Intro
We would like to address some of the points that have been raised by some of our users (and by one of our communities here on Lemmy.World) on /c/vegan regarding a recent post concerning vegan diets for cats. We understand that the vegan community here on Lemmy.World is rightfully upset with what has happened. In the following paragraphs we will do our best to respond to the major points that we've gleaned from the threads linked here.
Links
Actions in question
Admin removing comments discussing vegan cat food in a community they did not moderate.
The comments have been restored.
The comments were removed for violating our instance rule against animal abuse (https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/#11-attacks-on-users). Rooki is a cat owner himself and he was convinced that it was scientific consensus that cats cannot survive on a vegan diet. This originally justified the removal.
Even if one of our admins does not agree with what is posted, unless the content violates instance rules it should not be removed. This was the original justification for action.
Removing some moderators of the vegan community
Removed moderators have been reinstated.
This was in the first place a failure of communication. It should have been clearly communicated towards the moderators why a certain action was taken (instance rules) and that the reversal of that action would not be considered (during the original incident).
The correct way forward in this case would have been an appeal to the admin team, which would have been handled by someone other than the admin initially acting on this.
We generally discuss high impact actions among team before acting on them. This should especially be the case when there is no strong urgency on the act performed. Since this was only a moderator removal and not a ban, this should have been discussed among the team prior to action.
Going forward we have agreed, as a team, to discuss such actions first, to help prevent future conflict
Posting their own opposing comment and elevating its visibility
Moderators' and admins' comments are flagged with flare, which is okay and by design on Lemmy. But their comments are not forced above the comments of other users for the purpose of arguing a point.
These comments were not elevated to appear before any other users comments.
In addition, Rooki has since revised his comments to be more subjective and less reactive.
Community Responses
The removed comments presented balanced views on vegan cat food, citing scientific research supporting its feasibility if done properly.
Presenting scientifically backed peer reviewed studies is 100% allowed, and encouraged. While we understand anyone can cherry pick studies, if a individual can find a large amount of evidence for their case, then by all accounts they are (in theory) technically correct.
That being said, using facts to bully others is not in good faith either. For example flooding threads with JSTOR links.
The topic is controversial but not clearly prohibited by site rules.
That is correct, at the time there was no violation of site wide rules.
Rooki's actions appear to prioritize his personal disagreement over following established moderation guidelines.
Please see the above regarding addressing moderator policy.
Conclusions
Regarding moderator actions
We will not be removing Rooki from his position as moderator, as we believe that this is a disproportionate response for a heat-of-the-moment response.
Everybody makes mistakes, and while we do try and hold the site admin staff to a higher standard, calling for folks resignation from volunteer positions over it would not fair to them. Rooki has given up 100's of hours of his free time to help both Lemmy.World, FHF and the Fediverse as a whole grown in far reaching ways. You don't immediately fire your staff when they make a bad judgment call.
While we understand that this may not be good enough for some users, we hope that they can be understanding that everyone, no matter the position, can make mistakes.
We've also added a new by-laws section detailing the course of action users should ideally take, when conflict arises. In the event that a user needs to go above the admin team, we've provided a secure link to the operations team (who the admin's report to, ultimately). See https://legal.lemmy.world/bylaws/#12-site-admin-issues-for-community-moderators for details.
TL;DR In the event of an admin action that is deemed unfair or overstepping, moderators can raise this with our operations team for an appeal/review.
Regarding censorship claims
Regarding the alleged censorship, comments were removed without a proper reason. This was out of line, and we will do our best to make sure that this does not happen again. We have updated our legal policy to reflect the new rules in place that bind both our user AND our moderation staff regarding removing comments and content. We WANT users to hold us accountable to the rules we've ALL agreed to follow, going forward. If members of the community find any of the rules we've set forth unreasonable, we promise to listen and adjust these rules where we can. Our terms of service is very much a living document, as any proper binding governing document should be.
Controversial topics can and should be discussed, as long as they are not causing risk of imminent physical harm. We are firm believers in the hippocratic oath of "do no harm".
We encourage users to also list pros and cons regarding controversial viewpoints to foster better discussion. Listing the cons of your viewpoint does not mean you are wrong or at fault, just that you are able to look at the issue from another perspective and aware of potential points of criticism.
While we want to allow our users to express themselves on our platform, we also do not want users to spread mis-information that risks causing direct physical harm to another individual, origination or property owned by the before mentioned. To echo the previous statement "do no harm".
To this end, we have updated our legal page to make this more clear. We already have provisions for attacking groups, threatening individuals and animal harm, this is a logical extension of this to both protect our users and to protect our staff from legal recourse and make it more clear to everyone. We feel this is a very reasonable compromise, and take these additional very seriously.
Sincerely,
FHF / LemmyWorld Operations Team
EDIT: Added org operations contact info
Which results?
The ones stating that the food is enjoyable.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0253292
That study merely measures palatability. It even says:
Please provide the results you found that lead you to the claim you made around palatability and nutrition.
so you agree that vegan cat food can be palatable. Now your issue is with nutrition?
That was the claim, no?
if the food is palatable then it can easily be made nutritious.
these cats are not just being given sprigs of broccoli. cat biscuits with meat are engineered to meet the needs of a cat with very little 'good' meat. Vegan cat biscuits are palatable and nutritious.
cat biscuits in general are not natural to the cat world. Cats are spayed and kept inside against their will but a lot of owners.
Simply offering a cat a vegan cat biscuit meal is completely fine.
Do you have any examples of vegan cat food that has been proven to meet their nutritional requirements?
Benevo Katzenfutter vegan trocken (10 https://amzn.eu/d/75Ia3Bw
Is this too radical?
I can't find anything on that link that shows that it's been proven to provide adequate nutrition. Where is that information?
which elements are you particularly concerned about?
It says 'complete nutrition'. Do you trust this less than other brands which are often composite foods?
I don't particularly trust any mass produced food products, for people or pets, that hasn't been approved by a trusted source. For example, the FDA.
well then I don't know what to tell you.
It seems that you keep moving the goal posts.
there is research that be shows the diet does.not seems to be harmful.
there is evidence that the cats enjoy the food.
there are companies selling the food in the UK for 17 years.
I can tell you that people in the UK love their animals. Vegans generally would not want to hurt their own cat.
you have to make your mind up beyond that.
I hope at least you can see that it is not a completely radical thing to do these days.
There are companies selling and marketing homeopathic remedies that don't actually work, and they slap all the same kinds of "Totally works" labelling on it. It means nothing.
What you're telling me is that you don't know of any vegan cat food brands that have been proven to be both nutritious and palatable in any official capacity.
If you want to believe anything a company puts on their product, you are welcome to go right ahead, but that's a pretty standard benchmark for most people.
Benevo Cat is a professional cat food, created by Benevo in 2005, formulated and checked by independent animal nutritionists to meet the AAFCO(USA) and FEDIAF(Europe) guidelines for animal nutrition.
Is that good enough?
If only we could harness the power of you moving the goal posts
So why didn't you say that when I asked? That's what I couldn't find, why I asked, and now I can look into those groups.
What goalposts exactly? We're not having a debate, I'm asking for information. You're just assuming bad faith for no reason.
So I have shown that there is evidence that vegan cat food is palatable and nutritious.
We should therefore be able to agree that it is not animal abuse.
Assuming those groups are trustworthy, sure.
nice to reach a sensible and happy conclusion with someone in this thread.
Cheers mate!
Based on what owners self report.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9860667/
sounds reasonable. Hardly radical.
An approach that is trying to minimise animal abuse over all.
here is the type of food that might be used:
Benevo Katzenfutter vegan trocken (10 https://amzn.eu/d/75Ia3Bw
It's not slices of cucumber.
Right, it's saying there isn't enough research.
more research needs to be done. for sure. but as you can see, the research so far supports the idea that a plant based diet is healthy for a cat.
No, it doesn't, it says there needs to be more research.
It's based on their perceptions, so no.
that's how you measure quality of life. the other option would be doing it in a lab with test subject. which I'm sure you would not appreciate.
And, adequate care. there seems to be a slight benefit rather than a danger to the cats.
there are a few different things they measure. But sure, it's written down into the log book. y an owner.
How do you think they measure if regular cat food is palatable?
I did not down vote you buddy. probably one of the animal abuse possé that downvote anything that is positive to the vegan debate.