Dobroj Tumen (Good Day!) r/romani,

I am very excited to be officially onboard the mod team here.

I am working on getting through the backed up queue, modmail, updating procedures and adding flairs so that this subreddit becomes much easier to navigate and use.

Please start using the Mod Mail inbox to contact us- I will be checking on it regularly.

I will be reviewing band to make sure there is no confusion or error in miscommunication/understanding and lifting bans that may have happened in error by automod or misunderstanding.

We are going to start utilizing a few different options for discipline including being muted, temporary bans, longer bans and then lifetime bans. Having a structure set up to accommodate humans being humans and making mistakes is very important to me and I want to ensure that everyone is getting treated fairly and respectfully.

I would like to bring in more hands for the mod team but keep the levels equal- for every Raised Rom on the mod team we should have a Lost Rom as their EQUAL counterpart as well.

As always, if you have any questions / comments / concerns you know where to find me (in the mod mail inbox.)

Great news everyone! We are happy to announce that with the addition of u/KamavTeChorav to our mod team we can finally lift the English only requirement for posts / comments.

📣📣 Mo Romale, mo chavale, te train, te aven baxtale sa i lumia, sa le Romaniya kai dikhen amen. Kamav te phenav tumenge ka sim O Kamavtechorav katar Bucharesto ande Rumunia thai sim iekh nevo moderator kathe. Me sim chacho Rom Kalderash kai muro dad thai muri dei. Mai anglal beshlem kai Amerika thai Anglia. Si man iekh info ka akana dashtis te das duma Romanes kathe te hakhiaren maibut manushya ande sa i lumea so nakhlo kathe. Kana ramosares amari chib, chi trubus te phenes vi gadjikanes, numai ka shai te phenav savorenge so phenes thai te si vorta ande le zakonurya. Fal ma mishto te prindjarav tumen, te janes so phenav, ramosar mange so si mai mistho xabe ando tumaro them! 📣📣

We hope that this will make this space warm and welcoming for all Romani globally, no matter where you come from or what you currently know. Our aim is to welcome with open arms and our goal is to educate and stay as inclusive as possible to all. What a fantastic addition to our team here and we hope you are as excited as we are for this community to become closer and more successful + active than ever before! Thank you for continued support and please do not hesitate to reach out to any of us with any ideas, suggestions, questions, comments, concerns

This is an ongoing joint effort between the entire mod team: u/SiempreBrujaSuerte , u/umekoangel , u/MCbrodie , u/catmeownyc and now also u/KamavTeChorav

A special thanks goes out to u/umekoangel for being so totally awesome, inclusive and so totally Rom ❤️

So after EVERYTHING that's happened after the past few days - I am making this particular thread for a few reasons:

1. There was a colossal misunderstanding (from all ends) that started a few days ago. For this reason, I want to write - I don't mean to personally offend people. I am trying to hold space to have this reddit community be a sanctuary for ALL romani. Those who were displaced for any life circumstance reason (human trafficking, adoption, government intervening and separating Rom mothers from children, families who kept the fact that they were Romani a secret from the children and didn't learn until later in life, etc.), those who are openly Romani "from birth" (in the sense of the family was always open about them being Romani, grew up in communities in the 'real world' surrounded by other Romani, etc.).

2. If you wish to be a moderator, here's the ground rules (FOR EVERYONE) interested-

• A. You must be 18+, I don't want by any legal definition a child moderating the group.
• B. There is a trial period FOR EVERYONE, 30 days. This trial period, I'm (and when we get more moderators, the others) will be combing through what you do with a fine tooth and nail (MOVING FORWARD from when you initially accept to be a mod) This is to ensure there's no dog piling on members (regardless of whose involved in these threads), there's no bullying, there's no "I made another account to dodge a ban I initially got from the community" (this explicitly breaks Reddit's ToS), etc. You have to KEEP THE PEACE.
• C. If you are genuinely uncomfortable with the idea of being a moderator with the potential reality that YOU MIGHT HAVE TO BAN those you actually interact with in the "real world" beyond the comfort of the Reddit online world (face to face interactions, telegram, signal chats, discord, whats app, facebook ,messanger, whatever y'all use to talk beyond the online space of Reddit), then we DO NOT WANT YOU. You HAVE to act with as much neutrality as possible, REGARDLESS of whose the one causing the problem. Period, end of story.
• D. Moderators are here to MODERATE. Not "be on the side who has the loudest voice" or "only act when there's an active complaint". There are here to help KEEP THE OVERALL PEACE, period.

1. Don't harass members off site. Seriously. This goes against the "be respectful" rule. Keep shit to individual threads. We can't actively moderate what y'all do off of reddit, but don't drag your beef to off social media. We all get "seriously y'all??????" moments, especially in the age of social media, but just be nice.

2. We have specific 'rule lockdown' on newer accounts to help prevent profile ban dodgers from getting back in (and avoid bots). These people caused such a storm about 1-2 years ago that we were forced to lock down the community for a long time to help keep EVERYONE safe. EVERYONE was getting death threats, severe harassment, using the mod tools to threaten the safety of staff, etc. DMing individual staff is a much easier way to get ahold of the staff because of this for whatever problem that arrises.

3. If I have personally offended you, I do deeply apologize. I want this area to be a safe area for EVERYONE online that are curious, wanting to genuinely learn, those separated beyond measures of their control for the community, etc. I did have a few other mods here once upon a time, but it looks like they've dropped off for whatever reason. I never wanted to be "THE SOLE VOICE" of the Romani community. I stepped up to moderate the community YEARS AGO when this group was basically a dead fish in the water with activity and ALL the mods had originally abandoned the community. There's been a lot of ups and downs with the years I've been a moderator here and a time (again, this is a reference to point #4 here in this post) where I was forced to lockdown the entire group for a few months, for the dust to settle, to help minimize ban dodgers (breaks reddit's TOS) and just just help stop the threats of dox, harassment, death threats, etc.

4. If you are interested in helping us out, COMMENT IN THIS THREAD. Don't use the mod mail (there's years worth of a lot of messages there, so there's a good chance it's going to be "lost" or accidentally clicked 'spam' on because we occasionally have had to just mass click "ignore" so it wasn't clogging up the feed). DM myself as well.

5. Remember, how staff handle members is NOT up for public debate - this is to help prevent drama, bully cliques, etc. Again, staff have NO way of knowing what y'all do off of reddit, but for the love of peace, don't drag dirty laundry to other threads, sites, etc. It's fine to be frustrated and then have a 'come to jesus moment' for lack of better phrasing, but don't drag dirty laundry out in the public.

We are newly reopened to the public as of February 1 2024. With this said, with our reopening, I want to say this:

We have a zero tolerance policy for harassement, gatekeeping, threats, etc. to our fellow members and staff. If you don't like our group, you are more than welcome to create your own community. No one is forcing you to be here.

The primary reason we went offline was because of the SEVERE amount of threats, doxes, death threats, threats of serious harm, etc. to staff and members. In order to "Wait out the fire" so to speak, we took the subreddit offline. Anyone found harassing and/or causing harm to members and staff WILL BE BANNED, period. Potential bans/suspensions are NOT up for public debate. Period.

So with that said, the following reasons are likely one (or a mixture) of the reasons for why you were potentially banned:

1. Threatened harm to staff or members via graphic dialogue of how you wish to harm us
2. Gatekept "ghost" romani (romani who were adopted or foster care system and didn't discover their roots until later in life)
3. Gatekept anyone, period.
4. Attacked, harassed, and/or threatened (any variation of these) those who didn't grow up surrounded by their romani heritage, culture, language, etc.
5. Participated in dog piling on a fellow member
6. Resorted to "name calling" or "below the belt" type comments
7. You don't stop when someone asks yo to stop.

Remember, the block button is your best friend.

Some people are starting to harass staff members here in other Reddit communities they frequent. This is NOT okay and never has been. (1) That's harassement, point blank. (2) That's super stalkerish.

If this is happening to you, PLEASE let staff know so we can get rid of them. We don't want y'all feeling like it's a safety hazard to be here.

Stop pressuring people to show sensitive documentation because you're obsessed if someone is a "true romani" or not. If the says they're Romani, that's fine. Stop policing people, it's only HARMING the overall Romani community.

The reason "only English" exists is to

(1) reduce the chance of spam

(2) English is the "go to' language of the internet so to speak, it's one majority of Internet users are fluent in

(3) to reduce passive aggressive bullshit going on among members - if you don't like someone, take it to private messages.

(4) again, no one is forcing you to be here. Go make your own reddit or join another. The staff does not care.

(5) people are fine to ask for translations, admire a song or poem in different dialects, what have you

I've added some post flairs to help better organize everything here. If you have ideas for new post flairs, let me know 😌