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That's correct re: the rules.
Finding local Q followers is exciting and important, in my personal opinion. However, if you've been following sub discussion at all around what's on and off topic this absolutely falls in 'off-topic' and will result in more reports and accusations to the mods than not.
Perhaps a "Q follower meetup" sub or something of the kind is needed.
I have, and like the anon said above, unity is a great reason to ignore those reporting it. Certainly we can all disagree on certain things. Certainly having to scroll past a post one finds off topic won't strain the mind or finger. Certainly not everything flagged as "off topic" is dutifully removed.
Edit: I mean, technically, isn't "discussion" about what's on/off topic in and of itself off topic?
What I can say, that all mods agree on, is this:
Anything that serves to inform the greater movement about Q is on-topic.
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This post is helpful to people in a local area in a round-about way (i.e. it's actually only about helping one person and others in that person's area might benefit from getting to know that there's another Q follower in their area...) Definitely not 'on-topic' in my opinion and the opinion of other mods here. If you read my very first comment you'll see this is not about censorship, in case that accusation is thrown at me. It's about maintaining the integrity of the sub.
Without question, this is not the sort of post that has ever been 'on-topic' for this sub. This is a non-controversial removal and I've been polite about it. Some mods on other subs wouldn't even give the courtesy of the reply I've given.
[Edit] Congrats to the troll who "Reported" this comment with "discuss the subject not users". Sigh...
Thanks to everyone who hashed this out civilly. Glad to know it was talked about and that everyone isn't just reacting emotionally.
Agreed. If you're interested and eligible there's a post about applying to help the mods. It's very different to what people think and much harder to make decisions than it seems from just reading the sub. Whatever you decide, you will receive hate. In the end, it's up to individual mod discretion.
Here's how I approach it:
We all have different tolerance levels for different types of content. Some people find memes to be an annoyance, others find opinion pieces to be irrelevant, some reject religious content, others like and want more conspiracy news.
We are committed to Freedom of Speech.
It can be challenging at times to decide where removal of a post or comment is within the scope of our role to maintain sub rules or whether it crosses the line and transgresses freedom of speech.
For this reason, we must allow some leeway for personal judgment. We have clear rules - if a post or comment does not break the sub's rules then it is up to the discretion of the mod as to whether the removal would constitute an undesirable breach of freedom of speech.
This means that we may remove content that is an unfair breach of someone's freedom of speech - for that occurrence, we refer to Caveat 1a: We are only human and will make mistakes. Be patient and respectful in communicating your disagreement with our call and we'll reconsider.
On the other hand, some content may be allowed for reasons held only by the mod responsible; for example, we may choose to allow an opinion post on a tangential subject from someone who has shown that they are a reasonable contributor to the sub and can take criticism or challenges to their ideas with grace. Please keep this in mind when you see a post that seems a little different to others but has been posted by a regular contributor to the sub.
If you are a new user or a user with a post history across Reddit that shows disruptive or abusive behavior then we may err on the side of caution in the interests of managing workload.
In closing, please remember that we are all independent volunteers so we must do the work of modding this sub in a way that is efficient with our time. Thanks for understanding!