Not trying to start anything, and if this is the wrong place to post about it I apologize, I’m not sure where else to broach the topic, but as a user I’ve noticed an enormous increase is moderator action today and I’m curious if there was some catalyst that the userbase should be aware of. Prior to today, the modlog shows only a few mod actions most days, and previous entire months can fit within one screenview. Furthermore, most of those actions were locking posts or removing and reprimanding specific offending comments. Yet today there is an entire wave of moderator actions, including such vague notes as “Troll Post” on meme posts with significant engagement.
I promise I’m not trying to start drama, I am just concerned as I love Lemmy and want to see it and the community thrive, and I am concerned about the same issues that plague Reddit could potentially find their way here.
That said, I also understand this isn’t a democracy, so if the reply is simply “that’s how it is,” I guess I’m going to just shrug and accept it.
Just to clarify a few things:
Our mod log will show all federated mod actions, not just actions by lemm.ee mods and admins. So if any other instance is generating a ton of actions, it will also be visible from our mod log. In fact I don’t think there has been any increase recently in lemm.ee mod actions at all.
The mod log does not actually get cleared, there is simply a UI issue in Lemmy which makes it a bit hard to view the mod log chronologically. The UI makes it appear as if the mod log is one single list of actions, while in fact it’s different lists combined together (one list per each action type). You will notice some really old actions even on the first page of the mod log, this makes it seem as if there is a “missing period” in the actions, while in fact you are actually just seeing the first page for each different action type. If you navigate to subsequent pages, you will find all the “missing” actions there.
In practical terms, it’s not really possible to clear the mod log at all, thanks to federation. Even if one instance will delete their local mod log records, those records would still be visible in other instances which they previously federated out to.
I will say though, I do wish the modlog included which mod performed each action, as I think would be a good anti-abuse measure, and I am still concerned about a lack of recourse when a mod acts erroneously, such as in the case of removing entire a thread that at best was in the grey area of whether or not it matched a community’s intent. But that’s just my $0.02
Thank you for clarifying, both of those points radically help my understanding of the situation 👍