For those who haven't been following the recent drama on /r/aoe2 let me try to bring you up to speed.
If I am omitting anything or misrepresenting anything feel free to correct me, but I will do my best to be objective in the TLDR and then report my opinions later.
---- TLDR
The original creator of the sub (/u/sixtyt3) who has not been an active member of the community for close to 2 years (last post August 16th 2021) received 100+ DMs about some recent drama, presumably the Grathwrang incident a month ago.
In the course of reading up on that situation and various other moderator actions/auto-mod settings he decides that the mods are corrupt and they are doing their volunteer job poorly and so remove most of them (or at least revokes some of their mod powers)
The rest of the mod team says that is silly and they start the Reddit head mod removal process, which requires the head mod (Sixtyt3) to be notified of the action before it begins.
He then retaliates and bans all of them.
After numerous posts are made over the past day or so, most of which are removed, it appears that auto-mod is configured to automatically delete any thread that mentions mod/mods/moderator, which obviously has an impact on regular game mod posting. Users try to get around this by making tongue-in-cheek posts obliquely referencing the situation, most of which are also removed.
He then makes a Megathread to discuss the situation, listing ~6 issues/points that he wishes to start the discussion with. This post has since been deleted, but most of the comments are still there so you can get a feel for what was said.
He doesn't like what is being said by the community so deletes the Megathread 30 minutes after starting it, and then goes back to censoring any discussion about the moderators.
--- Opinions
Sixtyt3 said that the sub does not require a lot of moderators as censorship is not required, only the removal of spam and any content that break the rules.
Sixtyt3 then said that he reads the sub daily. But he required 100+ DMs to be made aware of an 'important' incident that had a large megathread in the sub with 400 comments and 750 upvotes and has only now taken action a few weeks later. Those 2 statements don't really reconcile in my mind and imply that he was not as active as he claimed.
When I tried to question him on his activity when it comes to removing spam/responding to reports etc. he refused to answer, but from what I can gather from other mods, he had a grand total of 7 mod actions in the past 12 months (most of which were in the past 2 weeks).
He then goes on to accuse the mods of corruption by either censoring posts on behalf of Microsoft/Worlds Edge or by unfairly promoting certain streamers in exchange for t-shirts and other swag. This is frankly, a disgusting claim when he admits that he has no evidence or even any indications of this actually happening, and simply seems like a way to justify the removal of the mod team.
--- Final Thoughts
Now why does this matter? While a lot of your reading this probably don't use Reddit a lot, and many of you probably look down on it as some plebian place where only noobs congregate to have discussions, it is a vital tool in our community, helping players enter the scene, ask questions & receive helpful answers as they improve.
Not only that, it is also a tool that could be used to help get players to start playing in the first place, as millions of users us Reddit on a daily basis, and it is possible that some might see viral posts on the front page and remember this game from their childhood, or simply think of it randomly one day and decide to find out about it, Reddit is the place to do that.
The former moderator team has been doing a perfectly reasonable job for the past 5? years (other than the Grathwran incident which was handled to some degree) and I have not seen any major complaints, they are active members of the community (to a minimum level) and respond to the changing needs of the community.
As explained earlier the former mods already started the process to remove Sixtyt3 as head mod, until that is resolved (either being removed or they back him in) I don't think it makes a lot of sense to mass report on Reddit or anything similar. Just spread the word about the situation if you care and hope that it is resolved in the next week or so.
If I am omitting anything or misrepresenting anything feel free to correct me, but I will do my best to be objective in the TLDR and then report my opinions later.
---- TLDR
The original creator of the sub (/u/sixtyt3) who has not been an active member of the community for close to 2 years (last post August 16th 2021) received 100+ DMs about some recent drama, presumably the Grathwrang incident a month ago.
In the course of reading up on that situation and various other moderator actions/auto-mod settings he decides that the mods are corrupt and they are doing their volunteer job poorly and so remove most of them (or at least revokes some of their mod powers)
The rest of the mod team says that is silly and they start the Reddit head mod removal process, which requires the head mod (Sixtyt3) to be notified of the action before it begins.
He then retaliates and bans all of them.
After numerous posts are made over the past day or so, most of which are removed, it appears that auto-mod is configured to automatically delete any thread that mentions mod/mods/moderator, which obviously has an impact on regular game mod posting. Users try to get around this by making tongue-in-cheek posts obliquely referencing the situation, most of which are also removed.
He then makes a Megathread to discuss the situation, listing ~6 issues/points that he wishes to start the discussion with. This post has since been deleted, but most of the comments are still there so you can get a feel for what was said.
He doesn't like what is being said by the community so deletes the Megathread 30 minutes after starting it, and then goes back to censoring any discussion about the moderators.
--- Opinions
Sixtyt3 said that the sub does not require a lot of moderators as censorship is not required, only the removal of spam and any content that break the rules.
Sixtyt3 then said that he reads the sub daily. But he required 100+ DMs to be made aware of an 'important' incident that had a large megathread in the sub with 400 comments and 750 upvotes and has only now taken action a few weeks later. Those 2 statements don't really reconcile in my mind and imply that he was not as active as he claimed.
When I tried to question him on his activity when it comes to removing spam/responding to reports etc. he refused to answer, but from what I can gather from other mods, he had a grand total of 7 mod actions in the past 12 months (most of which were in the past 2 weeks).
He then goes on to accuse the mods of corruption by either censoring posts on behalf of Microsoft/Worlds Edge or by unfairly promoting certain streamers in exchange for t-shirts and other swag. This is frankly, a disgusting claim when he admits that he has no evidence or even any indications of this actually happening, and simply seems like a way to justify the removal of the mod team.
Also this is not substantiated so please apply judgement: but I think mods should not accept any favors (tshirts or whatever) to drive traffic to any particular channel or twitch.
This makes is very hard to have mods that have zero bias. This is why we need fewer more patient mods.
This makes is very hard to have mods that have zero bias. This is why we need fewer more patient mods.
--- Final Thoughts
Now why does this matter? While a lot of your reading this probably don't use Reddit a lot, and many of you probably look down on it as some plebian place where only noobs congregate to have discussions, it is a vital tool in our community, helping players enter the scene, ask questions & receive helpful answers as they improve.
Not only that, it is also a tool that could be used to help get players to start playing in the first place, as millions of users us Reddit on a daily basis, and it is possible that some might see viral posts on the front page and remember this game from their childhood, or simply think of it randomly one day and decide to find out about it, Reddit is the place to do that.
The former moderator team has been doing a perfectly reasonable job for the past 5? years (other than the Grathwran incident which was handled to some degree) and I have not seen any major complaints, they are active members of the community (to a minimum level) and respond to the changing needs of the community.
As explained earlier the former mods already started the process to remove Sixtyt3 as head mod, until that is resolved (either being removed or they back him in) I don't think it makes a lot of sense to mass report on Reddit or anything similar. Just spread the word about the situation if you care and hope that it is resolved in the next week or so.