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The Internet may have already begun exploding due to April Fools' Day pranks, but one site's April 1st gesture is decidedly not a joke: the temporary closure of Reddit's "r/games" channel.
An 8pm ET post on Sunday confirmed a united front by r/games' moderation team to shed light on the "condescending, dismissive, vindictive and pessimistic attitudes we see in our day-to-day activity." Instead of being able to create new topics or post comments, the community's 1.6 million subscribers will be left reading a locked moderator post that describes an average day's discourse on the site—along with the mod team's hopes for change.
"By showing disdain or outright rejecting minority and marginalized communities, we become more insular," the moderation team wrote after describing the community's "vitriolic" state in general. "In this, we lose out on the chance to not only show compassion to these people, but also the chance to grow our own community and diversify the demographics of those involved in it."
The mods came with plenty of evidence in hand: a NSFW gallery of 71 bigoted, transphobic, racist, misogynistic, pedophilic, and otherwise hateful comments that the r/games team has moderated over a span of roughly six months (if its timestamps are to be believed). "These kinds of comments occur on a daily basis," the moderators wrote. "From bigotry to vitriol, this merely scratches the surface of the magnitude of the problem."
This disturbing gallery is rounded out by the mod team's thanks to existing members who have previously deescalated angry comment threads or added a positive spin, along with a reminder that r/games is far from alone in terms of questionable user comments. But the team also adds that these poisonous trends are found "frequently in communities that center around the discussion of games."
arstechnica.com
An 8pm ET post on Sunday confirmed a united front by r/games' moderation team to shed light on the "condescending, dismissive, vindictive and pessimistic attitudes we see in our day-to-day activity." Instead of being able to create new topics or post comments, the community's 1.6 million subscribers will be left reading a locked moderator post that describes an average day's discourse on the site—along with the mod team's hopes for change.
"By showing disdain or outright rejecting minority and marginalized communities, we become more insular," the moderation team wrote after describing the community's "vitriolic" state in general. "In this, we lose out on the chance to not only show compassion to these people, but also the chance to grow our own community and diversify the demographics of those involved in it."
The mods came with plenty of evidence in hand: a NSFW gallery of 71 bigoted, transphobic, racist, misogynistic, pedophilic, and otherwise hateful comments that the r/games team has moderated over a span of roughly six months (if its timestamps are to be believed). "These kinds of comments occur on a daily basis," the moderators wrote. "From bigotry to vitriol, this merely scratches the surface of the magnitude of the problem."
This disturbing gallery is rounded out by the mod team's thanks to existing members who have previously deescalated angry comment threads or added a positive spin, along with a reminder that r/games is far from alone in terms of questionable user comments. But the team also adds that these poisonous trends are found "frequently in communities that center around the discussion of games."
No fooling: Reddit’s r/games goes silent for one day to call out hate, bigotry
"Stark reality" illustrated by 71-image gallery of vile, moderated comments.
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