Petition to Remove u/otto4242 as a a Mod

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They are clearly not acting on the interest of the community and have been abusing their mod power to stifel any news about the ongoing struggles while openly supporting u/photomatt in the comments.

They have to go, right?

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31 Comments
  1. Judging by their flair they also seem to openly admit to being affiliated with the u/photomatt owned wordpress.org. How, given everything that is going on, is that not a conflict of interests?

    Ah the very least they should step aside until this is resolved.

  2. ~~I’ve not directly observed anything crossing the line~~, but the conflict of interest is pretty obvious.

    Either he should be removed *or* all of his mod actions should be 100% transparently documented (but I don’t know how that would work).

    Edit: I spoke too soon. See my other comments in this thread showing his… uhhh… lack of judgement.

  3. It’s pretty clear they’re stifling open discussion about WordPress right now and using the megathread as an excuse, which is a shame since this is a critical moment for the community and the future of WP

  4. Any examples of the abuse?

    If you refer to the megathread creation and redirection stuff, that seems to be mainly being done by u/bluesix. And that’s surely something one can argue about, but also not per se uncommon on reddit.

  5. The Reddit Nazis trying to cancel someone with a different opinion. Make a new subreddit and go cry in there.

  6. Honestly, grabbing our pitchforks doesn’t make the situation any better. Remember, this sub is not just purely for wordpress drama and the mods are probably trying to keep it contained a bit so the sub can continue to function to some degree.

    A mod that works for automattic is not a cause for alarm, and every post being some new uninformed fools opinion of Matt is frankly annoying as fuck and I would prefer the megathread. What did they do besides remove a poll?

  7. Feel free to discuss this. I’ve been moderating here for longer than I’ve been working for Matt so, you decide on that for yourself. I have never hidden that fact about me.

  8. We need to have him check a checkbox saying he is in no way affiliated with Matt or WordPress.org

  9. I support this.

    He called me a bot for calling him out on bullshit. He tried denying Matt blocked/banned ACF free from being updated in the repo. He wanted me to read the content to him.

  10. if u/photomatt has been sowing discord among the community he needs to go.

    if u/otto4242 has been covertly supporting u/photomatt disruptive agenda he needs to be given a 3 month probation.

  11. I have known of u/otto4242 here and outside Reddit but I have never met him in person. I don’t think he has ever abused his power. He has great integrity.

    Now, there is usually a small loud minority that they want to turn this sub into the whome Matt-WPE thing. When it all started, the first page on r/Wordpress was about that. Holy batman. Hence why him or u/bluesix made the Megathread.

    I don’t want 90% of the posts on r/Wordpress to be about Matt-WPE. As a moderator of other subs, and in previous accounts as well (I get bored of usernames quite often), I know what it is to moderate a sub.

    So many posts on here are something that gets asked almost every bloody day.

    While I am not a moderator on here, I understand both sides of the coin. I think they are doing a good job and I had disagreements with both u/otto4242 and u/bluesix and they didn’t remove my disagreements with them and had discussions with them.

    There should be ONE megathread to talk about Matt-WPE instead of those posts flooding the sub.

  12. Hard no. This thread is a witch hunt and a third of the comments are from OP. Anyone who has been around this community long enough will appreciate u/otto4242 for their work. The guy is one of the plugin reviewers and I believe a contributor too. In other words, he has put in **real effort** to the product, and if there is no product, there is no community. Get some perspective and sit down.

  13. At this point u/otto4242 should be removed as a mod solely because he is on the Automattic’s payroll which creates a conflict of interest with the WordPress community.

    Given how WordPress.org and its communication channels are under the personal ownership and control of Matt Mullenweg, this subreddit is the only open and independent platform for the WordPress COMMUNITY and him being a mod poses a risk.

    u/otto4242, either have the decency to resign your mod post, or quit Automattic and disown any association with Matt Mullenweg and BlackRock.

  14. Speaking as someone who does community moderation elsewhere: it’s *not enough* for your community’s moderators to *be* trustworthy; the community also has to *actually trust them*. It seems as though a lot of folks do not trust this mod anymore, which means that *regardless of whether or not it’s “fair”*, regardless of whether or not he has actually misused his mod powers, it’s likely to erode trust and camaraderie to keep him as a mod.

  15. Why is this sub *still* on about this? 1 hosting might down down. There are 100s others readily available, that don’t associate with WP so much as to endanger their entire existence on some technicality with how they’re named….

  16. Also, this is the exact same issue with what’s wrong with the community. Just because you don’t get your way, doesn’t mean Otto should be removed.

    You are not entitled to post just because you want to. There are site-wide rules and specific sub rules, don’t follow them, then your content will be removed.

    No one wants to see 100+ posts of the same topic.

    You are just been pissy because you are not getting your way. YOU are the problem.

  17. Yup, it’s a clear conflict of interest.

    Having someone on the team who’s employed by Matt just makes it really murky and it’s easy to speculate who is and isn’t taking action when it’s done behind Reddit’s mod protection “mod team” moniker.

    It’s best to avoid unnecessary strife

  18. I haven’t been keeping up but I hope this isn’t true. The funny shit here is if anyone is going to tell Matt to get fucked it might actually be Otto. LOL. This whole thing is wild to me. I do think Matt is on a rampage though and it’s not good at all. Feels like bordering on someone needs to check on dude.

    I don’t know what Audrey looks like today as I’ve been quiet for awhile but for a loooong time forever ago Audrey was literally just Matt and Otto.

  19. Look I’m not a fan of what is happening any more than most of the users here, but people need to cut Otto a little slack. He’s in a tough position. Some of that is his own fault (and his employer), but despite clearly frustrated tones in some of his responses, I do not see anything that’d warrant a removal. 

    If anything he probably just needs to stay out of threads involving Matt/Automattic and WPE… Regardless though, trust is a funny thing. Once confidence in an authority is gone, trying to get it back is extremely hard.

  20. I think people need to calm down a bit. Moderating a group like this, which is usually pretty tech focused and chill, during a major shitstorm is extremely difficult. I know people are justifiably angry, but screaming into the ether on this subreddit isn’t going to help anyone.

    While I disagree, in the strongest possible terms, with what Matt and Automattic are doing right now. not everyone does and those people are part of our community as well.

  21. What boggles my mind about all of this, and I’ve seen Otto exhibit these traits, is how tone-deaf Matt and a lot of his fans are – they really don’t seem to realize that a lot of us are having to rethink the hosts we are using, plugins we are using, and heck, even the use of WordPress itself because everything is now extremely unpredictable for the rest of us. They just aren’t reading the room.

    Even for those of us not using WPE or who don’t use ACF widely, there are real-world implications for Matt’s actions going forward. People claim that the non-techies don’t know what’s going on, but if one of us were pitching a project to them and mentioned WordPress, and the non-techies do a cursory search on Google and look at the news, they are going to get hit with a lot of articles from mainstream and respectable news outlets discussing Matt’s actions.

    I don’t care of Otto is removed (as long as he’s not removing comments/threads that help Automattic out), but I think he should stop commenting on things that are problematic and where he seems to not understand that the person he is talking to has extremely serious concerns that can’t be waved away with “oh, that’s allowed under the GPL, so why are you worrying about it?:

  22. When you own a business, you must have backup and redundancy plans for things such as this. I have no skin in the game on this issue. I just hope it gets resolved in some way.

  23. Y’know, mods are people too, and they make mistakes. They’re also entitled to their own opinions and have as much right to voice them as any of the rest of us, regardless of whether their opinion is in line with the mob, provided they’re not breaking the rules of the sub nor those of reddit in general.

    The only questionable thing I’ve seen here is the post allegedly threatening violence. Otto’s statement was perhaps in poor taste (and certainly worth rebuke) but the allegation is disingenuous and in bad faith. You **know** it was not meant in a literal sense because you’re certainly that intelligent. It could be taken as anything from a statement made in frustration to a rimshot attempt at playfulness but no one in their right mind would take it as a legitimate threat to cause physical harm.

    There are a lot of strong feelings going around, a lot of taking sides, defending, and attacking. This whole debacle started with an act of childishness and many are simply following suit.

    This needs to stop.

 

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