r/SubredditDrama • u/12thManStinks • Sep 26 '16
Poppy Approved Seattle Wars: The Mod Strikes Back
A LONG TIME AGO IN A SUBREDDIT FAR FAR AWAY...
In the wake of /r/Seattle's leader purging its active mods after a huge leak of a moderator apparently trying to financially profit from /r/Seattle, a huge blow up happened that rolled across /r/All for a couple of days.
- /r/Seattle, 20 days ago: The lead moderator of r/Seattle abuses moderation tools to benefit his own for-profit business, which is a huge violation of Reddit rules.
That happens and leads to the Seattle mod list instantly losing 1/3 of their members.
- /r/OutOfTheLoop, 19 days ago: What's the deal with /r/Seattle?
All hell breaks loose and the purged mods move over to:
/r/SeattleWA
Which the mods of /r/Seattle have for YEARS kept under wraps by heavily filtering with Automoderator and ruthlessly banning anyone who discussed it. The mods getting dumped leads to a huge series of leaks, including the entire complex years-built up /r/Seattle Automoderator. It is a capitol crime to say or imply "SeattleWA" in "Seattle".
- /r/circlejerkseattle, 19 days ago: Leak #1 and Leak #2 and there were like another half dozen but I can't find them.
When all this started, nearly a month ago, no one knew about /r/SeattleWA and it had a sleepy 800 subscribers or so. Since then, the "other" subreddit has climbed to 3,400+ users as more and more people find out about, and the Seattle mods are allegedly banning you for discussing or participating in it anywhere so use caution in this SRD thread. It's like how some subreddits have bots to ban you for even touching /r/The_Donald I guess.
That's where things stood after the Great Seattle Purge in order #69 and the destruction of the Mod Temple.
The fresh drama...
Earlier this week, a really amazing post in /r/Seattle got into /r/BestOf about some super sketchy stuff. Read it, it is great. However, not even 24 hours later, what knocks it off from #1 in BestOf?
A long comment in /r/SeattleWA about Seattle politics by the formerly most active /r/Seattle mod, /u/AmericanDerp, that got banned by the leaders of /r/Seattle. It was this user as far as I can tell who unearthed the info that led to the earlier drama, when he shared it with the other /r/Seattle mods, which put in motion the purge. He was the one who found out the leader of /r/Seattle was actually the hidden Sith Lord and not the kindly old Chancellor, it seems.
After getting executed, AmericanDerp promptly just moved over to /r/SeattleWA. All of this combined seems to be like punching the /r/Seattle Mods in the taint because they immediately add a new "Rule #7" to their subreddit. It is the first new rule in years:
Competing subreddits are not permitted. If you have a subreddit you'd like to promote on /r/Seattle, you should contact the mod team and ask for permission before posting links to it.
No announcement, nothing. It's just appears when /r/SeattleWA BestOf post starts trending a few days back. Which leads to someone asking in /r/Seattle today...
"Can we discuss Rule 7?"
And hoo boy, is it a total meltdown of drama and 1,001 ways to not name any competing subreddit named /r/SeattleWA, and the affirmation by the mods in /r/Seattle that it's just plain rude and tacky to link to "competing subreddits" (there's a new Reddiquette concept for you!). In the meanwhile, amongst multiple people announcing they are unsubscribing from /r/Seattle to go to /r/SeattleWA and dozens of apparent banning and comment deletions in the thread, the /r/Seattle mods refuse to lock or delete the thread. It's basically become an advertisement for the "competing subreddits" at this point. It looks like /r/SeattleWA is up like +300 users just from today's fiasco in /r/Seattle and counting.
Bonus obliviousness: the /r/Seattle mods are actively directing people to /r/Mariners and /r/Seahawks, in the same thread, where those subreddits proudly link to /r/SeattleWA instead of /r/Seattle, right now.
/r/Seattle mods these days: http://i.imgur.com/c4jt321.png
UPDATE: Locked and removed overnight by /r/Seattle mods. Of course, nothing cross-posted to /r/SeattleTransparency. Some chatter on /r/SeattleWA that some anti-bot automation issued a ton of one-day bans to LOTS of people since Careless's comment karma apparently dropped faster than shit from a goose's cloaca after eating a bar of laxative chocolate and it looked like botting.
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u/OllyTwist Sep 26 '16
This is one of my favorite kinds of drama. I think we are seeing the death of a subreddit and the emergence of its replacement. What a time to eat popcorn.
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u/mwmwmwmwmmdw Sep 26 '16
i dont know what worse a mod killing a sub with too many rules and regulations that they interpret however they wish. or a top mod just killing a sub because he just isnt "feeling" it any more against the entire subs wishes
and due to reddits top down dictator style mod systems these 2 scenarios are pretty much how all subs on reddit eventually die right now
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u/komnenos Sep 26 '16
The sooner it happens the better, the whole reason for this is literally ONE person, the dictator mod on r/seattle. If he stepped down there would literally be zero reason for any of this nonsense.
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Sep 26 '16
This r/Seattle Drama is great. I hope it doesn't move to r/OklahomaCity.
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Sep 26 '16
So I just noticed that they've got a side subreddit called r/SeattleTransparency/; it seems to be an attempt to document posts that gets removed from the subreddit, etc.
Of course, shockingly it doesn't for some reason list the "Can we discuss Rule 7? " post that was just removed. Instead, it looks like it's an attempt by the mods to highlight all the "good" removals they make, while ignoring any of the other removals that are made which might make them look bad. Which is, of course, the exact opposite of transparency. Nice job hypocrites.
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u/snallygaster Sep 26 '16
Wow, it's really rare to see people so desperate to cling to e-power on reddit.
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u/four211sby844am Sep 26 '16
Having power is fun. I'm the group admin for my friends group text in whatsapp. I ban them if they question my power
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u/MoralMidgetry Sep 26 '16
r/Seattle is such a shitshow. Reddit really needs to provide mechanisms that facilitate breakaway communities. But since they don't, r/SeattleWA should just start DMing r/Seattle users with an advertisement for their sub.
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u/dorkettus Sep 26 '16
That might actually be against reddit rules. I wish I could remember clearly, but I can't, so people, feel free to correct me if you need to. There was a guy at one point that I believe was DMing pretty much everyone with an advertisement for his subreddit. He was shadowbanned, came back, did it again, and was shadowbanned again.
Again, I may be wrong. I really wish they had a way to let people know that a city-specific subreddit doesn't have to be like that.
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u/ZeroKarasu Sep 26 '16
That was what happened with r/xkcd, right? Mass DMs to convert people over to a better sub until they seized control of the original?
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Sep 26 '16
Somehow this is the fault of Californians.
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u/sdgoat Sep 26 '16
God, we blamed everything on Californians growing up. I remember when the LA street gangs were going to move to Seattle and steal the children. And then I moved to California. When I first drove home with California plates on my car I promptly got a ticket after getting back to Washington.
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u/Trek7553 Sep 26 '16
I got banned for mentioning r/SeattleWA. I wasn't even aware of all the drama until the mods made a big deal about it and now I've switched subs, along with many others I'm sure.
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u/thetates Sep 26 '16
the r/Seattle mods refuse to lock or delete the thread.
...up until right after it was posted here.
Absolutely gorgeous.
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u/jaxmagicman Sep 26 '16 edited Sep 26 '16
Until today, I didn't know there was such thing as competing subreddits.
Do they both still get to make the playoffs?
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u/Dragonsandman Sep 26 '16
and the Seattle mods are allegedly banning you for discussing or participating in it anywhere so use caution in this SRD thread.
I'm going to test this out. Let's see if I can get banned from more than just r/the_donald.
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u/jcpb Sep 26 '16
This is like watching the social aftermath of Amy's Baking Company post-Kitchen Nightmares — condensed into a subreddit!
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u/12thManStinks Sep 26 '16
UPDATE: Locked and removed overnight by /r/Seattle mods. Of course, nothing cross-posted to r/SeattleTransparency. Some chatter on r/SeattleWA that some anti-bot automation issued a ton of one-day bans to LOTS of people since Careless's comment karma apparently dropped faster than shit from a goose's cloaca after eating a bar of laxative chocolate and it looked like botting.