/u/taylorhayward_boston you were spit on and that’s inexcusable behavior and I’m truly sorry that happened to you regardless if there was a reason. I’ve experienced my fair share of road rage and it is a truly awful experience. There’s a reason why spitting is considered assault.

But everything you’ve done in the last twelve hours is all on you. It speaks volumes about how you see your role here on /r/cambridgeMA, and to many, your idea of moderation is completely out of sync of what most of this community expects and from generally established Reddiquette.

Put simply, you have abused your power and done so arbitrarily and without transparency.

• You invited people to PM you with concerns then banned or muted them even when they were constructive.
• You’ve banned others for posting their disagreement with your decisions as a Mod even when they were not abusive.
• You’ve continued to lie and make excuses for the reasons you’ve lashed out at the community and some of its best contributors. We’ve all had a bad day, but instead of apologizing and making things right, you’ve continued your abuse of power and made frankly laughable excuses

All this is enough for you to have shown yourself unable to handle having power over others. It’s hard not to see this attempt at damage control as a means to hold onto power when there is now a credible alternative subreddit who is promising a fair and transparent moderation team.

But the last 24 hours is only the tip of the iceberg. This subreddit has suffered for years without an adequate Moderation Team, the reason for which I believe is illustrated by the last 24 hours and how you have chosen to conduct yourself: a person who is bad at wielding power, rarely wants to share it.

One doesn’t have to search hard to see complaints of a long Moderation backlog, or compare how posts at /r/boston are helpfully filtered by flair by the strong (albeit perhaps overly sarcastic) Mod Team. Here there’s not even any rules except for the ones you make up on the spot.

The fact is you don’t moderate /r/cambridgeMA and when you do so, it is self-serving, opaque/lacking community input, and arbitrary. As one of the few city employees here, I am not afraid to speak plainly and honestly even though you have shown to ban those for doing far less. I’ve helped countless people here publicly and privately here and on /r/boston with animal-related concerns. It’s your loss if you choose to add me to the long list of those you’ve banned because you lack the maturity and integrity to have the power you do.

TL;DR: I’ll say it again: **Step down. ** That is the only way to save face after years of barely moderating and then showing up only to abuse your power because of something shitty that happened to you outside of Reddit and your decision to turn around and hurt those you have power over. It’s just pathetic and just shows how far away you should be kept from any kind of power or responsibility since you are simply not up to the task.

Spare us all and don’t reply with your faux high road ‘I’m listening to all feedback’ bullshit. You fucked up and I’m far more interested in an apology and an unbanning of all those you abused while on your butthurt power trip*. Frankly, I think this is all an act to hold onto power…but prove us wrong and start to make things right.

*My empathy for your horrible experience being spit on has run dry watching you try desperately to hold onto power while refusing accountability or undoing the abuses you have done to this community. You took your pain and used it to hurt others and this community and that tells us all we need to know about the type of person you are.