Moderators of r/asoiaf ignore results of their own poll and keep the sub NSFW ( old.reddit.com )
A week ago the moderators of the A Song of Ice and Fire subreddit posted a Poll to determine the future of the sub in the ongoing protest:
old.reddit.com/…/crow_business_poll_to_determine_…
The stipulations of the vote were made quite clear:
The ballot and instructions are pretty straightforward. Please note: The poll requires voters to be signed into a Google account and to share your username but we do not collect your email. Nothing in your submission will link your personal information to your reddit username. While it’s not ideal—no polling method we have for reddit is, especially the native tools—we felt that this would address concerns about brigading.
We will leave the poll open for 48 hours and implement changes beginning this weekend, which will be announced.
If over 50% of people affirmatively for action, we will implement the highest voted and any actions that receive over 60% of votes from those who voted for action.
If over 50% of people vote against taking action, the subreddit will not take a stand against Reddit admin.
Below is more information about each action, which is also included on the ballot for your convenience. The poll will ask you to vote ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ on whether or not you want r/asoiaf to take action. People who vote ‘Yes’ will be presented with the option to choose which actions the subreddit should take.
The 48 hours passed but the thread stayed pinned for about 4 days with radio silence from the mod team.
Then the results came in:
old.reddit.com/…/crow_business_poll_results_and_s…
it turned out the option to not take anymore action in the protest won by 51 % which would mean that the option
If over 50% of people vote against taking action, the subreddit will not take a stand against Reddit admin.
should come into effect but seemingly the mods think differently about the rules for the very vote they themselves set up:
As a result of this outcome, we’ve decided to take the following course:
What we’ve decided to do after this poll is keep the board set as NSFW.
The content of the books, shows, and discussion threads warrant this label because of the regular discussion of topics that Reddit’s content guidelines consider NSFW and not appropriate for users under 18 including: murder, torture, rape, gore, fat pink masts, myrish swamps, twincest, sexpositon, graphic nudity, and much, much more. As subscribers of this subreddit, nothing about your browsing experience will change. You might see less ads, and it’ll correctly warn incoming new visitors about what they are about to get into.
Secondly in response to the results of the poll of the board: the voting was extremely close. Only 27 votes or one comment’s worth of upvotes on a good knee slapper in a thread makes the difference in the outcome, out of 700 respondents and 800,000 subscribers. So to keep the interests of both groups in mind, we’re opting to keep this setting on as it is the most supported among those interested in protesting while also avoiding the kind of disruption to normal board operations that those against it clearly do not want.
We will not be implementing the other options of themed memes or going private once a week.
Thank you once again to everyone who participated in the poll or provided feedback in some other way. We strive to make the decisions that are in the best interest of this community.
OFC that the mods did not leave the vote results thread open for any discussion, so the disgruntled users took matters into their own hand and used a one day old Q & A thread to vent their frustration:
np.reddit.com/r/…/spoilers_main_weekly_q_and_a/
What was the point of the poll if you’re going to ignore it and implement one of the protest actions? Taking no action won, y’all lost. Deal with it.
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Seriously. The NSFW is irritating (have to click to bypass the barrier) but whatever, I’ll live. But ignoring the results of the poll when they explicitly said this:
If over 50% of people vote against taking action, the subreddit will not take a stand against Reddit admin.
Come on. This is insulting to everyone. You laid out clear guidance and just ignored it and the vote. Also taking nearly a week was bad. Could have at least said it was delayed. Instead said nothing as far as I saw.
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Pretty close. Lost the vote but still decided to implement something despite not having majority support, seems like it took them a few days to figure out how to spin that.
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I think making the release post locked is flat out cowardly.