THE HAPPENING
A few things:
1) A janitor was fired a few weeks ago for being inactive. This is the only reason he was let go. He did not go on a deletion rampage or do anything negative -- he was simply absent. His only board was /int/ -- not /sp/ and /v/ as claimed. He wasn't even the janitor /int/ hated -- again, he was just inactive.
2) A total of two janitors have been recruited from /q/ since it was opened. One of these janitors had their identity outed in a screencap from the internal moderation board.
2a) Both janitors continued to post on /q/ after their addition to the janitor team. This was a mistake and I should have told them to stop posting at that point, or to at least avoid any subjects having to do with moderation. This will be the policy going forward. Contrary to tinfoil conspiracy theories, mods rarely post in /q/ (with a capcode or anonymously) because I've heavily discouraged it.
3) The internal board had what was essentially a venting thread, which was in poor taste. This thread has since been removed. Last year I banned venting in the janitor IRC channel because I thought it bred a negative culture amongst the janitors and us vs. them mentality, and essentially said I'd fire anyone who complained constantly about users on their boards -- this made the channel a much more positive/productive place.
The moderation team has been anonymous for the better part of the past 8-9 years to avoid exactly what's happened -- a witch hunt of angry posters trying to pin anything they don't like about their board on specific janitors/mods. As a reminder, janitoring is a completely shit job. It is tedious and thankless. The last sentence in the orientation e-mail is "WELCOME TO HELL KIDDOS", and no words could be more appropriate. While the vast majority of janitors who have served 4chan over the past 7 or so years have been excellent, unfortunately sometimes we get bad apples (or just lazy ones). To that end we've removed a number of inactive janitors over the past few weeks, and immediately can any janitor found to be purposely violating the rules of the program.
As always, the best way to bring concerns about moderation to my attention is via an e-mail to
[email protected], or the newly created
[email protected].
