Donate!
Before we begin, we want to highlight these charities! Most of these come from yesterday's post, but we've added some new ones in response to feedback given to us. Please do not gild this post. Instead, consider donating to a charity. Thank you.
The Trevor Project | Resource Center | Point Foundation | GLAAD | Ali Forney Center | New Alternatives | International Lesbian and Gay Association Europe | Global Rights | National Civil Rights Museum | Center for Constitutional Rights | Sponsors for Educational Opportunity | Race Forward | Planned Parenthood | Reproductive Health Access Project | Centre for Reproductive Rights | Support Line | Rainn | Able Gamers | Paws with a Cause | Child's Play | Out of the Closet Thrift Store | Life After Hate | Southern Poverty Law Center | SpecialEffect | Take this.
Staying On Topic
This thread will primarily focus on discussion surrounding our April Fool's Day post and answering related questions as needed. We may not answer unrelated questions at this time. However, there will be another opportunity at a later date for off-topic questions: the specifics have yet to be decided on. We’ll announce it when we have something pinned down. Thank you!
Questions and Answers
We've received a number of questions through modmail and online via Twitter and other forums of discussion. Using those, we’ve established a series of commonly asked questions and our responses. Hopefully, these will answer your questions, if you have any. If not, please comment below and we’ll try to answer to the best of our ability.
Why did we do this on April Fool's Day?
We did it for several reasons, some of them practical. April Fool's Day has consistently seen higher traffic in past years, so we took it as the opportunity to turn the sub on its head and draw attention as a result. Furthermore, it seemed unlikely that any major news would drop today, given the circumstances, allowing us more leeway in shutting down the subreddit for the day.
Is our sincerity in doubt because of this?
We are one hundred percent sincere in our message. Again, to reiterate, this is not a joke. We know a lot of people were waiting for the punchline. Well, there isn't one; this is, from the bottom of our hearts, real.
What kind of reaction did we expect?
Honestly, a lot of us expected some discussion on the other subreddits and maybe a few remarks on Twitter, maybe a stray discussion somewhere else online. We knew there was a possibility of this taking off like it did in the past 24 hours but we thought it was slim. We did anticipate some negative feedback but we received far less than we expected, in comparison to the positivity and support we saw online.
What feedback, if any, did we receive after posting the initial message?
We got some negative responses via modmail and private messages, which you can see here. Specifically, we also received a huge number of false reports on our post, which you can see here. This doesn’t account for all the false reports we received on this post or on other posts in the subreddit in the past 24 hours. We’ll also update the album with rule-breaking comments in this thread as we remove them, to highlight the issue.
However, we are profoundly thankful and extremely gratified that the amount of positive responses greatly outweighed the number of negative feedback, both via modmail and in other subreddits as well as other forums of discussion. It shows that our message received an immense amount of support. Thank you all so much for those kind words. We greatly appreciate them.
What prompted us to write this post? Was there any specific behavior or post in /r/Games that inspired it?
We think our message in this post sufficiently answers this question. There wasn’t really any specific behavior or post that got the ball rolling. Instead, it was an observation that we’ve been dealing with a trend of bad behavior recently that sparked the discussion that lead up to this.
How long was this in the works?
We came up with the idea approximately a month ago, giving us time to prepare the statement and gather examples to include in our album.
Were the /r/Games mods in agreement about posting it?
Honestly, most of us, if not all, agreed with the sentiment but not the method. Some of us thought it could end badly and a few didn’t agree with shutting down the subreddit. The mods who disagreed, however, agreed to participate in solidarity voluntarily.
We had an extensive discussion internally on the best approach, especially while drafting the message in question, to ensure everyone’s concerns were met if possible. After seeing the feedback, we all agreed that this was something worth doing in the end.
Are we changing our moderation policies in response to our statement? What is the moderation team doing going forward to address these issues?
Right now, we think our moderation policies/ruleset catch the majority of the infractions we’ve been seeing. Rest assured, though, we’re always discussing and improving the various nuances that come up as a result of curating the subreddit. As always, if you see any comments breaking our rules, please report them and we will take action if needed. As for how we plan to improve ourselves further as a team, we’ve recently increased the moderator headcount, and have been constantly iterating on and recruiting for our Comment-Only Moderator program to improve how effectively we can manage our ever-expanding community.
Why shut down/lock the subreddit at all? Why not just post a sticky and leave it at that?
We shut down the subreddit for several reasons: first and foremost, by shutting down the subreddit, it initiates the call to attention the post is centered around by redirecting users to the post itself. Realizing how the resulting conversation could potentially overwhelm the subreddit, detracting from our message, we wanted to mitigate that possibility while allowing us time to prepare this meta thread and for the impending aftermath.
Why did we include the charities we did? Why not this charity? Why that charity?
We didn’t intend to establish a comprehensive list of charities; we simply wanted to highlight the ones we did as potential candidates for donations, especially ones that focus on the issues we discussed in our statement.
Why didn’t we also include misandry in our message or charity promotion?
We didn't discuss misandry or promote charities for men, because men are not a consistent target in the gaming community like women, LGBT folks, or people of color. An important distinction: while men may end up as targets, they are not constantly harassed for being male in the gaming community.
Why bring politics into /r/Games?
Asking people to be nicer to each other and engage with respect and dignity is not politics, it’s human decency. Along the way of conversation and the exchange of ideas, that decency has fallen on the list of priorities for some commenters. Our aim with this post is to remind commenters to not let the notion of civility and kindness be an afterthought in the process.
Why don't we just leave those comments up and let the downvotes take care of it?
Typically, this is the case, but it still leaves the issue at hand unacknowledged. It’s easy to downvote a comment or delete something that is inflammatory, but the idea behind closing the subreddit is to bring to light the normalization of this rhetoric. To us, a significant portion of the problem is that these comments have become the “accepted casualties” of good discussion, and the leeway they’re allowed by many in the gaming community is problematic.
When are the weekly threads coming back up?
Soon, my friend. Soon.
Thank You
We wanted to thank the people who shared our post on Reddit, Twitter, and other places of discussion, as well as those who wrote articles online about our statement. We sincerely hope this sparks discussion and enacts change in the process, and for the better.
Written by: rGamesMods
Source: https://ift.tt/2TNGKpl
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