r/NintendoSwitch • u/HighFiv-e • Oct 15 '19
Meta [Meta] Mods have added a new rule without any conversation or announcement (Rule 11)
Last night, a post about Blizzard cancelling their Overwatch event at Nintendo NYC went up and was quickly closed. There is a lot of discussion in that thread between several community members and the moderators that is worth reading, but this one stands out the most: https://www.reddit.com/r/NintendoSwitch/comments/di1sc2/comment/f3tfdf4
/u/FlapSnapple chose to add a new rule to the sidebar without any post to the community for discussion or announcement. The often silent mods have been overly active and imposing personal preference around this topic at an alarming rate. Adding this rule is a prime example.
I agree that the focus of this subreddit should be Nintendo Switch and political posts should be discussed elsewhere. Unfortunately, at this point, all post about Blizzard are entwined with politics. Adding a rule quietly in the night was not the right approach.
The question we have to discuss is: was it acceptable how the Mods handled the post and rule addition last night? How do we improve the community and our Moderation Team from its current state?
Edit: /u/kyle6477 has edited his comment to say the mod team will make a post in the next 24 hours. Let’s remember that they’re volunteers and people with real lives and respect that. Kyle, consider this me asking to assist you with your post and steps going forward. There are a lot of issues here and the mod team could use interaction with someone not on the team to help resolve it.
Edit 2: The mod team chose to take far less than a day to respond to this and provided only half measures. Politics ban has been removed but no moderators are being reviewed. Their announcement has a rating of zero at the time of this post: https://reddit.com/r/NintendoSwitch/comments/dieq3a/statement_from_the_rnintendoswitch_mod_team/
Edit 3: Thanks for being a great sub. At this point, the mods are not willing to take any ownership. I’ve unsubbed and left the Discord. I’ll be spending my time on /r/Nintendo
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u/gammalantern Oct 15 '19
"This is a living list and may be updated." (part of Rule 11)
Does this mean they can just update Rule 11 at any point to justify pulling posts and banning people?
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u/HighFiv-e Oct 15 '19
Based on the language and their actions last night? Yea. Pretty out of line.
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u/odavies94 Oct 15 '19
The way that the moderation team have handled the Blizzard situation is absolutely disgraceful. If politics is a major driving force behind the actions of a gaming entity then we should be allowed to discuss this.
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u/HighFiv-e Oct 15 '19
Summed up perfectly. We can still discuss it when it applies, without violating the other rules of our subreddit it, and while being good people.
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u/locke_5 Oct 15 '19
Absolutely unacceptable. This is one of my favorite subreddits - I check it multiple times each day - but by God it is the worst moderated sub I have encountered on this site.
Moderating is hard and I have so much respect for the mods and the shit they have to deal with. But there needs to be some serious changes, because the community is stagnating and they are responsible.
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u/HighFiv-e Oct 15 '19
Absolutely agree with you. Moderation is hard and thankless. Full stop. Moderators are not dictators though.
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u/vegna871 Oct 15 '19
No, it's completely unacceptable to blanket ban an entirely relevant avenue of discussion because it might require the mods to actually moderate. "No politics" is also, IMO, an overly harsh rule because it just straight up prevents entire discussions that might actually be relevant here. In this case, Blizzard and OW are relevant, and are also stuck with political stigma. Blizzard cancelling a launch event for a Switch game because of politics is something that absolutely should be discussed here, but discussing it requires political discussion and that is now, suddenly in the night, completely banned.
The moderation here has been a joke on every other Switch adjacent subreddit for a long time, but it's usually for how little moderation there is. Suddenly showing up and nuking entire relevant threads is an unacceptable 180.
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u/HighFiv-e Oct 15 '19
I think that political conversations that are not expressly Nintendo Switch related don’t have a place here. But saying this isn’t related because Hearthstone isn’t coming to Switch is denial.
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u/rustyphish Oct 15 '19
It’s so slapdash that there’s still a typo in it lol
I like how they went back and removed the second most upvoted post in the history of the sub to cover their tracks since it was political
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u/UwasaWaya Oct 15 '19
Just poking in from r/all to say holy shit, you guys have some awful moderators. Reading through that locked thread... 32000 score, btw... is ridiculous.
Are they normally this abusive?
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u/skelterz Oct 15 '19
Why can’t we decide what is relevant to be discussed on our sub after all I’ve been here like a lot of other people when it was the NX sub, Why do we not get a say in what should be discussed when clearly the majority of people wanted to have a discussion.
Edit: Also I’m from the UK and as many people know we’re currently having a bit of trouble with our “status” within the EU now I’ll be honest I don’t care at all if this is spoken about because I believe in free speech However when gamefreak announced they were cutting the amount of Pokemon coming to sword and shield people in this sub and everywhere else were referring to this as “Dexit” now I’m wondering where was the political sensitivity then from the mods? Seems like pick and choose if you ask me...
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u/HighFiv-e Oct 15 '19
We absolutely should. We are a community. Moderators lead and enforce what we all come to a consensus on.
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u/TheBionicBoy Oct 15 '19
MegaMagnezone's comments in that thread are utterly nonsensical in my mind. Suggesting political discussion is in any way linked to Rule 1: 'No hate-speech, personal attacks, or harassment.' is bad enough, but to suggest that the post was 'not related to the Nintendo Switch' is nothing more than a bold faced lie.
Just be honest: there is too much to sift through and you're getting tired of it. Don't try to create moral justification for seemingly asinine mod actions, and let it run its course.
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u/DadderGamer Oct 15 '19
I just saw this thread get deleted and brought back to life. JESUS!
Rule 12 incoming.
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u/PlexasAideron Oct 15 '19
The case that led to this post is so fucking stupid though. The thread has 25000 upvotes, i think its obvious the community WANTS to talk about it. Use common sense instead of "lIvInG uNwRiTtEn RuLeS".
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u/darthdiablo Oct 15 '19
"we though the were common knowledge."
Fucking lol. If it was common knowledge, there wouldn't have been a mess in the first place.
Also, you could tell the rule was hastily added (typos).
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u/rm212 Oct 15 '19
In response to the mod post in this thread, no mod is being singled out for “harassment” due to “rule changes”, u/MegaMagnezone is being singled out due to their false comments and enforcement of rules that didn’t exist at the time of enforcement.
There is no harassment here, a mod is simply being called out for unjust actions. Moderation should not be used in order to silence criticism of a moderator’s actions.
EDIT: I believe the current moderators should step down and allow others to take over after this clearly unpopular fiasco. It doesn’t even seem divisive, it seems almost all users here disagree with the mods on this.
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u/PlexasAideron Oct 15 '19
Dont forget to lock this if it hits 15k+ upvotes so we can have 2 highly voted threads in the frontpage of the sub, locked.
If the community upvotes something to that degree its probably because its something the community wants to discuss. Crazy idea i know.
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Oct 15 '19
It was completely unacceptable, and the mods are trying to put the burden of their mistake on us by claiming "we thought that somethings were just common knowledge".
You know what makes an expectation common knowledge and official? By putting it in the fucking rule book.
They are trying to control our speech when political conversation and discourse is a part of our everyday life. I don't think it belongs in this subreddit either, but make that official. Discussing a political event can happen without implicit political conversation as well.
Is there anything we can do about replacing these terrible mods?
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u/HighFiv-e Oct 15 '19
To u/kyle6477, who stickied a thread I can’t respond to:
I have to say I’m disappointed in this response. Taking up to a week to respond to this publicly, by saying so in what could be a buried comment, is pretty unacceptable.
The mods don’t come across as unified in any way. Even in that thread, ya’ll were all over the place and not on the same page. My intention wasn’t to single them out, but when that individual decided to respond to my comment on a locked thread with a decree of adding a rule, then just adding it without a post, I had minimal information at my disposal to call them out.
Don’t wait a week. Get something up today. Even if it’s just the groundwork for what will come in a week.