The WoW Subreddit is back with restricted access. The mods have posted an update on the current state of the subreddit and are asking users to vote in a poll about what should happen next.
The subreddit mods explained they were in a call with an Admin from Partner Communities on June 16 who wanted to know what it would take for the community to end the blackout.
After the call, they received r/wow mods received the following message from the “Mod Code of Conduct” team:
Now, the fate is in the hands of the community and you can decide about what the next step will be.
The options are:
1. Going completely dark
2. Completely reopen comments but only accept submissions with Denathrius fanart.
3. Completely reopen and continue like nothing happened.
4. completely reopen and have a space to continue discussing core concerns of the protest.
We’re reposting the whole post here in case r/wow goes dark again.
How we got here, and what should /r/WoW do next?
Welcome back r/WoW.
TL;DR: Vote in our ranked-choice poll.
What happened
On Friday, June 2nd, the community overwhelmingly indicated the desire to join the protest. The thread accumulated a 96% upvote ratio where the top 30 comments voiced a desire for a blackout.
Two of our mods (/u/Rejemah & /u/YourResidentFeral) attended a call on Thursday, June 8th, with the Partner Community admins. Our concerns about accessibility, turbulence, mistrust, and timelines were heard, and the representatives on the call promised to escalate those concerns. It was a productive call that was immediately followed by the…
AMA dumpster fire on Friday, June 9th.
On Monday, June 12th, we joined the protest and went dark for 48 hours.
On Wednesday, June 14th, we came back from private mode to ask what our next steps should be. An obvious downside of the original protest was always the stated limited duration; Reddit just had to wait us out. Feedback on this post was more mixed than the first one. In lieu of a poll, we opted to let the community discuss, which meant that the results weren’t a clean cut “% of users support X.” This post also wasn’t open very long, as we rushed to decide our next steps. The highest upvoted comments said, “stick it out or don’t bother,” and given that we’d already bothered, we took this as an indication to continue the protest. There were, however, many mildly upvoted comments that suggested we re-open. Ultimately, the ratio for the re-closure post was 56% at the time we went back into private mode; a majority but no longer an overwhelming one. We discussed when we’d ask for community input again internally and we decided to use a real poll early the next week for definitive results.
While we were closed, we continued to receive your feedback over modmail. Feedback received was initially skewed towards support of the protest (you’ll just have to trust our math on this). For every message we received in support, we also received a modmail telling us to re-open. Some of these were insulting, harassing, or downright violent in nature; that is to say, a not-insignificant number of pro-reopening messages were from users who would be banned from our community for those same messages.
Friday June 16th we had a call with an Admin from Partner Communities who wanted to know what it would take for our community to end the blackout. We discussed our concerns: Reddit has promised certain things, but our recent experience is that /u/spez is a lying liar who lies (especially most recently in his AMA). We have moderators/users who use Apollo and some users in our community have visual impairments. Reddit has assured us that accessibility apps will be open and that our ability to moderate and remove spam will not be impacted, but Reddit also said the API pricing would be reasonable. /u/spez said they were working with developers, and yet those same developers have said their emails have gone unanswered. The Partner Communities rep also warned us that “Mod Code of Conduct” was coming.
Lo and behold, about 30 minutes after that extremely productive call, we received a threatening modmail from the “Mod Code of Conduct” team. This message is an ultimatum: reopen or else. We assume r/gaming and r/pics received the same message as both reopened in some fashion.
As the weekend started, more subs are back, and modmail feedback skewed towards reopening.
Going forward
The strength of this protest was always in our collective action. With large subs caving to Reddit’s pressure, we feel there isn’t much more we can accomplish. We’re not sure we still have the support of our community. We’re unwilling to see what would happen with whoever Reddit puts in charge of r/WoW, as we have no way of knowing whether our replacements would have the same dedication to maintaining an inclusive community that has always been our number one priority.
We have a couple of options:
Go back dark, **** ’em.
Completely reopen comments, but only accept submissions that are Daddy Sire Denathrius fanart.
Completely reopen and have a space to continue discussing core concerns of the protest (i.e. the state of API access and accessibility, perhaps in a weekly pin).
Completely reopen and continue like nothing happened.
These options are presented in a ranked-choice poll, please vote for the options that best represent your opinion. This poll will be open for the next 24 hours.
As always, you are welcome to make your thoughts known about the landed gentry our moderation in (1) modmail, (2) on r/wowmeta, or (3) as a meta post here when/if we reopen. It is our continued privilege to serve you.
— the r/WoW mod team
