Subreddit rules, common removals, and seeking new mods
Hey folks.
I wanted to have an open discussion as we close on the year here about the state of r/classicwow, especially regarding rules and moderation.
In the last 7 days, we've taken 1,153 moderation actions, not including anything that Reddit itself removes (e.g. something that flagrantly flags their offensive post content, T-shirt spammers, etc). Of those 1,153, I personally took 589 actions, AutoMod took 518 actions, and one other moderator took 8 actions. This is fairly representative of how the sub has been running on a weekly basis for the last year or so. I appreciate the other mod that pops in a bit, but I'm basically solo managing the sub these days. We'll touch on that more shortly.
As far as what we're doing, it's a few things. We have some AutoMod flairs setup to either highlight potentially rules-violating content or automatically remove it. Sometimes, all I'm doing is reviewing these and re-approving them due to a false-positive for AutoMod. Other times I'm reviewing and re-approving or removing a post/comment reported by another user.
Recently, a few things have been coming up repeatedly. All three of the below are open to being adjusted as to how we moderate them, so please speak up in comments below if you have any thoughts.
1) The "r-word" is being used a lot more frequently over the last year than in the past. We automatically have this removed. We also have "regard" removed as we consider this to commonly be used as a stand-in for the r-word. The way we've been handling "regard" is to remove it and that's that. However, the r-word proper, if used as a personal attack on another user e.g. "You are an r-word" is just an immediate ban, usually a permaban. If it's used more casually like "The AQ War Effort is r-worded" we'll just remove it and send the user a message. Basically the distinction being it's both removed and a ban if it's an attack on another user, but it's (usually) just removed without a ban if it's not used as a personal attack.
2) Private servers. You're 100% allowed to discuss defunct private servers by name, such as Nostalrius. Naming active private servers will get your comment or post filtered/removed, but we won't ban anyone for it unless it's literally a spam advertisement type of post. If you simply comment "On aqua lizard wow private server, we can do X" it'll just get filtered, no ban. This rule has been in effect for years and years to avoid this sub becoming full of spam or astroturfers advertising active private servers and/or to avoid further diluting this sub even more when there are already so damn many versions of Classic. Seriously, r/wowservers exists for a reason and we'd appreciate private server discussion (especially if naming active servers outright) be taken over there. However, if you briefly want to discuss a feature of a private server, that's fine imo as long as you're not naming active private servers. Please trust me when I say I'm not a Blizzard shill and don't give a shit if you play on private servers, but every time I mention this rule at least one user accuses me if being paid by Blizzard. I probably have done more to advertise and support private servers than 99% of people that accuse me of being a Blizzard employee, and I'm happy to back that up with evidence if anyone really cares.
3) Streamer posts. This has always been a bit of a subjective enforcement but I try to be consistent. Basically, if a post focuses on the streamer on a non-gameplay way, we'd remove the post regardless of the content/context. However, if it's a video of a streamer doing something that involves gameplay, we'd usually leave it. There was a post earlier today of a streamer being transphobic over comms that I removed as I felt this was not gameplay specific, but I got enough push back that I reversed the removal. At this point I'm planning to just blanket allow all streamer posts regardless of context (assuming no other rules violations) because it's just too much time and effort to deal with removing these when they can be subjective.
Anyway, this is long, and I apologize for that. I'm frankly burnt out and tired of being told to kill myself, being told I'm a shitty mod, and today's implication that I'm transphobic for removing that post mentioned above kinda was my last straw. We need more mods to help so I can pump the brakes a bit or possibly outright quit being a mod here. If no one legitimately wants to help, we'll potentially put the sub into a restricted mode in the next few months, effectively shutting it down.
Please DM me if you have an interest in helping mod here and we can discuss if you'd be a good fit. Also please comment below if you have any thoughts on the above three rules or really anything at all. I'm stepping away for a bit now but will read every comment and reply where appropriate over the next day or so.
Thanks,