@Patachu
Those comments were deleted because they personally attacked or insulted others, not because you were posting anonymously. They were not deleted because of the politics you espoused. They were deleted because you were promoting violence and personally attacking others.
Asking if this site has a political opinion is like asking if BronyCon has a political opinion.
It’s a massive fan-run event with dozens of volunteers and 10 thousand visitors. They don’t care if you’re conservative or liberal, mainstream or alternative, hard or soft. They don’t care what your sexual tastes are or what kind of wine you prefer.
They just want you to have fun and not hurt or harass others and to follow the few rules they’ve evolved over the years which help them to keep the convention running with a minimum of legal or personal risk.
The volunteers who work at those conventions may also attend things during the convention - they might wear a T-Shirt promoting a cause they believe in.
But they don’t get to promote those causes while working for the convention. They put on the Con Volunteer T-Shirt and do the work they volunteered to do.
Same thing here.
If someone is participating in a thread, they are not allowed to moderate it, unless they are performing tasks that everyone on staff agreed with in advance.
So, if one of us in the Tartarus thread and are involved in a conversation, we don’t get to moderate it. We recuse ourselves.
And, yes, as individuals we all have personal opinions. Some of them are quite strong. I believe very strongly that the climate is changing. Others on staff completely disagree.
But when we’re actually logged in to the mod channels and acting on reports or helping users, we’re wearing our “Con Volunteer T-Shirt”.
As a group we work together.
is Derpibooru staff fully neutral and objective
Here’s an example of why that is an odd question to try to answer.
As a group we feel that LGBT artists should be welcome on the site. Many people think that is a biased, and wrong, opinion and is encouraging the extinction of straight people. We allow people who don’t think we should be LGBT artists to be on the site to post their art here and participate as if they were anyone else - their opinions are none of our business.
But if they start harassing LGBT artists, or keep vandalizing tags on those fanarts, or promote their political ideas about LGBT fans promoting the extinction of straights - simply by existing and being allowed to use this site with “normal people” - then we delete those comments and ask them to stop. And if they don’t stop we will, usually over the course of a year of talking with them about our rules and why they aren’t allowed to harass artists or vandalize tags and banning them when asking them to stop doesn’t work, eventually ban them permanently from the site.
Those people think we are not neutral. They think this site is hugely politically biased and that staff is letting our personal political bias taint everything we do, because we allow LGBT artists to use the site, and won’t allow them to harass those artists and refuse to ban people simply because they’re LGBT.
That isn’t a hypothetical. This kind of thing happens a couple times a year. And for those people and their friends we’re completely opinionated and have a very clear political bias.
But which political bias we have is entirely dependent on the person you ask.
Liberals who aren’t allowed to personally attack conservatives think we’re alt-right, and conservatives who aren’t allowed to personally attack liberals think we’re alt-left.
We’re just trying to moderate to our rules. We work as a team so no one is individually making decisions, and staff actions are periodically reviewed by others. But some people believe that all moderation on the site is the result of personal whims or us having opinions about people’s arguments … as if we took the time to actually read the whole argument and form an opinion about it when the simple rule violation is that it’s completely off topic for the artist’s image.
We’re a fan site, and we’re not trying to push any political agenda - just like BronyCon. Unless you think that allowing everyone to access the site freely so long as they follow our rules is a “Political Agenda” (and some clearly do).
Like a fan conventions, we’re just trying to enjoy the MLP franchise, promote the community of MLP fans, and create a place that is welcoming for artists to preserve their work and allows them to share it with their fans.
As has been said enough that it shouldn’t need to be repeated, we’re just trying to create a place where we can store our Trixie art.
But that’s just my two cents. I’m just a volunteer here, and when I’m a volunteer I follow the rules for volunteers. If I disagree with your politics I won’t be talking with you about it as staff. I’ll be talking with you about it as another user on the site, and if either of us breaks a rule then I will “Nope” out of it and let the rest of staff handle it.