I think a better analogy might be this:

Someone in my city opens their doors to the public and invites over everyone for a pot luck. Bring what you can, you don't have to bring anything at all. The only rule is that it is Italian food.

People come and share, the owner has some rules posted saying only Italian food and be nice to other people.

I come in with a Chicago style pizza. It's still pizza. Still would be considered Italian food. Maybe a variation that not everybody likes but is still valid.

People start taking a few slices and liking it. The host sees this and throws the pizza in the trash saying it's not Italian

I take the host around back in private and ask why they did that, it's valid for the pot luck. Their reasoning is they have had problems with Chicago pizza in the past and doesn't like it. They shut me down and try to ignore it ever happened. I let everyone else know what happened, including some of the people who ate my Chicago pizza. There are a few different opinions but it spurs a thoughtful ad relevant discussion with a goal of getting the community there to decide if it should have been allowed.

The host really doesn't like this, kicks me out of the house, listens in on the discussion, and starts kicking others out as well who don't like what's happening.

I can't come back. I like pizza potlucks and the people there. So now I have to spend time getting my house ready to host my own parties with friends. It won't be the same as it was before, but neither will the house that was previously popping with pizza. Their reputation will be sullied and it will have a chilling effect.

--

I get mods are necessary, i get private instances get to decide. But when you're trying to be a public central forum, you need to allow discussion or plainly outline what is by allowed in the rules.

Brining up a potential issue to the community in a polite way to discuss it is not drama. This is the perfect time for such a discussion with everyone lands here after reddit admins started abusing their power.

I don't see how trying to get explanations on why something is banned when community standards allow it and starting an honest an open discussion to further build out those standards is stirring shit and starting drama. But if it makes you feel better to think I'm a twit, i don't really care. Do you

and they’re an admin, if not owner of it.

there is a difference between doing moderation for the good of the community and being kid on a powertrip. when person asks "which of the new trek is worth watching" and then the mod starts deleting and banning people saying "x is not good, you are better watching y", just because the mod is fan of "x", that is not moderating, that is just shameful.

the mod is not owner of the community, it is the community that creates the content. we literally just had reddit-exit because of that.

I get that the admin has control. And yes, i love that we can just go off to another server and have the same discussion. However there is something to be said about having a centralized server for niche discussion like star trek. That's what it seems they're trying to accomplish anyway. There's no rules or list of banned sites which i could totally understand. However, this comes entirely across as a petty mod not happy about something a site said once. The only purpose being so heavy handed with moderation like that is only going to splinter what was looking to be one of the most unified communities on the fediverse. It's anthitical to what the instance is trying to accomplish, becoming a centralized spot for star trek related communities on Lemmy.

They didn’t get banned for questioning a policy. They got banned for making a new post “calling them out on their power hungry behaviour” once the discussion didn’t go their way.

I can understand that too knowing the context. I personallay still think that article did was thought provoking enough to Garner discussion in the comments, which is half the point of a site like this.

But i agree, it's why I made the post! This is something to be discussed as a community as we all escape reddit. This is the time to be ironing these things out. We need these discussions and rules to prevent a mod from feeling they need to ban someone for "drama". Have clear defined rules agreed soon by the community and that problem is solved. Banning people trying to talk about getting a more clear ruleset in place is just asinine. Soon it's only going to be that mod posting and nobody commenting.

I also get things may have been one way on Reddit, but that also doesn't mean it automatically applies here. Even if it did it's not hard to copy and paste rules from reddit to here.

Also, did I see in the modlog they ( @ValueSubtracted@startrek.website is lurking and should really learn this site is way more transparent than reddit) banned you too?

EDIT: Just checked the modlog. They banned you for making this post I'm replying to on a different instance. How anyone could not see that as a red flag of petty retributive mod abuse then I don't know what is. For what it's worth, I banned them from my (much smaller but hopefully gonna pic up some Trekkies soon) instance so they'll never know what's being missed 😜 of course I'd happily reverse it if they cool off and explain their actions.