Guild Wars 2 on Reddit Blackout

[Syvaris Laskaris.5247]

6 minutes ago, Cyanophyta.6345 said:

And personally, I don't believe most reddit mods moderate out of the goodness of their hearts. Maybe you do, but for most, it's because they're addicted to both the website and the feeling of power they get from being moderators. Moral grandstanding and all that.

Their stated reason for becoming a mod is that they wanted to censor the community because of "hate speech", They literally state that they don't like the community. 

Edited June 18, 2023 by Syvaris Laskaris.5247

[Neo K.9145]

1 hour ago, Syvaris Laskaris.5247 said:

Their stated reason for becoming a mod is that they wanted to censor the community because of "hate speech", They literally state that they don't like the community. 

If you consider removing homophobic, racist, sexist, and other hate speech censoring than so be it. That's on you if you think that kind of speech is okay. The subreddit mod team does not, and I'm pretty sure you'll be banned from here as well using speech like that.

Guild Wars 2 is a game that prides itself on diversity and inclusion from the game itself, to the developer, and to the community. Anyone acting against that openness is a threat to the community. 

I very much love the GW2 community but like every online community, especially given the current state of real life politics there are evil people who become part of that community and in order to make it safe for everyone, the bigots have to be removed. Intolerance can not be tolerated. 

[Syvaris Laskaris.5247]

8 minutes ago, Neo K.9145 said:

If you consider removing homophobic, racist, sexist, and other hate speech censoring than so be it. That's on you if you think that kind of speech is okay. The subreddit mod team does not, and I'm pretty sure you'll be banned from here as well using speech like that.

Guild Wars 2 is a game that prides itself on diversity and inclusion from the game itself, to the developer, and to the community. Anyone acting against that openness is a threat to the community. 

I very much love the GW2 community but like every online community, especially given the current state of real life politics there are evil people who become part of that community and in order to make it safe for everyone, the bigots have to be removed. Intolerance can not be tolerated. 

Case and point, someone who sniffs their own farts and thinks they should get to play shepherd with a community.

[CETheLucid.3964]

19 minutes ago, Neo K.9145 said:

I very much love the GW2 community but like every online community, especially given the current state of real life politics there are evil people who become part of that community and in order to make it safe for everyone, the bigots have to be removed. Intolerance can not be tolerated.

And who decides who is 'safe' and who is 'evil'? You? Because it can't be as simple as Guild Wars 2 players for the Guild Wars 2 community, yeah? Everything else is peripheral. Plenty of places are just about completely devoid of moderation and do well enough. Not that I'm suggesting there be no moderation but you are clearly going to the opposite extreme to curate a very specific environment as opposed to allowing the community to be more honest and organic.

In general I'm just suspicious of people who hold onto their moderation chairs, people who sit in multiple moderation chairs, for years on end with no monetary compensation. You just finished telling us how much it can suck. Price gouging is a problem just now? Not all those years you did it for free? And say CEO man isn't going to budge... are you really going to pay to be a reddit mod? To keep this personal idea of your vision for the community?

Maybe it's time to move on. I wish you and the current mods well all the same. I would hope you have enough self-respect to step down if things aren't going to work out. Can't say I appreciate you lot holding the community hostage over it though. But alright man. Thanks for the insight. Very interesting.

[Vivi V.2193]

3 minutes ago, CETheLucid.3964 said:

And who decides who is 'safe' and who is 'evil'? You? Because it can't be as simple as Guild Wars 2 players for the Guild Wars 2 community, yeah? Everything else is peripheral. Plenty of places are just about completely devoid of moderation and do well enough. Not that I'm suggesting there be no moderation but you are clearly going to the opposite extreme to curate a very specific environment as opposed to allowing the community to be more honest and organic.

In general I'm just suspicious of people who hold onto their moderation chairs, people who sit in multiple moderation chairs, for years on end with no monetary compensation. You just finished telling us how much it can suck. Price gouging is a problem just now? Not all those years you did it for free? And say CEO man isn't going to budge... are you really going to pay to be a reddit mod? To keep this personal idea of your vision for the community?

Maybe it's time to move on. I wish you and the current mods well all the same. I would hope you have enough self-respect to step down if things aren't going to work out. Can't say I appreciate you lot holding the community hostage over it though. But alright man. Thanks for the insight. Very interesting.

another example redditor thats terminally online and needs to go outside lmaooo jfc im off these forums forever. my two final and only ever posts. this whole thread is just redditors whining and its funny asf. yall need to go touch some grass. go watch a mutahar video or something and get yourself educated. reddit wont die, but it really should just because of people like you lmaoo. kittening cesspit of a community huh, dont know whats worse, this or wow.

[Linken.6345]

19 minutes ago, Vivi V.2193 said:

another example redditor thats terminally online and needs to go outside lmaooo jfc im off these forums forever. my two final and only ever posts. this whole thread is just redditors whining and its funny asf. yall need to go touch some grass. go watch a mutahar video or something and get yourself educated. reddit wont die, but it really should just because of people like you lmaoo. kittening cesspit of a community huh, dont know whats worse, this or wow.

Bye dont let the forum door hit you on the way out bud.

Seeing your 2 contributions nothing much was lost anyway.

[OhOkYea.5431]

It's childish at this point. These no-life reddit janitors are holding a massive part of the GW2 community hostage because they are desperate to feel important. I hope they all get perma'd by reddit staff for abusing their privileges. At least in some subs they let the users vote in a poll to decide what to do (since users make the platform what it is, not the easily replaceable reddit mods)

[Vivi V.2193]

10 minutes ago, Linken.6345 said:

Bye dont let the forum door hit you on the way out bud.

Seeing your 2 contributions nothing much was lost anyway.

who asked kitten lmaoo surprise third contribution lets go!!!

[Jedrik.3109]

This forum has had only one purpose ever. To troll the unhinged community of this game. There never has been nor never will be any type of healthy, reasonable, compassionate, thoughtful exchange of ideas or feelings. And every thread here solidifies this take. There is nothing of value in any of the these "conversations". But please feel free to continue.  I enjoy smiling in my last days.

[Poormany.4507]

2 hours ago, Neo K.9145 said:

I very much love the GW2 community but like every online community, especially given the current state of real life politics there are evil people who become part of that community and in order to make it safe for everyone, the bigots have to be removed. Intolerance can not be tolerated. 

Pot meet kettle? This kind of power hungry mentality just leads to echo chambers that make everyone even more divided than they already are. Of course remove blatantly racist, homophobic, etc. posts, but the goal of getting rid of anyone you personally view as "evil bigots" just deepens divisions and stifles any kind of actual discussion on topics.

Imo, mods should just reopen the subreddit. Plenty of other subreddits have already done polls and opinion surveys that showed that the vast majority of users voted to keep their subs open permanently, don't really care about the pricing changes that much, and just want to be able to discuss and make posts on their regular platform. If mods actually "love their community" as they claim, they would listen to what the vast majority of them are actually saying, such as in the current thread, and reopen without second thought,

[DarkCobalt.2849]

Personally, I'm a little dismayed that the GW2 subreddit of all things has decided to continue with the protest, even posting a discord link in the blackout message to try and move users to a different platform. We're not a very large community and the game hasn't been in the public spotlight for years now. Whether or not you support the Reddit blackout or are for/against the API changes, ultimately privating a subreddit of a few tens of thousand users of a niche, nearly decade-old videogame is doing nothing more than hurting that game's community. Frankly, the GW2 subreddit is so inconsequentially small compared to something like r/Fitness or r/mildlyinteresting, it just isn't worth sabotaging the game community for the protest. At the end of the day we've barely made a real difference, but have utterly nuked our community. To me, that isn't really a worthwhile tradeoff, and part of the perception of Reddit mods being "too power hungry" comes from this mismatch in opportunity cost. This applies to pretty much all videogame-specific subreddits and post-blackout polls have indicated that most users would prioritize keeping their game communities alive than splintering it for the sake of boycotting a larger product that not all players would necessarily use or support but do benefit from.

Edited June 18, 2023 by DarkCobalt.2849

[Neo K.9145]

First to give an update on the sub. It will be opening this week. We are working on automod and necessary rule changes to deal with the lack of moderating tools come the shutdown. 

To respond to some accusations here, I mod only one active sub and that's r/GuildWars2. I might be taking over DyeJob as that moderator is considering leaving. I'll gladly admit that many mods on reddit and other forums can be just power hungry users that are detrimental to the community. Personally I don't see myself as that and I think that anyone who thinks the Guild Wars 2 subreddit is run that way is fooling themselves. 

Case in point, the recent balance patch preview. The entire front page of the sub was filled with complaint posts. None of which we removed. All that was removed was some low effort memes and some duplicate posts about the same thing made close to each other. And any threats of violence against devs which very nice for a change I didn't see much at all. Many of those posts would have been removed here but we allow free discussion of the game even in negative light. 

The things that are guaranteed to get your post or comments removed is hate speech of any kind and threats against other users or the developers. Anyone here approves of those things than I don't want you on the sub and frankly I wouldn't even want you playing the game.

We get anywhere between 20-100 reports a day and I'd say about 95-99% of it is approved. For the most part moderating this sub is pretty easy. The majority of the community is great and usually the biggest problem is individual users fighting each other. During certain times of the year such as Pride Month the removal number goes up drastically due to the amount of hate speech that comes in and per our rules those people are permanently banned as you would be on most forums that respect human rights. 

To say again, moderators are not paid. Being a mod costs me time and sanity that I'm willing to give up to keep the sub clean of hate. The reddit wide protest was about the horrible changes reddit is implementing that will make it harder for moderators to do their job in addition to just destroying major parts of what has made reddit what it is. It's being done not as a benefit to users but a benefit to those who run the company in their efforts to do an IPO and run away after they cash out. Reddit will suffer from these changes. 

With all that said this will be my last post about the situation here. As I said at the start the subreddit will be opening up this week after we get automod updated and some other details ironed out since we'll have less moderating abilities.

[ThatNeilGuy.8049]

On 6/17/2023 at 4:41 PM, CETheLucid.3964 said:

Mods don't make the community. The users make the community. Mods are a very small part of that. In this instance, a very small part holding the rest of the community hostage.

Mods are a small but very important part of each community.  They make sure the topics stay on topic.  Without the mods doing their job, you'd see few GW2 posts mixed in with the spam posts, hate speech, cryptocurrencies scams, etc.

Without the mods, Reddit communities fall apart.  Without the 3rd party tools, mods can't do their jobs effectively.  Reddit doesn't provide enough of their own tools to properly support the mods.  Reddit doesn't have enough employees to do the moderation on their own.  The mods are doing all of the stuff they do for free.  For some of the big subreddits, perhaps they are acting like overlords.  For smaller communities, like the GW2 subreddit, the mods do it because they like the community.

[patton the great.7126]

I genuinely hope they replace the over zealous mods on the gw2 reddit. They held a poll. It wasn't very overwhelming in terms of for the black out...yet they went ahead anyway defending a cause not many care about. 

I mean gw2's sub reddit is insignificant in the grand scheme of reddit. I'd bet hardly any of the current members even used 3rd party apps or cared. Volunteer or not it's time for a change hopefully reddit eliminates them as mods and brings on a new less biased crew.

 

The absolute best thing is gw1's sub reddit joined the dumb protest. The extremely active gw1 subreddit....hahahahaha. I felt so bad for the few that actually still use gw1. 

More of a reason that gw2 devs should use the OFFICIAL forums instead of that reddit anyway.

[SnowdropFox.2456]

Whatever my personal belief on the matter might be, I just like how literally everyone here has an opinion on how mods should behave and how the sub should be modded, but none of you would ever step up to do it and lead by example.

Hypocrisy thy name is GW2 community.

This 'discussion' has evolved to a Twitter mob screaming at politicians for being incompetent, while sitting at home and doing literally nothing with their life except virtue signal on social media.

Just close this thread already.

[JTGuevara.9018]

On 6/16/2023 at 2:00 PM, ShadowCatz.8437 said:

Due to conflict about increased cost for access to API (for third party apps) where reddit mods set all subedits to Private incl GW2 official reddit page.

Google typical direct one to reddit when one search for issues that isn't that often mention on this forum any more like about dungeons etc. I just discovered that there is an ongoing conflict where mods now have set most reddit subedit to "private" which means that those will not longer be public or even possible to read as mods will not accept new members as long as this conflict is happening.

Maybe Arena Net need to find a way to save older content from reddit for archival purposes?  This Blackout means that all historical content is now inaccessible when one look at content that have been posted at reddit.

FYI I am not a reddit user or member, but like to check on reddit if there is some kind of information that isn't here on GW2 forum. Before Twitter became what it is today (for GW2), reddit where a source where some devs published information and discussed, so it is important to at least keep some of that material intact for the future.

 

Ah, Reddit...a hive of karma-farmers, ad-bots, trolls and pseudo-libertarian mediocrity. I'm sorry for the decent communities that actually try to make it a more likeable and inclusive place. Moderators and the communities essentially keep the lights on for free there. If not, then sub-reddits would essentially be overrun by trolls, karma-farmers, brigaders, ad-bots and more unsavory folk. Not that it matters to the Reddit corporate brass, who milk the value that their communities actually make. Corporate America, where you are rewarded for mediocrity!

I am not surprised by any of this. These days, tech services see what they can get away with. Youtube, for example, has the nerve to charge for an ad-free experience they USED to provide years ago. The mobile app for youtube is absolute horse manure.

I suppose time will tell, though, if these boycotts at least make shareholders skittish since I doubt they will be effective long-term. I can safely say that Reddit will not come out with their PR unscathed.

As far as gw2 is concerned, it will likely be tedious to go through the entire sub-reddit for information, especially since it's years and years of archives. Structurally, Reddit is basically just Facebook split into many pieces, where Reddit pretty much just shoves everything into a single page.

 

[JTGuevara.9018]

8 hours ago, Jedrik.3109 said:

This forum has had only one purpose ever. To troll the unhinged community of this game. There never has been nor never will be any type of healthy, reasonable, compassionate, thoughtful exchange of ideas or feelings. And every thread here solidifies this take. There is nothing of value in any of the these "conversations". But please feel free to continue.  I enjoy smiling in my last days.

Because Reddit is all peaches and cream, apparently...

[patton the great.7126]

3 minutes ago, JTGuevara.9018 said:

Because Reddit is all peaches and cream, apparently...

Ya you thought that too? Was my 1st thought...Was like bro what are you even on about....Glad I'm not the only one 🤣

[Leger.3724]

Someone should just claim it. Reddit said they are open to this.

I can't imagine being such a self absorbed person that I would actively deny people access to historical resources I had little or nothing to do with because I don't like something the website admins said they were doing. What a massive overstep and overreach by people who should never have been moderators in the first place. If you think you own a community, you own resources produced by others you should never moderate.

And of course for the "touch grass" crowd - why don't you look in the mirror and then go touch some yourself. If reddit is no big deal there was no need to take the subreddit offline now was there? But it was a big deal to you. Hypocrisy. Spiteful and pathetic hypocrisy

There were so many other options. Read only. Step down. They chose the one most punishing to the community. Well done. Well kittening done.

Edited June 19, 2023 by Leger.3724

[Alaeacus.9635]

Redditors hate official forums with draconic rules, pearl-clutching against naughty words, and devs who ban or shadowban if you simply express dislike for their products.  Official forum users hate reddit because they see it as more lawless, a place where dregs go when kicked out of "civilized" areas, and official forum brown-nosers like the power of reporting people for erroneous comments, to protect the corporation or product they invested their entire identity around.  (My words describe all product "official forums", not specifically GW2's.)

I used Reddit Is Fun (RiF) App exclusively for years.  Official Reddit website and App are both absolute garbage design, buggy, ad-heavy, data-mining, intrusive, etc.  There is a lot of Reddit I do not like, and a lot of Redditors I think should touch some grass, but after RiF shuts down, that is the end of my Reddit use.  

Edited June 19, 2023 by Alaeacus.9635

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

13 hours ago, Neo K.9145 said:

If you consider removing homophobic, racist, sexist, and other hate speech censoring than so be it. That's on you if you think that kind of speech is okay. The subreddit mod team does not, and I'm pretty sure you'll be banned from here as well using speech like that.

Guild Wars 2 is a game that prides itself on diversity and inclusion from the game itself, to the developer, and to the community. Anyone acting against that openness is a threat to the community. 

I very much love the GW2 community but like every online community, especially given the current state of real life politics there are evil people who become part of that community and in order to make it safe for everyone, the bigots have to be removed. Intolerance can not be tolerated. 

Have you heard of the Law of Noncontradiction?

[Bakeneko.5826]

On 6/18/2023 at 4:47 AM, Neo K.9145 said:

And in all this time I have not been paid or in anyway by ArenaNet or Reddit

And fan forums of the past not only didn't pay, they sucked money from owners. No need to play victim card for running community you want to run.

[ccccc.4963]

On 6/17/2023 at 10:47 PM, Neo K.9145 said:

The mod team of r/GuildWars2 was at most 6 active people in recent years. 2 have already decided to resign, 1 isn't active. Of the three of us that still remain only one or two might stick around.

Why are 6; inactive and disenfranchised moderators holding a community-forum hostage and why are they coming to other forums for sympathy. 

[PositronicDaydream.5620]

I dont really use reddit much and have only vagely followed the whole blackout thing but didnt they say it was only meant to be 48 hours? Is there are new end date or is the subreddit now down completely? There is a huge amount of information nobody can get access to. Having to search these pages via google caches and internet archive is infuriating. Im all for pushing back against greedy corporations but sympathy for "the cause" is wearing pretty thin

[phokus.8934]

This "protest" is probably the dumbest thing I've heard of regarding Reddit.  It will prove absolutely nothing and will do nothing but alienate people.  I'm sure a new subreddit will popup free from these power hungry people.