Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of Reddit Admin

Clearly that can't be true. That subreddit is still valuable without AMAs. The people in charge just can't bring themselves to be honest with their users. Look at the re-opening announcement and spot the blatant lies and half-truths:

> Today /r/science was briefly shut down, and in the interest of transparency we would like to address the reason for this occurrence. Following consequential changes in admin organization and AMA execution, the capacity of /r/science to continue hosting AMAs was impacted. Admin support has been crucial to the /r/science AMA program, and unfortunately these recent changes had the consequence of limiting that support, impacting several AMAs. By changing the status of /r/science to private briefly, we hoped to enable both Admin and the moderation to team to focus their energies on resolving these issues in a timely manner. Though this situation is ongoing, we are returning /r/science to public status in order to limit the inconvenience to the community.

> The comments in this thread will be locked.

They also don't care to explain themselves to their users so they just blocked the comments. Father knows best.

"also does" is far from "if we can't do AMAs in a NY office any more, we have to close shop"

I didn't take the FPH drama very seriously, but this looks kinda bad to me, so far.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Blackout2015/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Blackout2015/comments/3byzzp/admins...

for extreme irony, compare this https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/3bwgjf/riam... with this https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/3bz8jp/right_now_admi...

I still don't know what to think of it, and I can't keep up with it either.. but I just hope it gets thoroughly archived and documented on sites other than reddit and imgur. Because while I won't condemn reddit on a whim and call it a bad actor, I also don't find any of this trustworthy at all. I'd even say, unless the /r/pics "takeover" was the "root mod" (or whatever it's called, I never made a subreddit) locking out all other mods, if this was actually admins protecting "their" assets, made by the community, that'd surely be crossing the line for me.

As would be paying lip service to mods as to how swell everything will be to get mods to get subs back up, while people with scheduled AMA still don't know how to get in touch with the people Victoria had the contact info for. I don't have a link for the last bit, and it was just a claim by someone anyway (didn't check if they actually were involved with AMA stuff), so don't take my word for it - but that mod mail really does read so fluffy while making no real commitments to anything, it wouldn't surprise me in the least.

Anyway, I would rather see blacked out subs in support of something I agree with, than active subs that are testament to a shameful episode and state of things. They have my support to black out all the things, for days, weeks and months. For how ever long is necessary. If reddit becomes a place putting effort into again, I'll enjoy it like nothing was ever gone. Otherwise, might as well go out with a bang and some pride. There is infinitely more where reddit came from, and maybe a better site will be born because of all this somewhere down the road. Maybe reddit can reform, but it clearly needs some boundaries, so this blackout has my full support. Enough already, users and communities are not dough to be shaped however one wishes, to be disrespected like helpless dependents. It's a bit like that Fight Club bathroom scene: "We cook your meals, we take care of you when you're sick, and we also make the sites that pay your salary worth visiting. Do not fuck with us."

Yeah I know I'm being a bit dramatic, please take this with a grain of salt. It makes me sad rather than angry or indignated. Still, I don't think this is cool, at all. It's just not on.

>the commonly agreed best subs use extensive vigorous modding

Do you include TIL among those? I do. Best sub there is.

The only they they use 'extensive vigorous modding' for is verifying whether titles follow the rules. And ~100% of that is based on user reports, they just double-check.

Aside from that, there is 0 moderation, other than for sitewide rule violations. You can say anything_you_want in comments and they will take no action.

Volunteer moderators are an extremely common feature of forums all over the internet. The only forums I know of that have paid moderators are forums for specific companies and their products.