll is, you'll realize you've been banning people simply because they don't align with your worldview, which you've somehow rebranded as "trolling."
It's honestly laughable.
But hey, I don't hold it against you personally. In fact, this forum is one of the most pathetic places on the internet because of people like you—you wait days for a response unless it's on some thread where a bunch of lonely people with zero social lives spend all day planning coffee meetups that will obviously never happen, arguing about things they know nothing about.
Seriously, if you go over to Reddit and read a few posts, you'll get a good laugh at how "experienced" users with ten thousand posts act—people whose peak sexual experience is watching something on a porn site, yet they still act like experts. It's enough to make you want to grab a morning coffee just to deal with the headache.
I don't blame you, really; I actually feel bad for you. You're engaging in something you shouldn't be, doing it in a biased and transparent way that is, frankly, disgusting.
Later!

Is that really Andrew Gomez95? Someone just go ahead and check their IP address once and for all.🙄

Honestly, I couldn't care less what velvettinker41 thinks about who’s copying whom or all that nonsense regarding IP addresses.
I stopped giving people like that any real weight back in the late 90s.

I don't really get why some people just wander through life aimlessly talking nonsense, but this is strictly about principle
Stemmay's red card today was total garbage—she got flagged for absolutely nothing. Seriously, you can't just hand out penalties whenever you feel like it. Even if nobody actually does anything about it, at least a lot of people will see this, and honestly, that's enough for me.

velvettinker41 said:I don't really get why some people just wander through life aimlessly talking nonsense, but this is strictly about principle
Stemmay's red card today was total garbage—she got flagged for absolutely nothing. Seriously, you can't just hand out penalties whenever you feel like it. Even if nobody actually does anything about it, at least a lot of people will see this, and honestly, that's enough for me.

LOL, yeah, that Stemajz guy... just another wannabe moderator who clearly has zero life, no job, and zero friends.
I'm heading out, I need some air before I lose my mind.
later

Here’s yet another person complaining about bias from the FBI moderators.

It’s pretty obvious what’s going on here. I actually called it first—velvettinker41 and John Doe are clearly the same person. She was jumping between both accounts within minutes just to back herself up on two different threads. After that, she went quiet on the velvettinker41 account for a while, only to dust it off again recently... if I remember right, she only brought it back after being totally exposed while using the John Doe and Jane Doe handles.

The whole thing about nicknames has nothing to do with why someone is actually complaining—that should just be handled according to the rules (if it hasn't been already). Honestly, calling it out feels a bit like an *argumentum ad hominem* since there’s a legitimate point behind the complaint. Look, I’ve definitely been in groups where I completely disagreed with a moderator's take on a specific topic and felt that blatant bias too. But I didn't get slapped with a ban just because I chose to shake my head and walk away rather than engaging with the provocations and personal attacks. If I had actually responded, we’d just be stuck in a massive shouting match where both sides end up getting penalized. And that... that just isn't fair.

I’m feeling a bit lost here and could really use some clarification. I recall someone from General Motors explaining to me ages ago how IP addresses cycle through different values—along with a few other technicalities I can't quite place—and suggesting that identifying a clone is virtually impossible unless you catch them through their writing style (or if they happen to be as polite as I am and just come clean😍). So, I’m wondering how John Hill managed to provide such impartial proof that certain banned users were actually clones by relying on IP addresses; looking at the post being cited, how reliable is this "informant" really?
Could someone walk me through this? Honestly, I don't see any stylistic similarities between those two, so I’d appreciate a more concrete explanation since I keep running into conflicting answers.

To a layman like myself, this is genuinely fascinating, so please enlighten me:

eks mod normall says:

I used to moderate for a while and ran a NASA router that worked best in bridge mode, which meant every time I hopped online or logged into the forum, I was cycling through a massive variety of IP addresses, rather than being stuck with something like 89.172. ++++++

I’d see IPs like 94.634**, 203.305***... 98.178*** and so on.

Back in the day, I found plenty of users in the main Communist Party thread whose IPs overlapped with mine, meaning an IP address isn't exactly a foolproof informant , though it does become an issue if multiple people are connecting from the same corporate office.

It's also an interesting topic that hasn't received a single answer from any admin or moderator yet.

That said, I find myself agreeing with the user above. 👍
The original thread pretty blatantly dodged the core issue by resorting to baseless ad hominem attacks.

Look, placidmarlin3, we don't just go sniffing around IP addresses for the hell of it. We only dive into that if there’s actual cause for suspicion. Take velvettinker41, for example. She was constantly popping up on the exact same threads with a bunch of clones, basically running her own little support group and trolling everyone under different handles. What are the odds that all those accounts share the same IP, hold identical opinions, hit the same threads at the same time, and spend their days backing each other up if it isn't just one person?
If people aren't out here causing trouble on the forum, they can post from the same IP for years and nobody will even blink—they could even run a whole fleet of clones without anyone ever catching on.