A brief timeline of the events leading up to this drama:
(screenshots taken from the public malefashionadvice discord)
-
On July 1st, /r/malefashionadvice (MFA) went private, becoming the largest private subreddit on the site (the only one with 5M+ subscribers). The mods and much of the active subreddit community moved to a discord server. A message from a mod with an explanation for going private can be found here.
-
On July 13th, the MFA mods received and responded to a notice from the admins requesting that MFA be reopened within 3 days or the mods would be removed. On the same day, an article on The Verge was posted, describing the subreddit’s migration to discord. The MFA mods make an announcement in the discord that they expect to be removed.
-
On July 20th, reddit admins removed the mod team without responding to the modmail. Another Verge article describes the situation. Despite going into restricted mode, one user posted a link to the discord in the subreddit, which was not well received by some commenters.
This brings us to today, when Reddit admins put out a request for new MFA mods.
Most of the comments are not welcoming to the call for moderators:
- “Reddit kicked out the old mods for rebelling against Reddit’s shitty behaviour. Reddit took the free labour which the existing mod team had provided for years, said “fuck you” to all of them, gave them the boot, and now wants fresh free labour to replace the old unpaid serfs. Gotta protect them shareholders.”
- “I’d like to be a mod because I think Spez is a dishonest creep, as is everyone involved in the ModCodeofConduct account, and I pledge to do my very best to burn all your efforts to the ground. This community will not accept scab mods.”
- “I’ve never moderated anything in my life and I dress like a toddler, please make me a mod I promise that I’ll eat the boot and not just lick it, thanks in advance”
Some users responded to the call, but were met with criticism.
- “Id like to be a mod because I love mens fashion, and I love this community. As you can see by my comment history, I’ve been contributing here for nearly a year. This is such a valuable place for so many people and I’d be honored to be overseeing it”
- In response: “Only rats cross the line”
Some other goodies:
-
The MFA Wiki has a big link to the discord at the top.(see update 1 below). The Wiki history page shows that the discord link was added to the Wiki, then removed by the admins, then re-added by the same user. -
The default comment sort for MFA is now controversial.
Update 1: admins have rolled back the Wiki by 3 years because of the discord link added.
Update 2: several comments that responded negatively to mod applications in the thread, such as the “only rats cross the line” comment linked above in this post, have been removed by admins.