[First, this is what we think of Reddit’s attempt to bully the moderation team](https://i.imgur.com/YkIEgpJ.png).
We continue to disagree with Reddit But the writing’s on the wall — we don’t have much leverage here if we continue to keep this subreddit private; so we have choices to make. Do we want to continue moderating or not?
From the start of the subreddit shutdown, to now, the moderation team has been talking about our goal if our desire for promises made by Reddit to be met or changes to be made would not come to pass. For all of us, moderating is a hobby; this was never meant to be a job. It was clear that feedback in our past thread was that some vocal users did not understand the futility of moderating a team sub of this size, but such as it is, the frustration is partially ours to blame.
One of the issues we discussed was how the last few years have been challenging for the moderation team. Multiple moderators have quit, including two current moderators who were asked to come back to help last month. It was mentioned in a past post that at one point post-series against Tampa Bay in 2022, one moderator had to make over 150 bans and the sub came very close to being overrun. More than 2,000 actions were taken by a handful of moderators within that 24-hour people.
For all of us, the content moderation was done on our phones, using a third-party app that allowed us to quickly navigate multiple reports, and reports that the community used to flag bad actors or trolls. To say that we would have been able to do any of the above with Reddit’s official app would be a lie — the very idea of using Reddit’s official app to moderate a subreddit of this size and surge posting behaviour can be nauseating. At least three moderators, myself included, have already indicated they will not be able to provide any moderation coverage beyond a certain time frame due to the API changes.
This brings us to our discussions in the past week, what we’ve discussed about our past experiences moderating this sub, how to encourage community building, and what kind of challenges we wanted to try and solve.
The first one has been tediously argued over the last week due to past poor experiences for some of the more veteran mods and longstanding users — but a compromise was reached. We are going to lift the ban from shitposting on any day other than Sundays. However, it will come with a caveat: We will allow it for post-game reactions and continue to allow it on Sundays. How well a post does will likely determine how long it stays up. It’s a trial phase we would like to try and work into the sub due to the growth over the past year, and the influx of younger users who have complained about not feeling part of the community. One comment was made during this discussion; we would like to see less soliciting of upvotes for shit posts.
Secondly, over the past year, we’ve observed significant community growth, going from less than 150,000 to more than 255,000 today. With that growth has come a [significant number of reports](https://i.imgur.com/nZk7DiM.png), including [reports for submissions](https://i.imgur.com/6N94T51.png). One of the core issues brought up has been our fairly inconsistently applied rules. One of our goals for this change will be to clean up the rules. I will personally commit to cleaning up the language by the end of July 2023. With these rules will come easier navigation panels for communicating removal reasons between the moderator and the user.
The third piece of this will be the subreddit’s overall health. It’s not been a lot of fun dealing with the fucking Leafs, but such as it is, they are our team and trolling comes with the territory. We intend to seek out new moderators at some point to help us bridge the gap between the absent moderators and new ones.
Lastly, it’s clear that the flairs in this subreddit are broken. We need to fix it. Not only would fixing it provide a greater utility to identify the types of posts a user is looking for, but also help hide posts that people do not want to see (i.e., memes/shitposts). We will be fixing this over the summer. Older posts are, unfortunately, not going to be filtered correctly, but we will do our best to include them.
These are the core issues we felt needed to be addressed based on past user feedback. Our mistake was not exercising more feedback from the users prior to shutting the subreddit down, so we intend to put up a poll to allow users to decide on our next steps while the changes are implemented.
What does the subreddit want to do?
by ESF-hockeeyyy
34 Comments
The poll went away…
At least this time yall tried to post one instead of blindly making the decision for the 250k of us
E: lol that it was a formal timed pull, now its just a comment upvote with no set end listed. Does it poll for a day? Week? Incompetence at every step and trying to do everything against letting the sub just be about the Leafs
You know what we want … we told you prior to the “blackout” what we wanted, ya’ll disreguarded us and did what ya’ll wanted .. how’d that work out for you .. “bullying”
don’t go playing the put stupid choices in the poll for lolz thinking it will win .. that’s cowardly.
edit: jfc .. the mods cant even get on the same page.. poll is gone, multiple what do you want posts .. cmon
We did it guys we saved Reddit!!!! If you really were convicted in what the blackout stood for you would hold out until the you get removed. Mod powers are threatened and you cave.
edit: There’s also literal discords with thousands of members where people post these polls but surely this one wont get posted right.
Let’s be real with ourselves. Shutting down the sub is futile. We’ll lose all our mods because they’ll be replaced by some random goons who don’t give a shit about the Leafs or the city or its fans. Yeah what’s happening is shit and Reddit leadership are trash but why are we being punished by taking away a great place for discussion, especially before the ‘most important’ time of year that isn’t an actual hockey game?
With all due respect, I feel this sub is over-moderated. And that’s part of the problem.
Where’s the poll? I went to vote- it said it only had 10 votes but that the post had been closed. Did it actually only get 10 votes? Out of 250k people?
Why was it taken down?
I’d rather you guys quit the sub entirely and let us flourish over on r/TorontoMapleLeafs like we have been since you shut down.
You made the decision to close without consulting us, now that Reddit was going to replace you, suddenly you want our feedback?
Here’s the poll .. don’t pick the booby answer
[Shitpost Sunday Alive And Well](https://www.reddit.com/r/leafs/comments/14d1htp/poll_next_steps/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=2&utm_term=1)
Making r/Leafs a joke sub is not the answer. Open it back up or fuck off. Posting a player every week is idiotic.
mods on here are a bunch of birds lol
>What does the subreddit want to do?
So now you want our opinion?
If you really wanted to make an impact, you would have given up moderating to show how much of a shitshow it would be, instead of holding onto your power and locking us all out without asking beforehand lmao
I don’t agree with Reddit and what they’re trying to do to 3rd party apps but as others have mentioned this sub is overly moderated. It needs to be opened back up.
Open up fully. The protest is over. Nothing is changing. This community doesn’t belong to you. Step aside from moderating if you’re not happy about it.
What is the bullying in the picture you posted?
>Subreddits exist for the benefit of the community
While the sub was down, the message you wrote said, “there are no new posts, you’re not missing anything” or something to that effect.
I missed the discussion. Since you brought up bullying, I felt that was condescending.
Anyway, why not just keep everything exactly as it was?
Great job guys, you accomplished nothing other than pissing off an entire community. Let some new mods take over if you’re still butt hurt and whining. Cause this is hurting everyone.
Sorry sub I’m out!
I love the 3rd party apps as much as the next guy but if they are this critical to moderation then a mass mod exodus from subs and letting them divulge into chaos was clearly the next step.
10 of you decided to shut a sub down with 250k users and now it’s all “what does the subreddit want to do?” lol
If you don’t like doing mod work, then don’t do it. Quit, and let someone else do it.
As you mentioned, this sub has 250K subscribers. Closing the sub in protest affects 250,000 users for your own personal agenda.
Users don’t care about how much work you have to do to make this place run, just as you don’t give a shit how much work it takes to handle the garbage or to generate electricity in our city. Your plight is inconsequential to most people, so don’t hold everyone hostage for your own cause that only benefits yourself.
Garbagemen and power plant operators get paid to show up at their jobs, mods don’t. The world’s your oyster, if you don’t like mod work, then go enjoy life somewhere else.
Please ai, replace mods this year. This can be the year people
Clean up the language? Fuck that
So you guys don’t want to lose your power and that’s why your considering reopening right? Just keep it closed and let new people come and run the subreddit.
Over the past year the sub has felt overmoderated and underadminned. The Dallas Stars logo was the downvote button for months because we played a game against them in like November. The wrong threads were constantly stickied.
Simultaneously, no fun content was allowed outside Sundays. I’d much rather see memes than YouTube clips of idiots yelling on the radio.
> We are going to lift the ban from shitposting on any day other than Sundays. However, it will come with a caveat: We will allow it for post-game reactions and continue to allow it on Sundays. How well a post does will likely determine how long it stays up.
This shows the problem clearly. You’re trying to be formal, but in the end it’s hard to parse and the rule seems completely unnecessary. Then, you give yourself to the authority to just delete whatever posts you want because they aren’t serious enough. You don’t have to put yourself through that – just add a flair system and let people filter what they don’t want.
I think you’re burnt out, listening to too many people, and should simplify things. Let the upvotes and downvotes speak for themselves. I’d let new blood like /u/nate_diaz take over.
The mod team made their decision to close this sub indefinitely, not thinking about the users of the community or even consulting with us.
As such r/torontomapleleafs has been set up, so honestly the mod team now just need to redirect this sub to the new sub.
Holy shit no one gives a fuck about mods. Please stop it.
Lock it back down and force the admins to show their true colours – the more subs that do that the worse it looks for them.
I just wanna talk hockey man
Can we just do that. Let the million plus subs do shit, I doubt anyone even noticed this sub. It’s a specific sports team based subreddit
Just step down and let new people become mods. It’s overmoderated as it is and the blackout was another mod power trip. Supposed to be a fun place to talk about the team but most of the time all the posts get removed and we’re just left with a bunch of tweets.
The majority of people here don’t care about your API bullshit.
No one cares.
I saw someone call this whole thing “neckbeard 9/11” and I think that sums it up nicely.
If mods feel overworked and under appreciated, step down and do something else. It definitely seems like a lot of work and the mod team seems to be burnt out or resentful of the community. I get that 3P apps make it easier but Reddit clearly isn’t going to cave to the pressure, it’s time to move on. Bring in new blood and let the community flourish under new leadership.
You’re getting bullied over the internet by an app that doesn’t give a fuck about you great job
Stay closed. Fuck u/spez.