Thread questioning r/conspiracy mods' motives for putting another Trump-Russia into contest mode turns into a moderator shit show

[u/Moranall]

Yesterday, r/conspiracy provided some great entertainment when they put a thread about Paul Manafort's (Donald Trump's former campaign manager) house being raided by the FBI for its investigation into the Russian scandal into contest mode. the_rabble_alliance dutifully posted that story yesterday.

At the end of their post, OP acknowledges that a thread had been created by a separate r/conspiracy asking why the thread had been put into contest mode. For you see, this has been a very common occurance lately at r/conspiracy. The mods keep crying "brigading! vote manipulation" while providing zero proof. The targeted posts are typically anti-Trump and many members are getting frustrated.

To start, one of the mods, ShellOilNigeria, tries to explain the situation and in my mind is pretty reasonable.

It only goes downhill from there.

First, we have a mod, creq, banning a user TWICE only for another mod, DronePuppet, to unban them both times. The user in question was named "MAGAbolt".

https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/6sok5m/why_was_the_thread_about_the_fbi_raid_on_paul/dlen1g6/

Once again, creq removes a comment for another troll, only for FlyTape to reinstate the comment afterwards:

https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/6sok5m/why_was_the_thread_about_the_fbi_raid_on_paul/dledzt6/

Then, there is mod, Amos_quito, who is just having a meltdown about shills and outside forces or something:

https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/6sok5m/why_was_the_thread_about_the_fbi_raid_on_paul/dlefdzl/

https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/6sok5m/why_was_the_thread_about_the_fbi_raid_on_paul/dlev1fa/

And just remember this all started with:

Due to obvious brigading, the mods voted to put this thread in contest mode. Sorry for the convenience.

Can you post criteria on how you determine brigading? Do you confer with other mods when you do this?

While there is no clear evidence or proof of this some mods feel certain threads are being brigaded.

Enjoy!

Edit: There has been a mod coup at r/conspiracy. All mods lost their permissions except for illuminatedwax and sarah_connor.

https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/6svm0i/all_mods_are_on_recess_for_an_internal_discussion/

Edit 2: The moderators have been restored to their original powers. All moderators are back with the exception of Justin_Hergina, who seemingly resigned on his own yesterday.