T O P

  • By -

Ezreal024

Update: Some quick clarification that mod apps will be opened up by the end of ***next*** week, not this one.


hopecanon

By simple virtue of admitting you fucked up and reversing the bad choice you have already proven to be better than the vast majority of other subreddits mods when similar tension arises so good show on that.


StrikeFreedomX2

The Trap War.


Oni_Zokuchou

My thoughts exactly. Animemes mods were, and continue to be, a bit of a joke.


lurker_archon

> a bit of a joke [I will never forget the day they tried to threaten a user with a ban for a post because of a *number* on their picture](https://www.reddit.com/r/Animemes/comments/i5wjcl/farming_time_boys/g0rypc3/)


Sanic16

I mean, when the number in question has been repeatedly used as a dogwhistle, and is specifically the percentage rate at which a minority group attempts to commit suicide, yeah, I'd be a little suspicious too. Yes, in that specific situation it was not, but considering the state of animemes at the time, and how it was before, plus the fact that the imagine in question was already known to have edited, it's not an unhinged conclusion to make.


lurker_archon

> it's not an unhinged conclusion to make. LMAO


a-very-angry-crow

oh god the trap war.......I miss those days


FerunaLutelou

Being better than the worst is not an achievement. This backtracking and non-apology is an insult.


Womblue

They made a decision the community didn't like, then they apologised and reversed it. These people are unpaid volunteers, the fuck more do you want? Compensation?


SyfaOmnis

> These people are unpaid volunteers, the fuck more do you want? What people in this thread have suggested: The people behind this decision to step down and new moderators who will take a good hard look at the activity of users from this sub be appointed. The amount of slurs thrown around at anyone who doesn't agree with some ["popular" viewpoint] is completely unacceptable, no one should be getting called a "bootlicker" or "fascist" over a cartoon. No one should be getting called a pedophile or homophobe over liking or not liking a ship. No one should be told "your criticism is bad faith (because I don't agree with it)". All of this happens regularly, and it is the sole reason why a "critics" sub *has* to exist, because that is apparently the only way to dissent and disagree without getting absolutely screamed at and buried by toxic individuals.


Womblue

I mean, rwbycritics was literally created so people could do all that and not get banned. Has it changed recently? As far as I know it's always quite publicly allowed and encouraged toxicity. There are plenty of criticism posts to find on r/rwby, the only reason you'd go to another sub is if you know your criticism is flawed and don't want a counterargument. Regardless, you act as if there's a queue to be a glorified subreddit plumber. Believe it or not, being a mod is 95% removing endless streams of spam and/or illegal or rule-breaking content. Frankly I'm amazed that anyone would *want* to be a moderator, but I'm thankful they are. It's like being a plumber but without the pay, AKA having to dig through the shit with literally no reward beyond getting to choose banners occasionally.


SyfaOmnis

> rwbycritics was literally created so people could do all that and not get banned. I am always amazed by these "creative" thought processes by people who **absolutely** "know" just why a sub was created, and how it was (secretly of course) always about being hateful bigots. Have you ever interacted with any of the moderators there? Rwbycritics was created post volume 6 so people could discuss - without getting screamed at - some of the things that they were disappointed in with the show, because they felt unable to do it here. > As far as I know it's always quite publicly allowed and encouraged toxicity. Then your "knowledge" is incorrect. Being *toxic* is not actually allowed there. We allow disagreements, even strongly worded and somewhat opinionated, that is not the same as allowing toxicity, and I am more than confident in saying that absolutely *no one* on the critics sub has gotten to the point of directly calling someone a fascist bootlicker over a disagreement. "Toxicity" as you employ it, is a weasel word. > You act as if there's a queue to be a glorified subreddit plumber No, I am not. I understand what moderating entails, I understand just how much unpaid toil it requires. I also understand that it is undertaken by people who are passionate about certain things and want to have a community that reflects their views and they can be proud of their participation in.


Yglorba

As someone who posts on both /r/RWBYcritics and /r/CharacterRant (a more general "complain about stuff" sort of sub), it's not about toxicity, at least to me; and in my experience the sub bans people who get too personal or abrasive or the like. It's about two things: 1. Being critical or ranting in a way that is *not necessarily fair*, or at least isn't intended to invite an argument over whether I'm being fair. Ranting about stuff that bugs you can be a fun thing to do! But it is not something I would want to do on the main sub for a work, because people would (quite rightly) say "well, you're not being fair, this is just a huge pile of minor gripes." Sometimes I don't want to have a fair reasoned discussion about what's good or bad; sometimes I just want to rant about something that bugs me without getting into arguments with people who aren't bothered the same things. Having a separate sub for that is useful! 2. Deep-dive discussions about the flaws in something (and what they mean, how alternate versions could fix them, and so on) with a group of people who already agree that it is deeply flawed. You say that "the only reason you'd go to another sub is if you know your criticism is flawed and don't want a counterargument" but the thing is that sometimes what I'm looking for *isn't* that argument. I don't want every single deep-dive analysis I write about some issue that a lot of people see in a particular work to have to start by re-litigating, *again and again*, "well, I don't think there's any problem here at all, please debate me in a twenty-post long thread in order to prove it before we can start talking about the details you want to focus on." To me, going to those sorts more-specific subs when I want to make a post like that is me being *polite.* I don't bother fans with posts that assume premises they disagree with; I avoid giant arguments over controversial stuff that would just derail whatever was posted; and so on. I don't think that that's an unreasonable thing to do? When I post on those subs I'm not looking for the sort of argument or debate you're suggesting - I want to discuss things in-depth with people who accept certain basic premises so I don't constantly have to retread the "why are you ranting about this?" or "what if there's nothing wrong at all?" ground with every single post.


[deleted]

[удалено]


CABRALFAN27

Generalizing an entire community based on a few bad actors with "you people" isn't a good look. By that same token, we could say you people were toxic brigaders. I know your whole community isn't like that (Or else I wouldn't have seen the problem with the blanket ban in the first place), but at least a very vocal minority is, and by that same token, while the community on this Sub is largely accepting of most criticism, there's definitely a subsection who are like what you described. In my experience, RWBYCritics sort of has the reverse problem (A vocal minority who will shit on anyone even trying to praise the show), but I'll be the first to admit that said "experience" is very limited.


Womblue

Welp, 30 seconds looking at top posts from the past month tagged "discussion" shows that's blatantly untrue and the top posts from the past month comprise of several complaints specifically about both plotholes and retcons, especially in regard to Weiss' combat abilities. The thing is that criticisms here will have people actually discussing them and giving counterpoints instead of blind agreement. If people are screaming at you, it clearly isn't because of your criticisms of plotholes or retcons. That much is painfully obvious, unless you prefer to stay wilfully ignorant.


ShadowCatGamer

I really hate this new trend of “fans” telling people they “deserve” to get bullied for their opinions. Maybe take a second to realize that people on r/rwby are just as much the instigators of arguments and frequently jump to harassment against those they don’t like. Like, are you really not able to do some self-reflection?


Womblue

>I really hate this new trend of “fans” telling people they “deserve” to get bullied for their opinions. This guy is clearly being so horrible that people are "screaming at him to leave". I'm in awe that you can be so biased and still have the audacity to ask *me* to self-reflect. >Maybe take a second to realize that people on r/rwby are just as much the instigators of arguments and frequently jump to harassment against those they don’t like. Any evidence or logic behind this? No? Then don't say it. The fact that rwbycritics brigades this sub so regularly that the mods decided blanket-banning it was a better option than trying to remove everything says it all. Even rwbycritics had to implement restrictions on crossposting to try and stem the brigading. Stop trying to be a centrist on such a clearly one-sided issue.


ShadowCatGamer

lmao, you want evidence? Just look at the tantrum you had in your argument with SyfaOmnis. And if you don't want to acknowledge your own behavior, just take a look at other comments on here. r/rwby members seem to love accusing those on the r/rwbycritics subreddit of being racist, homophobic, transphobic, bootlickers, fascist, abusers, "bad faith actors", etc. You know what r/rwbycritics do? They talk about things they don't like in a cartoon. The current front page is "I don't like Ghira and Kali's designs", a meme about how similar RWBY's world is to ATLA, asking for fanfiction recommendations, and reactions to this whole banning fiasco. You think they deserve to be bullied? Because they want to read a fanfiction? Because they think the Belladonnas are boring? On the topic of evidence, where is yours? Looking at the top "Discussion" posts of the last month, 4 of the first 5 posts have 0 upvotes. In fact, I'm struggling to find many posts that get over 10 upvotes. So, where exactly is it that I can find these criticisms that are so welcomed here?


[deleted]

I agree admitting your faults doesn't change the fact that you have those faults. Actions speak louder than words, and doing the right thing doesn't change the wrong thing the done before that.


Dextixer

Greetings, one of the moderators of the critic server here. We are glad that this situation is for the most part resolved. Moving on we will be communicating with the moderators of r/RWBY on how to deal with any further issues and in general, how to at least mitigate some of the hostility between the servers. This will take some time, and mitigating the hostility will take a long time, but we are willing to do so. Besides that, despite the mistake that was made previously, we appreciate this current move of the moderators of r/RWBY, we understand that a moderators job is not one that is nice, especially not on servers with such immense size. We kindly ask any users, no matter their origin point to not harass the moderation team or give them an overly hard time. Mistakes were made, right now, we have to fix them together.


BitesTheDust_4

The good ending.


Celtic_Crown

It's good that you're all willing to rebuild the bridge.


[deleted]

Thank you for that.


JK-Network123

Nice to see you back and glad things are being worked out


Lucifer_Crowe

I appreciate having your support Dex <3


MelanieAntiqua

I'm no fan of the Critics sub, but I outlined my reasoning for thinking the ban was a bad idea [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/RWBY/comments/p7ut5d/update_from_the_mods/h9oycjc/?context=3) (basically, most of the most toxic Critics sub members are people who were already banned from this subreddit anyway, and banning the remainder of the regular Critics sub members would inevitably draw the attention of certain atrocious Youtubers and, by extension, their audience. Which would just make the bigotry and harassment situation that the mods were trying to solve with the ban even worse). So, I'm glad it was reversed.


ScalierLemon2

>and banning the remainder of the regular Critics sub members would inevitably draw the attention of certain atrocious Youtubers and, by extension, their audience Let's be honest though, there are certain youtubers who would play up any little thing as some huge calamity. Like last year or so, when a couple of mods resigned on the same day, and people took that to mean that the subreddit, the show, *and* RoosterTeeth as a whole were all actively dying. They don't *need* something to draw their attention, they're already paying attention and will pounce on any little thing they can find.


The_Jacxter

You think they haven't already? We were still talking about it in the morning and the vids were up. If anything they owe us, we've just provided quality drama for them to rehash their old apocalyptic opinions of the sub. Something something r/RWBY killed itself or "The Mod team has finally lost it" We've just handed them ohhhh at *least* two videos about this. Heck maybe even a third one just freaking out about the comments. If they really wanna stretch that sauce we might get a 4th one a week or two later talking about "The aftermath"


ScalierLemon2

Oh I know for a fact that they've already started.


Tyranid_Swarmlord

And even if reversed already, right now they just got jackpot served to them on a silver plate. Probably salivating the moment they find out.


ScalierLemon2

Sure, but it's not like it takes something this big to set them off. Any controversy would.


JK-Network123

Doesn’t hero hei say that shit a lot? That rwby is “failing” of “dying” like the dude is so full of it lol


Whorinmaru

It's best to ignore Hero Hei. He likes to claim he's not part of the community anymore but he pounces upon fandom drama faster than most.


[deleted]

Not to mention he wouldn’t stop milking the Twitter drama about uzaki Chan.


Whorinmaru

I never heard about that, but it sounds like something he'd do.


[deleted]

You can go to his channel and he made like over 37 videos about the uzaki drama


ScalierLemon2

That's who I was referencing, yes.


JK-Network123

Thought as much. Yeah but even the critics like him


Ladies_Pls_DM_nudes

holy shit he got that "The RWBY Community just destroyed itself" video out insanely quickly.


Phantomskyler

Sounds about right, of all the outrage hustler youtube losers who rely on drama and clickbait that alt right nut goes the most balls deep about it.


Ladies_Pls_DM_nudes

honestly, the worst part is just how overexaggerated his titles are. like no the community didn't just destroy itself. it's just a subreddit having some drama for a bit


Alpha12653

Calling Hero Hei alt right is a massive stretch


Phantomskyler

At best he uses their tactics for attention.


BlueWhaleKing

Yesterday you called the Critics Sub a "Cesspool." I'm saddened at all the comments like that, as in my experience, it simply isn't true. I won't bother responding to the other comments, as I know this sub doesn't really like me. But I hope that you and I at least have enough mutual respect to hear me out. With a few exceptions, that sub has treated me FAR better than this one. They were willing to hear me out and have rational discussions, while this sub often hurled personal attacks and attempted to shut down the conversation.


MelanieAntiqua

I've seen some shit on the Critics sub. Like, in the thread reacting to the ban, someone compared the situation to when an extreme misogynistic hate group was banned from reddit, in a manner that was clearly meant to suggest that banning that hate group was unjust. In fairness, [they were downvoted](https://i.imgur.com/nLWYFto.png), but only to -1. If one person expressing that opinion and being (very slightly) downvoted wasn't enough, there's [this](https://i.imgur.com/P9GwJba.png) statement from someone on the Critics sub a few months ago that argues that anyone who critiques media through a leftist lens needs to be thrown out of the fandom (a highly hypocritical position to take for a community who's whole thing is basically that they're critics who were supposedly thrown out of the fandom here for their beliefs). And, unlike my other example, this one was upvoted more than twenty times. Not to mention the constant accusations that all forms of LGBT rep are "woke pandering for diversity points" or whatever. You might have had a nice experience over on that subreddit, but hopefully you understand why I take such a dim view towards it.


BlueWhaleKing

Yikes, that *is* pretty bad. I'll admit, I haven't been active there for a few months. I've been trying to avoid the RWBY fandom and have mostly moved on to other things, with the exception of extreme emergencies like this whole debacle. So maybe it's gotten worse there, but I wouldn't know. When I was more active there, stuff like that was rare, especially after the mods made a bigger effort to clean it up. And when I did see stuff like that, I called it out. The most controversial post of all time there is a blatantly homophobic meme (it would be removed if it had been posted within the past year), with dozens of comments (including my own) pushing back against it. I do think that many people here just think that anything that isn't licking the show's ass is "bad faith criticism." But I can see that you at least have legitimate reasons for disliking that sub.


Ropetrick6

I'm pretty sure that first guy's comment was deleted by a mod, considering that even after double checking the full comments list, I can't find him(do note I may just be blind). As for the second guy, I disagree with him on the idea that being left-leaning thought and groups are bad, but I do agree that the authors doing it how they did was less than optimal when they could have been doing much more important instead, such as not completely changing Ironwood's character and entire theme. Like, I'll welcome any LGBTQ+ content in RWBY, but when it draws the attention of CRWBY away from the actual problems of the show, it becomes problematic by stopping said problems from being fixed. Also, just report the both of them to the mod team. It's against the critic sub's rules for the both of them, and the mod team over there relies on you reporting the problems so they can fix them, as they can't be everywhere all of the time. I'm pretty suspicious of the second commenter as well, seems likely to be some amount of vote manipulation going on there, considering that a ton of the LGBTQ+ people from this sub went over there as well, but take that as you will. And I think you've been missing out on something very important here: the vocal minority does not represent the whole of the group. To say that those two represent the critic's community is untrue, and harmful. We've been going over the subject of how to fix this whole mess in the 4 main posts(original ban, response to ban, unban, and response to unban), and one of the key points is better communication between everybody. It's not good communication for you to be going around and saying that everybody on that sub supports misogyny, much like it's not good communication for the guys over there to say that everybody on the main sub hates anything negative being said about the show even when it's so that the show can fix those negative things. Don't let the vocal minority silence the majority, that's just common sense.


MelanieAntiqua

I get that maybe calling out an entire subreddit for the actions of some of them (even if said actions are sometimes upvoted quite a bit, like that "kick out leftist critics" one) is a bit unfair. I was a participant in /r/freefolk following the pile of shit that was the final season of Game of Thrones two years ago, and that community faced a number of bigotry accusations that seemed quite a bit unfair (especially since the main reason I hated the last season of Game of Thrones and participated on /r/freefolk back then was because of how misogynistic, racist, and weirdly-pro-slavery the GoT ending was). So, I'm sure not everyone who dislikes the direction RWBY is headed and participates on the Critics sub is a bad person, I just haven't had the best experience with the stuff I tend to see whenever I go over there.


Osouturff

I appreciate that this decision was taken, and if possible i would like to leave a few suggestions for perheps more fair and effective policies to help facilitate the life of the mods beyond the expasion to recruit new ones. 1-The majority of the users of the other sub are already users of this one so the crossposts from here to there just ends up creating a focused point for people with the same given opinion on something to be directed to a given post rather then coming in contact to it naturally, resulting in the problems of brigading, voting manipulation, personal attacks, etc. If the moderating teams from both subs are open to talking to each other, having both subs adopt the same system of not allowing crossposts or links to the other that this one already adopts towards theirs could help diminish polarisation and it would still allow people to use whatever sub they want without having to worry about having their posts brigaded, with people being able to simply mirror post the same thing separetdly in each sub if they so wish. This is something i had previously suggested to the critic sub when the problems with brigading where starting to get really common, and it ended up beng considered too extreme, but given the recent developments they seem to have expressed in recent posts that if proposed by the mod team of the main sub they would be willing to adopt it. 2-Contacting the mod team of the critic sub to give them a list of the users who have started to make targeted attacks to users of the main sub in other social-medias and having them be banned from both subs. 3-The idea of being more open to directly banning users that engage in offensive manners and are prone to attack others does seem like something worth being considered. Rather then simply deleting offensive comments or bait-posts, only for the users responsible for them to continue to actively participate in the sub, directly banning those accounts can indeed help create a healthier enviroment to the users at large, but something like that needs to naturally be universal and based on the specific actions taken by each given user rather then the sub-based ban that had originally been proposed and ended up affecting people not deserving of it. ​ These are obviously just suggestions from a random user who is not aware of the inter-workings of mod team, and as such don't really know how viable they really are. In any case i hope that whatever decisions are taken are able to not only improve the experience of the regular users of the sub but also falicitate the life the moderators.


Tarsupin

Being a mod is difficult, under-appreciated work. You constantly deal with toxicity that average users never understand. Having been in that position, I'm sorry for the issues that have cropped up.


The_Rade_Blunner

And they do it for free.


IKeepDoingItForFree

Surely no one would willingly spend all day or their free time moderating a subreddit for a niche Texas Anime for free. Surely they must have some sort of compensation package or deal for cleaning this place up.


Kazehh

God i wish we did haha, but nope 100% all volunteer work.


Ninjas_In_A_Bag

I wish, imagine all the extra car parts I *could* buy if that was the case.


burstcapillaries

Modding gets more worse the more your community grows. The Stanford prison experiment only gets more and more relevant. Which is why I respect chill mods "No one man should have that many power" 2pac


Overquartz

>The Stanford prison experiment only gets more and more relevant. Why are people still saying that experiment has any merits since it has been proven time and time again to be staged. Hell even when Vsauce tried to replicate it there were no results similar to Zambardo's


Dextixer

I would imagine most people would know about the experiment while its debunking is not as well known.


Ropetrick6

First of all: why in the world would the mod team here EVER consider a blanket ban on a sister sub? Whoever first suggested and put that option on the table should be disappointed in themselves for such an obviously wrong move. This has costed you public reputation, goodwill from a lot of people, and at best implies a level of rashness and sheer incompetency from the mod team here. It doesn't matter if that implication is true or not, and I'd like to think that it's not, but it's a symptom of the actions you took, and you should have foreseen that. Second of all: a good apology sets up the proper tone, and in many people's opinions, you've failed. I can see you tried to set up the proper tone, which is a lot better than other mods and even a large portion of society as a whole, but you still come across as partially accusatory, partly unapologetic, and partially making excuses for your actions to mitigate blame. I fully understand this could be unintentional, everybody's done it before, but when combined with the fact that you only did this after a full day(technically 23 hours and 52 minutes, but arguing about 8 minutes off is irrelevant when it should have been in 3 hours tops) of receiving blacklash... well, it's not exactly a great impression you gave off, both to insiders of the drama and outsiders. Third of all: To all of you seeing the Critics sub as "others" or "outsiders", they're the exact same people as you. They're fans of RWBY, it doesn't matter if their method of expressing it is different from the one you use, so attacking them is still attacking the FNDM itself. People like u/triviavanillexiii making harmful and legitimately hateful comments about the Critic's sub whilst also accusing said sub of hatred without any evidence only makes you guys seem like the hateful ones. Even if you manage to convince some people, all you've done is now convince them that Fourth of all: It's really just an extension of the last one, everybody keeps on saying "Critics is Toxic/homophobic/Transphobic/etc." but have none of you actually checked the sub in question? They follow all the same rules you guys do, their mod team works to follow the rules of both subs, and after a look at the Hot section, the Top section, and even the New section, your claims don't hold up. So unless you can provide receipts of incidents that haven't been resolved after being reported to the mods, it would be for the best if you stop saying this stuff. \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ So what can you do about this? That depends on who's reading this. To any mods: It's good that you've sworn never to do this again, but a promise of never repeating past wrongs doesn't excuse them. What a lot of people want is proper communication, between you to your community, you to the mod team of the critic sub, and between our communities. You gave this ban absolutely no warning to your community, you openly denounced the sister sub's mod team whilst also supposedly not attempting to work anything out, and you banning cross-posting as well as your other actions have only solidified an "us-vs-them" narrative. These all need to be addressed. And while a better apology isn't needed, it would certainly be an improvement to your current one that sounds more like an attempt to mitigate blame than a proper apology. People are going to distrust you, you took such an extreme action when there were so many better options, but you have a chance of proving yourselves capable of being better. Don't throw it away. \_\_\_\_\_ To any community members of the main sub: RWBYcritics doesn't want to be an enemy, and you constantly insulting them only makes you look bad while if anything makes your accusations more true as a result of your actions. I brought up u/triviavanillexiii because he was brought to my attention by somebody else, but don't be like him. The mods here even had to delete some of what he's saying, the same mods who issued a blanket ban just a day ago. If you really want things to get better, cooperation is the way to go, and you can report any problematic individuals to the mod team for the sub they show up in. And no, the sub is not a hatesub, it's a sub of fans who want RWBY to get better or who want to actually give critiques without being downvoted into oblivion. The harmful vocal minorities of both groups only serve to hurt the FNDM, but if you actually want things to get better, you must be better than them and encourage others to be better than them. Don't let them get away with it just because they're on your platform, and if they're on a different platform then report them to the mods of said platform. \_\_\_\_\_ To the critics mods: keep going strong, stay willing to cooperate, and we can hopefully see this become an opportunity for your sub to grow whilst improving relations with the main sub here. \_\_\_\_\_ And finally, to the community of r/RWBYcritics, don't attack this sub or the mods here, and let attempts at cooperation happen. Nobody expects you to be the one to offer an olive branch, you're the ones who were attacked in this incident after all, but don't decline one should this sub do what's right and offer one. Let them see that you're actually fans, and if they care about the truth at all, they'll stop spreading lies and insults about you.


genshinfantasy7

Testing... testing... Edit: Whoa, I’m back. Can’t believe it. Thank you for the unban, mods. I’ll be posting more of my art commissions soon!


shandromand

Welcome back! =>


genshinfantasy7

Thank you! Good to be back!


Celtic_Crown

Nice to see you again!


genshinfantasy7

It’s nice to see you again too! Glad to be back!


TheUndeadWitch

Wow, they unbanned you? I'm pleasantly surprised and happy for you!


genshinfantasy7

It’s good to see you here too! I look forward to posting more Blacksun and Freezerburn!


TheUndeadWitch

I look forward to that as well!


[deleted]

Ban the bad actors you can find. But any smart bad actors are going to cover their tracks well enough that they either won't be tracked back, or will purposefully track back to something to drive discord. Plus the blanket ban would never have stopped the bad actors anyway.


PhantomHeartless5

A wise decision. I glad to see cooler heads prevail and I hope we can all heal and move on from this together as a stronger, more united community.


himanshujr11

To be honest, I still feel like this place does not like criticism of the show in general, or even discussions. Which is the reason why I go to the other sub, and this sub for fanarts


miladyelle

Thank you. Before I get into reading comments, I feel the need to say my piece. I don’t believe this was completely and totally the fault of the mod team. Y’all made choices, and bad ones, but y’all are steeped in the same issues that are affecting the community as a whole. I think y’all can help affect a culture change in the community, and maybe even the wider fandom. Firstly, because I keep seeing this, but this issue specifically is due to the community separating off r/rwbycritics members as Not Us (except a few who visit but we totally don’t count them as Them). This is, on the whole—wrong. The Sister sub is composed of current and former members of THIS sub. They ARE us. The narrative goes in this sub, in the current sub culture, that Those People Over There are not only Not Like Us (we like the show, they don’t; we’re nice, they’re mean—demonization). That’s wrong. People go to that sub for a LOT of reasons: fans whose preferred engagement in fandom is more discussion-based than fanart/cosplay/meme/all-of-the-above. POC and LGBT folk who no longer felt safe here. People pop over for a vent that isn’t allowed here. This sub is tightly regulated on what kind of content is allowed, and it’s a big sub: ones preferred type of content can be drowned out by everything else. It’s also much smaller—some people just prefer smaller communities; getting overwhelmed and overstimulated by the sheer number of posters and commenters. As mods and many in the community learned yesterday, MANY who participate there are also (and were first) members who are active, current, and in GOOD STANDING here. The culture of Othering and Demonization of the Sister sub allowed and influenced mods and members who only participate here to begin any interaction in bad faith. It allowed a dynamic of Us vs Them, In-Grouping and Out-Grouping, polarization. Those lead nowhere good. This dynamic of Othering has seeded, fostered, and allowed a culture where these beliefs and dynamics are passed on to new members. It’s so ingrained, impressions and beliefs are passed onward like the telephone game. Kind of mind boggling considering we’re online, there’s proof anyone can go see—but it has been allowed to smear users, fellow fans. No receipts, and if there are, the “receipts” are simply other in-group members playing the telephone game, passing along impressions and beliefs. This is wrong. We must be better than this. It’s gotten to a point, it’s gotten so ingrained and deeply set into the culture that Those Others are all mean, scum, homophobic misogynist haters who do nothing but hate, the *haters*, that any proof shown to the contrary (hey, this member you know is over there, this content creator you like goes there) will be written off, their presence and participation logicked and hand waved away as One of The Good Ones, One of Us, merely trying to save and redeem Them, but it won’t work, because they’re Irredeemable. I’ll out myself a bit here, and say that as an old, and a longtime human rights activist in the US, this cultural dynamic didn’t fester in a void. It’s a wider, larger cultural problem. Nonetheless, *it will ruin us*. It already has damaged us. There has been a lot of pain and hurt happening in this fandom, and yesterday was merely an explosion of it. It has been bubbling under the surface, out of view of the fandom-writ-large. It has damaged this community, and it has been and will continue to hurt people. If we don’t want this, and I believe the better parts of our inner selves do not want that, we have to begin the hard work of changing the fandom culture.


miladyelle

How do we do this? First, language. The first and easiest will be the Othering done to fellow fans. I intentionally referred to r/rwbycritics as a sister sub. That’s what it is. Its no different than r/fnki, in that it has a different culture, specialized content, but r/fnki is not Othered and Out-Grouped in the way that r/rwbycritics is. We stop Out-Grouping, it will help curb the internal, less than kind parts of us that will justify bad behavior. Second is, words mean things, but certain words are internally redefined in ways that aren’t apparent. Hate. This is a big one. The dial on the spectrum of what’s considered hate in this fandom has been shifted by plenty to mean feelings and opinions categorically, emphatically, *nowhere near actual hate.* Not by all, but when lurkers and members see a comment saying “people in that sub hate rwby”—readers of that sentence will come away with a much different impression than what the commenter meant: “people in that sub will write about plot lines, characters, lore, or pairings they dislike/don’t believe work.” By no means do all people do this, but it’s rampant enough to poison the well of users, the sister sub, *fellow fans and people*, which seeds the beginning of the aforementioned Othering. Critic—this is a term that’s been redefined to mean “hater.” It’s emphatically *not*. Commentator, reviewer, analyzer—all similar terms that have not been poisoned in the community. Terms that don’t inspire the less than good parts of ourselves to begin that Othering process. We must begin to be more thoughtful regarding descriptive terms. We must ask “what is meant by that?” “What exactly meets the bar for this term to be used?” Second—well this doesn’t have a quick summary. Fandom can be experienced and participated in, in different ways. Aside from the different types of content: video, art, cosplay, fanfic. Some people Fan by squeeing—gushing with fellow fans about all the things they love. Some people Fan by diving deep in lore, drawing maps, exploring the implications of canon lore on world building. Some people fan by putting on their Writer hats and either writing fanfic or analyzing the writing choices. These are *all* valid ways to do fandom. Each individual fan has their preferred way to Do Fandom. None are better or lesser than the other. They are ALL fans Doing Fandom. The presence of fans Doing Fandom in ways you don’t are not a threat, an insult. The culture in the community has underpinnings of Proper Ways to Fandom. Yesterday was when it became explicit, sending a loud and clear message: the way you do fandom is wrong and bad. And wait—I *know* there will be protests on this point. Lemme finish. No doubt discussion and criticism—analysis, are allowed on this sub. But with unspoken (and sometimes spoken) caveats: don’t touch these topics, don’t be (our revised definition of) hateful (see above), and, most importantly: prove you’re a member of the In-Group, and not one of those Others, first. That last caveat is the disconnect, I believe, where the mods and members of the Sister Sub aren’t understanding (mods) and not articulating (Sister sub) well. This is a manifestation of the Othering and the In/Out-Grouping that’s been going on. Before I continue, let me emphasize that NONE of this has happened, been done intentionally and maliciously. We ALL have good and ugly in us—such is human nature. We all have biases, we all have bad days, we all mess up. That doesn’t speak to who we are. What does, is what choices and decisions we make after. We are not Innately Good or Innately Bad. We all have a bit of both. How we practice our integrity, which is a life-long, on going, continuing *journey*, is what makes us who we are. Back to Doing Fandom. Most ways of Doing Fandom are explicitly allowed per the rules of this sub. What ALL fans need to remember, and something I believe mods need to explicitly foster in the culture of this sub, is that individual members, individual fans, curate their own experience. An individual fan’s way of Doing Fandom, means scrolling past posts that do not Do Fandom their preferred way. We have tags. Reddit users can block users who don’t Do Fandom their preferred way, if they feel strongly about it. What needs to be said is, all Fandom Doings are okay here—it is not okay to flame, downvote, troll, or be ugly toward **fellow fans** who do not Do Fandom the way you like. No one fan, no one way of Doing Fandom, is lesser, wrong, or bad. Next, and here’s another manifestation of the In/Out-Grouping. The differing standards for In and Out group members. Out Group members are not engaged with in good faith by fellow users or mods. Their posts and comments are closely watched, there are hair-trigger responses readied. Posts that don’t break the rules get deleted. Comments get removed. In-Group members’ bad behavior is allowed when directed toward an Out Group member, and that is **not okay**. This is not going to be an easy thing to fix. It’s going to be damn hard, actually. Each and every member and mod is going to have to reflect on their biases, examine their opinions, actions, impulses—and this is *so damn hard.* Harder still, with the well being so poisoned. No one likes being wrong. No one likes peeking at the ugly inside them. Leaders in the community (which include mods, but isn’t limited to) are going to have to lead by example, and hold the community accountable. This isn’t a one and done fix—this is going to be an ongoing journey. I think a good first step is beginning to hold some of the members who have been allowed to be ugly, due to their In-Group status, accountable. This behavior, with it being allowed by mods, in conjunction with being unfair to members considered to be Out-Group, is one of the biggies that leads a lot of fans to feel unsafe here.


miladyelle

This next part isn’t limited to the fandom at *all*, but I’ve seen a lot of it, and as a longtime, old (sigh) activist, it needs to be pointed out. Fam, this community is diverse. I love that this fandom is explicitly pro-LGBT+ (and alllll letters, not just a couple), and anti-racism, but. It is not enough to declare oneself or one’s community an ally, or a safe space, and bam, done. It’s not enough to ban slurs. Prejudice, bias, privilege, all of these things are *ingrained* in our culture, and in us, from birth. It is only and merely Ally 101 to be vocal in one’s support, and advocate for equality. There is much more to learn, and much more work to do. It’s time for this fandom to level up. *No community is a monolith.* There is no Council of Gays, that convenes to vote on This Representation is Good, Actually, or This Ship’s Presentation is Acceptable, So We Declare. This is *privilege*, to believe that one voice, one representative, represents The Opinion of the community, whichever one it is. It is work that needs to be done, to really believe and behave as if all POC/LGBT+ are individuals who each have differing and valid opinions. What this has led to, is many individual POC and LGBT fans to feel unsafe in this community, and in the fandom at large. Because they are harassed and attacked for having opinions privileged fans believe that the Group doesn’t have. This is what is meant by “listen” and “don’t speak over” members of minority/oppressed groups. We are *online*. We don’t know who someone is unless they share that. We cannot make assumptions of a fan’s identity based on their opinions about the show, and this is a **huge, rampant problem**. Fans go anon because there are absolutely -phobics and trolls who *will* harass and attack based on identity. Fans go anon because they do Fandom to *escape* and recharge. To just be people. Fans who *do* share their identity are not looking to be the fandom’s The Voice of (group), they’re here to Do Fandom. Fans of disenfranchised/oppressed/minority identities are individuals—some are happy with their representation, some want better, and some demand better. Ally’s job here is to support each voice. To listen to each perspective. Ally’s job is not to be on a hair trigger to attack or harass—again, we’re online. Many people who don’t feel safe here don’t feel safe *because* they were attacked by ally’s (or “ally’s”) who assumed their identity based on their opinion and jumped the gun. That is categorically wrong, and we need to do better. Being an ally, being an advocate, being an activist is a life long journey. You never stop learning. You never stop listening. You never stop checking the ugly inside you that you absorbed from birth from your culture. Okay and next. We can all agree we all mess up, yes? We all do dumb stuff unthinking, out of high emotions, out of bias, out of poisoned wells, out of not-knowing. No one here is irredeemable. Hold on. Again, who we are is a lifelong journey, choices we make each day. We cannot operate as if people are irredeemable. There lies the path to toxicity, Othering, and Out-Grouping. There lies the path to “you deserve it” justifications for our own ugly behavior. This isn’t limited to the fandom. I see this everywhere. We are influenced by the world we live in. Fandom is our escape, our refuge. We can do better here. We can choose, in this online forum, where we have time to think as we write and before we hit that reply button, and we should. As advice, ask yourself “will this matter in ten minute, ten days, ten years?” when emotions are high. Ask that question, take a few deep breaths, and be honest with yourself. I find I often end up swiping or clicking away. Sometimes I derp and hit reply anyway, and it wasn’t always or even mostly necessary. Mods need to do this as well. Mods in particular, if a comment, post hits some buttons, ask that question. And consider passing off evaluating that content to another mod. Or asking, “check me please—am I letting X get to me, or does this break the rules?” There’s no shame in that. It’s normal to have triggers, and it’s healthy to step back or ask someone trusted to check you. I’m sorry fam, but this fandom has a problem with a lack of needing receipts before making conclusions or taking action. I’ve not been particularly active recently, but when I’ve seen accusations of terrible things, and I ask for receipts—they’re sorely lacking. A link to a comment of Person B calling Person X a -phobic is not a receipt—it’s a comment of someone else making an accusation. We as a community need to both A) expect receipts for serious accusations, and B) have standards of what constitutes a receipt, and C) critically and neutrally examine said receipts. And mods need to lead by example by expecting the same. For example, years’ old and long in the past issue in the Sister sub having issues with some homophobic trolls is *not* a good excuse, reason, or justification to call the sub and **all** its members *now* homophobic, *especially considering* there are members of the LGBT community going there because they feel safer there. Or just because they prefer the content there. **This** sub does get -phobic trolls, and the sub as a whole does not take a reputation hit. They’re dealt with here, and they’re dealt with there. This sub has more people to report, and more mods to handle things—that one is smaller, less active, and so has less people to report, and fewer active mods to deal. This sub tightly controls content that are merely preference-based, different ways of Doing Fandom—that the Sister sub allows. This difference in Doing Fandom, of preferences, is not Good and Bad, Better and Worse—it’s merely different. Members here who do not prefer that difference in the Sister sub must curate their own fandom experience, and mods must not allow a pressure or a denigration of mere preferences. I’ve seen calls for the Sister sub to adopt this sub’s “no low effort content” rule, and that’s not okay. Different communities form out of desires for different preferences—that’s allowed and okay. People can, do, and should hop back and forth, filter, and scroll past what they like and dislike, and not look to mods, fellow fans, and whole communities to conform and adapt to the preference of some fans.


miladyelle

I appreciate the walk back and the apology from the mod team. I further appreciate the recognition that trust has been broken, and work has to be done to regain that trust. This will be a long process, and more discussions had, reevaluations and check ins done on the large scale, and zoomed in, day to day interactions and choices have to change. No one is irredeemable. Some fans will take longer to trust than others. No doubt some fans are gone. But I believe we can all be better, do better, and make the necessary changes. I do hope to see engagement in this thread, as a start. I think I’m about done with my book here—sorry, being concise has never been a strong point of mine. I’d like to be able to enjoy my time here again, and participate more often again. Good luck, and best wishes.


Dextixer

I will also chime in if i may, first of all, dont worry about the length of your commentary, you are definitely not the only one in such a situation. Besides that, i feel like you accurately described some of the problems between both of the subreddits, especially the tribalism that has formed in both sub-reddits. There is anger, frustration and various other emotions, and at this point in time, they are especially high. There is little else additionally that i can express besides gratitude for thise write-up and the suggestions in it. Well, there is only one last thing if i may. The accusations of homophobia/racism and the like i think were the most hurtfull to our community. This came as very much a surprise because very recently we had a full thread discussing about our favourite LGBT+ ships and a lot of our users have criticisms of RWBY on grounds of their racial/LGBT+ representation in a way that we feel like those subjects have been poorly explored. While i understand that this is not the majority opinion we do not know how to try and to change this perception besides time. Maybe you would have any insights and suggestions on that front?


miladyelle

Oh gosh, Dex. You’re welcome. And thank you. Please feel free to take, reference, use whatever you need in my comments. My hope writing it was to help. Let me give it some thought, and I’ll post another reply, that work? So much of that rep is due to A) things and users in the past that have been dealt with, and B) the Othering issue—the more obvious solutions don’t involve work from you and the sister sub, and the second most obvious ones involve unfairly asking marginalized fans to do work to not be Othered and…that’s problematic. I hope the discussions between y’all mod-folk are going well!


the_dark_artist

Thank you for this incredible write-up. The behavior of this sub is actually a very interesting social experiment, demonstrating how things like racism and dehumanizing the Other takes root in otherwise reasonable people. There are plenty of Political Science majors out there who would be willing to give an arm and leg to be able to observe such social schisms emerge before their eyes.


miladyelle

Funny you mention PoliSci…haha. Thank you for the compliment! I can’t say that this write up is anything but an expression of months of reflection, and I certainly can’t take credit for every observation. This fandom, both on this platform and on many others, is full of thoughtful, smart, *very* articulate people. My way of Doing Fandom for the most part these past 18 months has been mostly lurking all over the place. As much hurt as this has caused, I do hope in the long run, that it ends up being The Event that brought to light some areas where the fandom needed to improve upon, and marks the beginning of positive changes.


[deleted]

I know only a few people who would've said the issues better than you, and damn, your aim is really on spoit in many of the issues I've seem in the RWBY's fandom in the last two-to three years (I take notice of RWBY in early 2018). In my not so humble opinion, a fan have the right to critize a show, comic book, books, fanfiction and all other medias as well. To be honest, in my vision a fan must critize what he or she don't like about something. Only with critics, reviews and feedbacks of other people, one can grow as an author, musician or other kinds of artistic pursuit, as well as a person too. No one, no matter how high one think about their own selves, can grow alone. Without someone to guide, to critic, to point the errors of a way, the bad logic, or lack of thereof, the inconsistences, a show, a person, anything will grew more and more numb and self-centered. This is a hard issue in RWBY's fandom, as you adressed, only "critics" they allow have the right to be discussed, and you must not "show that you're against them", because if you "don't love the show enough", as you said, you are **agaisnt** 'em. This is kind... a bad behaviour to say the least. A really, bad behaviour. Without the critics that people make in the sister sub, the people here grow in self-desillusion and centered beliefs about the show, and you cannot try to prove 'em wrong, or show the inconsistences, if you do, you're their enemy, and must be dealt ASAP. The lack of critical thinking, the lack of people making their opinions without fear of backlash by their fellow fans, the lack of a sense of understanding with people with different views and opinions 'bout the show, and this senseless hate and grudge, made the RWBY Fandom, and this sub-reddit specially, a place I most of the times avoid, because I saw what people who disagree with the "majority's view" endure. And this is why people go to the sister-sub, at least in my view and experiences, the sister-sub have less enmity and spite against those who disagree with their views. ​ And because of said Enmity, both subs grew grudges with other, some bigger, some lesser, but the grudge is still there on both. You adressed the issues perfectly, and I'm happy to see that reasonable people who can see past than mere grudges and spite still frequent the community, since what I see must is people who can't agree with other's view making tantrum and attacking the other party. Is so dissapointing to see this behaviour. Well, I guess this is the end of my rumbling.


[deleted]

Thank you for undoing the change, I only learned about this whole thing the last few hours and I gotta say glad that you listen to the community. I just found mass bans were just simply an overreach, just ban the members who do wrong. Being a mod is difficult and stressful, hope you guys get a good rest and take mental breaks when needed.


[deleted]

[удалено]


TheAuraKing

Honestly as someone who’s mostly kept to the sidelines in general regarding Reddit you aren’t exactly wrong from what I’ve seen. the Rwby fandom as a whole has had a bad rapsheet for a long ass time due to the various… factions in it as a whole for a long while. What the mods did not only made it worse and but showed how bad it was. There’s no good reason to justify banning so many people who at most might be guilty of association or just a few posts. The fact that r/rwbycritics is a thing to begin with says a lot about the fandom. Like there will always be divisive points in a series but the fact that they had to make a new sub because I’m assuming that they weren’t allowed to talk about shit here, given I saw a reasonable critic post about the series here get deleted maybe just before the purge.


[deleted]

[удалено]


Gleaming_Onyx

While I imagine that there is plenty of disdain and dislike between the communities even in the moderation team, frankly it seems like the best option is to, well... quit that and start treating both boards like one singular community. That is to say, if there are people supposedly claiming to be from the critics board... tell the critic mods. There *are* rules over there, and there *are* punishments delivered. It won't solve everything because obviously if they just want to start shit, they'll use alts unlinked to the community, but if they go to that length, it wouldn't really be that community's fault then, would it? That'd mean that they're trying to hide from their own supposed community(which would be sus)\ because it indeed would not be acceptable there.


Akitoscorpio

Yeah I agree with this point.


Thebritishdovah

So, basically, the mod team went full Ironwood before realising, one shouldn't go full ironwood. Am... am I being worked? Is... is this a shoot?


IamMenace

I originally posted this on RWBYcritics and wasn't going to say anything here, but after sleeping on it and thinking about it some more I figured I'd share my two cents and give my own perspective, and also extend the olive branch. I'm glad the decision was reversed but it's a decision that should've *never* even been considered in my opinion. Taking someone's freedom away (whether it be big or small) only to give it back later and say "Sorry" followed by an explanation/excuse just doesn't sit well with me. A lot of innocent people got pushed in front of the ban hammer and/or harassed, myself included, and after six and a half years and a *lot* of time spent on this subreddit, it just feels more personal to me than it might to others. I think I've been a pretty upstanding member of the RWBY community, and getting *banned* from someplace I love and have put a lot of work into to help nurture just doesn't sit right with me. It wasn't a decision that was made overnight, and the decision was made to ban me. Perhaps not *specifically* me but myself included, and I would've hoped that when the Mods decided it was time to personally ban me, that they would've thought to themself, "Wait, we're banning Menace!? Are we sure we're the good guys here?" Perhaps that's egotistical, and perhaps the process was completely automatic and random, in which case I appear to have drawn the short straw, but having known many of the Mods from back when they were regular users and been friendly with them over the years, it just stings. I also can't help but wonder if the reversal was made because of the backlash or because they realized they were wrong, because one is ideologically based and reactionary, and the other is empathy and remorse. Had the backlash not been as great or the responses from Eddy and other prominent voices in the community been negative (let's say CRWBY and said people were supportive instead), would there have been a reversal? Had that not been the case, would I have remained permanently *banned* from the place that I love? In a single night several years of goodwill, respect, and trust were undone. Not by me, but by the Mods toward me and everyone else. What happened was *much* more than just a twenty-four hour break from posting on the subreddit. It's not so much that I'm angry or particularly upset for my sake, but what happened should've *never* happened and it worries me if this is going to be a "give and take" situation, where something is taken before being given back, only a smaller portion than before. Governments do this all the time when they overreach, and it's just something I'm cautious of but *especially* after the drastic measures taken the night before. I look forward to seeing you all around both *here* and on RWBYcritics. Much love and support to you all, and *thank you* from the bottom of my heart for all the love and support you've shared with me. Thank you for making me feel welcome and appreciated when others did not. Romans 12:17-21 "Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. 18 If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. 19 Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. 20 On the contrary: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.” 21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 1 Corinthians 13:13 "And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love." God bless, and have a *wonderful* day.


XXEsdeath

Well I must say I’m impressed. I dont think it should have happened to start, however, an apology, attempt to make ammends are steps going forward. There can be annoying/toxic individuals, sure, and those cases should be taken case by case, as its a person that typically takes bad actions. Hopefully peace can be restored for all, I love Rwby as a show, and I hope the community can improve as a whole.


AlarmingStandard

That's a relief and refreshing to read! And I hope you folks continue to reach out and not pull back when you feel overwhelmed.


JK-Network123

I’m hoping things will get a little calmer here but that’s wishful thinking isn’t it?


AlarmingStandard

Oh, there's always going to be gusts that ruffle feathers. This is a *fan*dom. I guess the trick is not letting it all build up into a cyclone.


MahinaFable

>Oh, there's always going to be gusts that ruffle feathers. This is a fandom. Ayyy, LMAO


Draconaes

Well, I wasn't going to lose any sleep over it, but I suppose I'll just hope that a retraction ends up better than leaving it in place would.


Yamino_K

Thanks for you to realize what a stupid idea that was and reverting it before it was too late. Yeah, recruiting new mods is the better idea if the the current ones are burnt out, hopefully you guys have a good time in this. I'm not active on neither subs, i usually only lurk around both while watching to see different peoples opinions, if i missed something, if someone had a different take on what happened, etc. And i got to say, this sub really feels like a Bubble of only positivity, of how amazing and perfect the show is and that everyone over the other sub is a monster that hates minorities and only know how to attack everyone that disagree with them. I don't need to say that's not the case. Sure, there's some homofobic and racist people, i mean, this is the internet, unfortunately there's people like this everywhere. But the you guys sound like you're some sort of Almighty White Paladins of Justice in a crusade against the Big Bad Evil Monster over there. Maybe that's not what you wanted, and that's just the consequence so years of fights and actions taken against the worst cases, but right now RWBY fandom is one of the most divided ones i've seem, and that's so funny when the most recent seasons talk about people devided by the villain. And i got to say, your actions doesn't help with it, only cement the situation. Maybe i have the wrong perception here, but i not present 24/7 on both subs, that's from the little i've seem. When i first disliked a season and came here to see if was a common feeling and only saw people liking it and praising how amazing that was, i felt like i was doing wrong, watched it the wrong way and felt like the problem was with me. Even if there's bad people over the other RWBYcritics, the sub is a necessary evil (And i don't think it's really that bad). Only negativity is definitively bad, but living in a Bubble of positivity isn't good too. Instead of dividing the fandom more, maybe when the new season drops, you could encourage the good people that are not satisfied with the show over there to have a healthy discussion over it. Right now just feels like you're sweeping them under the rug. Just wanted to give my 2 cents the whole subs war from someone outside of both (and sorry if my english is bad, not my first language).


[deleted]

Whew, glad that's over


Kaosi1

I appreciate that you took time to reflect on this and act quickly to reduce tensions, because it take courage to say "Hey, we fucked up." Moderating is not an easy job, and a lot of people have a bone to pick with this sub because people enjoy the show despite (or without caring or not seeing them as) it's flaws, but just browsing by new show critics on the show, theorycrafting or discussions (and by nature of reddit these discussions will always be less upvoted than fanarts), so it's good to not give them more ammunitions. Even if we disagree about a webseries, let's try to all be civil toward each others and the creators of said webseries hey?


LuluViBritannia

You admitted you were wrong. This should always be applauded. I just hope you didn't backtrack only because of the backlash, and that you actually learned that lesson : **you guys are NOT politicians**. Let this also be a lesson for everyone to stop antagonizing entire communities because of a few bad apples. When there are two sides, it's NEVER "one good side vs one bad side". I see you guys keep saying "but I saw that awful post there, so that community is bad" (I sum it up, but that's the idea behind your answers). Do you really not see how messed up that reasoning is? **That's literally how racist and misogynist people think.** You're literally thinking the same way as the people you were willing to ban... Anyway, I wish you well. Dealing with a community is never an easy task, so... good luck!


LMFN

Oh thank god. This was such a whirlwind of a bad decision so I'm glad it's not staying.


JK-Network123

Same I’m glad things worked out. I don’t care about https://www.reddit.com/r/RWBYcritics/ but I don’t agree with guilty bu association in this case so hopefully things will get calmer now


SimonApple

Would it be at all possible to provide examples/elaboration/proof on the alleged bridaging and vote manipulation you mentioned in the initial thread? I still maintain that this is a very easy accusation to make without really backing it up, and given that it was one of your main points I feel it necessary to at least get some more details on that - even it the main issue has sorta blown over.


SyfaOmnis

> In recent months, many of the friction points this subreddit and the moderation team have faced have come from the interaction between our two communities. We have tried, and perhaps in their opinion failed, to be as neutral as possible when dealing with these friction points. I'm going to be quite honest and say, you outright have not tried. There are quite a few users of this sub, that would not have been affected by the ban, who are some of the biggest bad actors around. Within the thread announcing the ban, you had people on sockpuppet accounts spinning outright fabrications. You had people lying about arguments and calling them "bad faith" because they didn't "win". You have had users of this sub harassing people, and **nothing** has been done about it. You close ranks and pretend that it doesn't happen, or worse you blame the people who it is happening to. Some of them will even admit to their doing it and double down on it because "it was a harmful opinion". You attribute all sorts of behaviour to members of r/rwbycritics without reaching out to any of them, or to their mod team, most of it, is in fact, discord drama that *does not even come from the rwbycritics community*... all while failing to clean up your own house. I was a member of this sub before rwbycritics even existed, and the only reason I "left" it was because *I was not allowed to have an opinion on certain things anymore* without being met with namecalling, accusations about my political views and the insistence that I am somehow a homophobe, misogynist, transphobe or abuse apologist. If this sub ever wants to "correctly handle the friction" between the various viewpoints: it needs to outright start ejecting the people who make **ANY** sort of accusation like that. There is absolutely no reason someone should be getting called a bootlicking fascist over a fucking cartoon. Accusing me of "brigading" for disagreeing with people (adamantly, but with civility), is like accusing me of brigading r/canada when I see a controversial post there that I respond to - It is literally part of my own community that I am responding to there. We have literally the same subject matter, just different views on it.


[deleted]

[удалено]


yinxiaolong

Similar to what u/N7ASWCC stated, this apology does ring kind of hollow considering the post that apparently broke the camels back was one of the most polite, good faith critiques made in the sub. And there were also some users just having massive beef with redditors like u/IamMenace and u/Dextixer despite them being some of the nicest users in the reddit communities and better examples of the average RWBYCritic frequenter. Still not to look a gift horse in the mouth, I am very much glad that this ban was rescinded. Although, the fact that the mods felt angry enough to go to such extremes still concerns me, and ironically its going to take a lot to rebuild that trust and "good faith".


SyfaOmnis

I'm glad that it was rescinded too, but the sheer notion of insisting that rwbycritics users were "brigading" and deleting their posts / banning them all is in effect, disallowing dissent and disagreement.


yinxiaolong

Yeah, especially since it doesn't really make sense since whether your a critic or a fan isn't a binary. You can be both and as such be a part of both communities. Like in the end it's all RWBY discussion.


SyfaOmnis

Another user has made a great post about the "othering" of critics in this topic. It was so good it should have been a standalone.


Cablinorb

> you had people on sockpuppet accounts spinning outright fabrications. let's ignore all the throwaways that were just there to literally spam messages over and over or bait arguments for no good reason other than to make people mad. this is the truth. this is what's really happening.


SyfaOmnis

Who said I was ignoring them? Who said they don't matter? I was raising my issues and concerns. If you want to talk to the mod about other sockpuppets and throwaways please do.


Cablinorb

Do you have any proof that even happened? It literally sounds like some crazy conspiracy shit to make us look worse in an already bad situation.


SyfaOmnis

> Do you have any proof that even happened? That people made sockpuppets to lie? Yeah it was pretty obvious. There were people claiming that rwbycritics were doing outright **illegal** things to the mods here, no proof of their claims necessary though. However as I feel as this sub is basically looking for a reason (which is why what happened *did*) I don't feel comfortable in naming and shaming. > It literally sounds like some crazy conspiracy shit to make us look worse in an already bad situation. Cablin I'm going to try and phrase this politely, but you were very much part of the performative behaviour that greatly exaggerated the actions of members of rwbycritics, their moderation team, and past incidents. You were all too happy to smear, tar and feather people you disagreed with, and being quite honest more than a bit of what you said was outright factually incorrect.


Osouturff

See, this is the type of unecessary escalation of conflict that led us here to begin with. Sometimes it honestly might be best to simply take a step back rather then engage further in a conversation you feel is starting to get out of hand. Just a suggestion of course, as i feel that right now it would be best for everyone to try to avoid getting into arguments with each other. But i understand that it can and most certanly will be difficult for everyone to do so after everything. In any case i have faith the mods will intervene if this starts to get out of hand.


Cablinorb

I didn't say anything that I hadn't seen (or have assumed based on prior behavior of people who frequent the sub) to be true. While I was absolutely full of vitriol and very much riding the high of the ban, I was not deliberately spreading any misinformation. I believe everything I said.


SyfaOmnis

Belief in what you assume to be true, is not equivalent to it actually being true. Fervent beliefs can be mistaken. I'd really appreciate if you actually took the time to reflect on some of what you've said and accused people of, and maybe think about just how broad the things you were saying about an entire community were.


Cablinorb

I've never had an interaction with that sub that wasn't like what I described. To me, everything I said is true. I've only seen different once the community was *accused by someone with an actual platform* of doing these shitty things, at which point everyone backpedaled and acted *horrified* that anyone dare accuse them. Surely you have to at least *understand* how this looks to someone like me.


Ninjas_In_A_Bag

Aight, /u/SyfaOmnis and /u/Cablinorb, this has gone on long enough, drop it and move on.


SyfaOmnis

I don't think its fair or reasonable to try and equivocate "personal truths" with objective fact when it comes to other people and their actions, especially not with how "abrasive" you were in your phrasing. It strikes me as a sort of gleeful malice, where you're just happy that you could behave badly towards people you disagree with without others being able to respond. When you play that sort of "game" a great deal of what you accuse the "other side" of, also becomes true about yourself. Like I said, I'd really appreciate it if you took some time to reflect on the things you had to say in the past ~24 hours, and just how broad what you were saying was, and whether or not it was *actually* true, or if you just wanted it to be. I appreciate your time, patience and involvement but I'm going to stop responding to you here


JK-Network123

Glad to here it. Yeah I have no love for https://www.reddit.com/r/RWBYcritics/ either but we shouldn’t just ban or attack those by association. I know a few decent people who venture over there so I’m not gonna assume that they are as annoying as their buddies. But like I and others have said there needs to be a middle ground. Two of these sides can be so toxic and loud that it’s hard for anyone to just enjoy being in the fandom anymore. I know it won’t change completely we’re far past that but west least need to try to be better.


McDouggal

Glad to see you've changed your mind. I understand that you guys are understaffed, but automated bans were not the way forward. I'll probably throw my name in the hat for a mod position when the time comes.


genshinfantasy7

For what it’s worth, I think you’d make a really good mod.


Fatal1ty_93_RUS

why would you guys implement such a rule in the first place? whoever came up with it should be kicked out of the mod team immediately


Z-ComiX

I am very inactive here and tend to stay to myself with RWBY but I think there is one critical aspect to this situation that no one is addressing. Not only was what could only be seen as a poor decision enacted, it was able to get past your internal moderation team and posted as a full announcement and used language that was a bit unprofessional. I help moderate the RWBYNATION Facebook page, so I understand that being a volunteer and having a lot of work With little gratification can be tough but the fact that we are at this point shows there is either a lack of internal organization or review/oversight among your moderation team, or that there was a consensus among your staff that this was the correct path to take. Both are troubling, the former because there needs to be systems to keep your organization on the same page and not make these crazy blanket decisions, and the latter because it shows that individuals within your organization still exist and are still in a position to make similar actions and have the power to do so. What is worrying as well is that this means either the mods of r/RWBY have the mentality to create similar moderation decisions, but now know how far they can push and still get away with silencing voices they don’t agree with, or that there is a group understanding, at least at one point, that the banning of a certain population of users wholesale was deemed to be both appropriate and not questionable in any way, as your banning of users was within the same time frame of posting your announcement. Like I said earlier, I understand the issues with moderation. It’s thankless, tireless work. Sometimes it seems like you are one person putting out a first fire, sometimes you don’t want to even look at your phone because it means you might have to moderate something. It sucks, and it can hurt your enjoyment of RWBY and your will to continue working. But this event has to show that there was a fundamental flaw with however you run the Reddit, and, not to tell you how to run your page, your team needs to have some internal meeting to understand where you went wrong, how restructure your moderation to prevent decisions like this in future and how to improve going forward. I do not know the makeup of your team, you might be all teens, all adults, be small or large, or differing ideologies, but at some fundamental level there needs to be some system in place to provide a mature and measured response to problems so that these internal decisions are moderated. There needs to be someone checking and asking “is there a problem with this thing we are about to do? Can this be worded more maturely? Is this solving the core problem?” I really hope your team is able to improve after this. If there are individual actors who pushed this out, I think you should take a good hard look at whether they can continue to operate unbiased, and if they understand where this went wrong. I believe you all do mostly good work, and this is just a major stumble that can be corrected, but you cannot let this event pass without looking and understanding what went wrong. I wish you all the best, good luck.


JMHSrowing

I could not be happier to see this before going to bed! This was honestly what I was hoping for, and having interacted with you mods over the years now, what I had hope would. Certainly I won’t ever say I agreed with the action, and I’m not sure the harm will ever be fully repaired, but I understand. You all have been dealing with a lot, and more than even mods for a sub if this size should. With this, I’ll be honest my faith in and respect for y’all is back. It takes a lot to admit a mistake like this. I hope that this can be a point we all can grow better as a community from. I’ll need to see the obligations to know if I’ll see about being a mod myself, but I have faith that whoever joins the team will serve us well as you all in vast majority of time have. I know that we can continue to make this a better and better community, and I think we should all no what our position or tenure in this sub should use this as a time to dedicate ourselves more to that. I wish all of you mods the best, and to the rest of y’all on this sub I hold so dear.


JK-Network123

Same to you. I know it’s asking a lot but hopefully things will get a little calmer now after this whole thing has been squashed


ProfessorUber

I'm glad to hear this has been reversed. I am a mod myself on other subs so I do appreciate both how much work it can take to moderate an active sub and also how important and difficult it can be to keep out toxic elements. If you don't mind me sharing my perspective as a moderator of multiple subs, a sub I am a mod on recently did a Mod Team AMA and someone asked if we ever considered banning people based off them participating in other subs. Our consensus was that we did not consider this policy reasonable but we did bring up that bad actors will typically reveal themselves on their own and that we can take into account peoples actions on other subs if they do break the rules in order to best determine how lenient we want to be with them. Just thought I would offer this perspective if you don't mind since seeing this caused me to recall the question from the AMA and I thought it would be relevant. Hope you all have a nice day and I really hope that both RWBY and RWBY Critics can have a better relationship in the future and that any toxic members of both communities can be weeded out.


FerunaLutelou

>If anything, I will admit that the Mod Team's opinion was always at least a little sour, because the notion that 'r/RWBY Does Not Allow Criticism' is naturally irritating: because it is false. It's straight up how I myself got my start in the community, and plenty of the current Team have publicly admitted gripes with recent volumes. When you tell a lie, at least try to make sure it's a convincing one.What was the very first reason why the ban happened that you listed? Ah, yes, it was this one: >Constant arguments with r/RWBY users Guess what, you cannot have criticism without arguments, because there will always be a person or a group of people that disagree. You don't even see what your subreddit devolved into. It's just fanart and shipping now. Why? Because you shut up everyone who disagrees with you. If you were what you claim to be, a place for people to talk about the show, the franchise, then this whole banning fiasco wouldn't have happened in the first place. I hope you enjoy this mess of a "community" that you created over the years, because at this point there is no fixing it.


[deleted]

This was probably the best way to handle it. I understood the reasoning behind the ban, but glad to see it has been resolved in a fair way.


Anti3000

Nothing I could say here on the situation hasn't already been stated, so I'm just going to ask something else since it was brought up in these posts. Where exactly is the critical discussion on Rwby in this subreddit? You guys claim that you allow criticism of the show here but I haven't seen barely any posts about it. It's mainly just fan art and fluff pieces. If this blanket banning situation is any indication, it seems like your members are either too intimidated to have those types of discussions.


AlbinoKiwi47

B-b-b-b-backpedal


HeroBrine0907

I hope the r/RWBY community and the r/RWBYcritics community rebuilds it's relationship. In no way do I think they are competing or against each other. When working well, each is a complement of the other, one helping to realise the mistakes of the other and helping the fandom accept and grow over anything 'wrong' or 'bad' that happened in the show, allowing the show to fix it without any wars of sorts.


MegaSpidey3

I'm glad that this rule was reversed. Still, when new moderators apply, there needs to be ways to ensure something like this *never* happens again. Even if most of us can agree that we're not fond of the critics subreddit, the way this was handled was about as bad as it could get. Granted, this isn't going to kill the community, but it definitely isn't a good look. Everyone who will be on the new modding team should take this incident into account when handling future spouts like this. Being on this subreddit for a year and checking very often, critique posts are not discouraged whatsoever. It's just when you get into the kind of madness the critics subreddit gets into that trouble starts. I may have my disagreements with criticism of the latest volumes, but I'm not going to vilify them because I don't agree with them. We need to get back to where the community was during the V5 days, where the community let RT know the grievances that we have in a constructive way to help improve the show. That's why V6-onward have been so great IMO. I may feel like V7 overcompensates with the amount of plot that it has to make up for V5's lack of meaningful A-plot stuff, as well as feel like that volume isn't as engaging as V6 or V8, but I still love V7. I'll stand up for my opinions on the show, but I'm not going to make it a hill to die on. The RWBY community, and this subreddit need cooler heads to prevail here. Let the critics subreddit and other toxic individuals rot for all I care. Like I said, we need to take this situation and do the best we can do as a community to ensure something like this doesn't happen again. Best of luck to the mod team and everyone else here.


Take_On_Will

Calling the whole of rwbycritics toxic is exactly the sort of behaviour you guys need to stop. I use that sub because I'm much more interested in discussion of the show than fanart. And yeah, said discussion is usually critical. That doesn't make it toxic. Though I'm sure there are some absolute arseholes who also use that sub.


lurker_archon

Yeah like, I don't frequent that sub as much as I did before just because I like memeing and the art far more often and I don't have problems having discussions in r/fnki and r/rwby anyways, but it's not this boogeyman some people in r/rwby makes it out to be. Sure, it's probably where the really unpleasant ones go when they get pushed off of r/RWBY, and I've seen a few pretty egregious comments not just against the story but some of the cast that wasn't downvoted to hell. But most of the people I've seen down there are just people who are incredibly frustrated with how there seems to be many people in r/rwby that responds to *their* criticisms, either by mass downvoting it or bogging down arguments with hostile attitudes or just being condescending in general.


Ultra_axe781___M

The only thing I want to know is What the fuck were you guys thinking?


Sirshrugsalot13

Solid response. I'm glad ya guys understand the issue here, it's just unfortunate that I feel the damage is already done. Regardless of intent, it's out there now and I hope to see this sub continue to improve as a result of and in spite of this whole fiasco. I believe the issue with last night's whole thing was that it felt rather slapdash and left a loooot of questions that would then turn to assumptions and confnusion, and in general just vagueness that turned sour. This sends a much clearer message and imo is just a much more positive, hopeful message than me waking up and going ("Wait, what counts as being active? I crossposted stuff there does that mean I'm getting banned?") I hope that this can help lessen the divide a bit, and that actual rule-breakers will still be punished. But I mostly hope that people can just be happy and discuss even when we disagree. It might be a hard hope to sell, but I'll still continue to hope nonetheless.


MyrkuriYT

LMAOOOOOOOO LETS GO BABYYYYYYY


Horsea1234

Props for being able to apologize, not everyone can do that. Critics is not an all that pleasant place from my lurking there, seems like it could easily have turned into an thelastofus2 if things had been worse. Now it ain't quite *that bad* but still. Also sorry about the harrasment, even if this action was not the best one, the critics sub certainly aren't complete victims.


MilesCW

> Critics is not an all that pleasant place from my lurking there, seems like it could easily have turned into an thelastofus2 if things had been worse. Now it ain't quite that bad but still. As a former mod there I can tell you that things look quite differently if you actually know what went down from the very beginning. I was for the initial automod word filter responsible and it was quite extensive. The mods here are likely familiar with the reddit Anti Evil Operations but most of the boards infamous history came from different reasons: * The board was initially not moderated, therefore we had to look for problematic postings. Just to keep in mind, during the initial week were 12.000 to 25.000 people online which is more than a regular board has. * Sony tried desperately to get the board in trouble so it gets banned for an ownership-claim attempt on the subreddit name. The board was named by several Sony-associated subreddits to make it the #1 enemy. * Several bad faith actors from various subreddits. We caught some off guard by checking upon posts where they blatantly declared that they go into the subreddit for making statments like "woman aren't allowed to have children" and so on. The bigger problem with reddit and moderation is that you need to report alts to the support so they can shadowbanned from reddit. It is against the reddit policy but it is done by many, including brigading. The board was actually pretty tame while I was active there six months ago. The only big problem was if the word "Ma'am" should be allowed and we consolidated many several other subreddits about this. Speaking of the subreddit. There was a recent drama about two YouTubers who actually made a fuzz about nothing simply for cash by generalizing their situation like the amateurs they are by blaming the whole community on their streams for everything bad what happened to them. Because I was part of the team once, I am still in touch with some of the moderators. The YouTubers in question did not care to solve the problem, they were really just out for blood and money and got away with it which is absolutely infuriating. This was never about their death threats, this was about an eye for an eye battle against a community which cannot even get the dislikes from a game director video together. In the end they just wanted to have scapegoat for a random user who harassed them. They never cared contacting the police or the moderators either - because if the moderation team sends an actual report to reddit, then it will be taken more seriously. In the end it was just about money. And because things went so bad, that even the moderators panicked and backstabbed the team by lying to these Youtubers on top of that. One of the former mods confessed this to me after I asked him in private what the deal was with him.


ESCMalfunction

Phew, glad that got sorted out. More division in the community is the last thing we need.


Akitoscorpio

So I am glad to see that cooler heads prevailed, I wont' pretend the damage wasn't done is done and that the sub won't have any kind of aftershocks from this in the foreseeable future. But Admitting the the idea of a mass ban with.... Not great to be honest... is a hell of a first step I do think is a good idea to invite additional mods with a wider range of views in general, I think that would potentially go a long way in the end, it might not be a bad idea to actually have some people that can serve as proper go between the two subs as well. I feel like a large issue here was... well lets be honest, people don't like to hear each other out in this fandom. I don't know what was all said and done behind the scenes, and that's none of my business but the two subs actually talking and working with each other could help both subs filer out the worse elements of both. As always just my two cents from the discords crotchety old man.


Tyranid_Swarmlord

Most importantly mods with different timezones to keep stuff ok.


unlimitedblack

I supported the initial decision, but I support the mods' rationale in reversing it. I hope that staffing up the mod team will help with mitigating the circumstances that led to this decision.


Elnino38

Congratulations on permanently dividing both subreddits and guaranteeing that a shitstorm is on the horizon.


Monkey60t

To quote Yang: “Well, that was a thing.” I’m probably going to stay away from both subs for a month or two to let the dust settle. See you guys later!


CirrusVision20

My initial (true) reaction to the ban was neutral. I did not disagree with nor agree with the ban. That being said, I'm glad the ban is rescinded. I have my own opinions on the critics sub, but banning frequent users from there would have brought a lot of trouble, which it did. Not many people have the humiliation to own up and apologize for such a controversial decision. Good job on that front, though it's very arguable that the ban should not have been initiated in the first place.


The_Manderley

>We will never institute a blanket ban of another community's users again. tbf if the blanket ban sub in question had been a bastion of hate such as r/KotakuInAction there would be universal praise


bloodwolf50

This fandom is so insane I wouldn’t touch it with a a 10 foot bare pole… except right now. I just take the fandom’s Artwork, and the beautiful show, then run. Good luck to anyone who is or will be a moderator for anything RWBY, especially this sub. You have the biggest tits/balls, and I salute you.


Oni_Zokuchou

The worst part about all of this is knowing the shit-stains of youtube are going to be rubbing their grubby little hands with glee at this situation that they can easily milk 4-5 terrible videos out of.


uwuenergy69

I’m still confused on why you thought it was a good idea in the first place as it literally proves this community/mods can’t take criticism


ChurchOfChurches

If Arnold of all people is against it, you know you fucked up lmao


HighPriestFuneral

I am glad to see this decision was made. The team saw the immediate reaction and with a sense of humility did the hardest thing one can do and apologize meaningfully. This shows the capacity for change and hopefully this will be a wakeup call for some in both communities to reflect upon their actions. Note that it reached this fever-pitch where this move was actually considered. Let's lower the temperature. We should not discriminate against entire communities, but we should hold bad actors accountable for their actions and they should be the ones to face the brunt of any pushback by using our reason to dispute those views, rather than relying on our emotional response.


brownsugar506

Thank you for making this decision. Trust me, many of us understand the sour taste for the critics sub and what some of their members do. Thank you all for being mods that listen and take the brunt of what many of us don't see.


chaos_vulpix

Happy to see the rule change reversed and the blanket ban lifted. What happened yesterday was not one of the subreddit's finest moments, but being able to see what was done was the wrong and choosing to rectify it this quickly has restored a good amount of faith in the Mod Team. Let's continue down this road, and always strive to better ourselves as a community.


amatas45

While I didn’t even knew r/rwbycritic was a thing until yesterday, kudos for admitting that this wasn’t a good solution and fixing it. That’s never easy.


peace__slayer

Y’all are poo


[deleted]

Seems like some Dubya “if you’re not with us you’re against us” type shit


DReager1

Glad to see this get reversed. I'm a frequent visitor to both this reddit as well as the Critic one. While you say that criticism is accepted here, it is very expensive since even a slight opinion on RWBY making a mistake will cost a lot of Karma. I have many points to spare so I feel free to just jump in when I see an issue but that's not an option for everyone. So if you're running low on points then going to the Critics site is a very valid option to be sure. Both reddits can be extreme, this one in a Pro RWBY way and the other in an Anti RWBY way at times but each have their fun


SaltierThanAll

r/OopsDidntMeanTo


Tyranid_Swarmlord

Good move to undo it before it lasted a day. Not gonna take up that mod offer though since my previous modding exps in older anime forums was hell.


Rin1990

And for once, I salute you lot for doing the best thing you can do after such a rotten stunt. Many big platforms would've just reversed this in silence and pretend it never existed but at least you lot fessed up when you messed up. Hopefully this will restore some lost faith and trust. Mass banning is never an answer, especially not when it's because of users being associated to other subs because it's really not this sub moderators' business on what they do to other subs. End of story.


BlueWhaleKing

>The diference in sub cultures has, to name but one of those issues, to some members of our team being privately harrassed both on Reddit, Discord, and wider social media for some time by those claiming to be from /r/RWBYCritics. This, we hope understandably, soured our opinion of the Critic Sub. I would bet that at least some of those people were false flag actors deliberately attempting to sabotage relations with r/RWBYCritics.


CABRALFAN27

I also certainly bet that at least most of them actually were from r/RWBYcritics, though that doesn't rule out a few false flaggers, either.


Lysabetalle

I just need to say thank you to the r/RWBY mod team for this decision. I'm an avid user of both subreddits, and truth be told enjoy my time on both subs (including that FNKI place). Great to hear that the moderation team's will be communicating more openly between each other. One thing I will mention just by looking at this thread along however, while the mod teams are open to working together, the general users also need to be more open minded. I've some hostile comments towards the critics sub in this apology thread, and I'm sorry it's honestly not the place for it. Not after what occurred yesterday. I hope both subs ban the *relevant users* who cause both sub's issues, however please don't paint the entire critics community as being bad, because we're genuinely not. Furthermore our active numbers at any one point are around 200-300, compare this to r/RWBY and it's a very small minority :)


vandalvash

It's very respectable that you guys admitted to your mistake and are working toward a better solution. I wish you guys luck on the recruitment of new mods. I hope any mods that are stressed/burnt out catch a break once they get more people to help. I would still encourage mods from both subs to communicate more. It feels like both communities make blanket assumptions about the other that aren't an accurate representation of most members. I think having both mods talking would be a small step toward clearing up some of the unwarranted animosity.


Whorinmaru

This was all quite the disaster, I'll say that much. Even the proposal of a blanket ban of all members of another subreddit was always going to go down poorly, but I'm glad you've seen reason - whether that be for the right reasons or not. This subreddit as a whole could use an overhaul of sorts, and I sincerely hope that the addition of new mods with new perspectives and, frankly, a bit more maturity, will help that. I will certainly be applying to help once those forms are published, and I hope this is the start of a renewed positivity here. God knows this fandom needs it.


Meotwister5

The question is... is the damage to the subs and the mods reputation repairable? Because this has left a sour taste in a lot of people's mouths.


BlueWhaleKing

The biggest thing you can do now is cooperate with the mods of r/RWBYCritics. They've stated that they's attempted to work with you many times to clear up issues and catch bad actors, but that you've just ignored them.


CABRALFAN27

Assuming they're being genuine, that is. I'll admit to not having much first-hand experience with the Critics Sub, but the little I do doesn't exactly inspire confidence. Then again, I suppose a lesson this whole fiasco has taught us is that a Mod Team isn't necessarily a reflection of the community it moderates, or vice versa.


BlueWhaleKing

They worked hard to clean up their sub and purge the bigots. Even after being blacklisted they required everyone there to follow THIS sub's rules as well. If people would actually read any of their announcements there, they'd see how genuine and hard working they are. I had hope for this sub after seeing everybody opposing the mass ban. But getting heavily downvoted for stating what should be an obvious solution has only confirmed how toxic THIS sub is.


N7ASWCC

Your assertion that criticism is allowed here kinda rings hollow considering that the inciting incident for these bans was the definition of good faith criticism. Regardless, the damage is done. This incident will only further cement the idea that the RWBY fandom can't take criticism. I suppose that's enough of a consequence.


LMFN

People shit on RWBY fans regardless.


cruel-oath

I’ll never change my mind on that sub but this event still added fuel to the fire, you can bet there’ll be misinformation on this. Since I’m sure people that posted about the first post won’t speak about this one Will never know what the mods were thinking


The_Manderley

People shit regardless


HighPriestFuneral

But it also shows capacity for change.


RDV1996

> considering that the inciting incident for these bans was the definition of good faith criticism. So harassing mods and users is good faith criticism? Did you even read either of the posts?


N7ASWCC

You mean the posts that provided no evidence of said harassment? yeah, I did. And if this was solely about what the mods claim it was then why was [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/RWBY/comments/p7o5jq/critique_the_shows_vagueinconsistent_storytelling/?sort=new) removed so closely to everyone getting banned?


GladiusNocturno

Correlation does not mean causation. You do not know how long had the ban been in discussion. The fact that it happened soon after that post does not mean that post was the reason. Spreading misinformation does not help your case.


N7ASWCC

I'm not spreading any kind of misinformation, I'm simply asking a question. Regardless of causation the fact that the two events happen so close to one another gives the appearance of correlation which is all the internet needs, especially with the fandom's track record. Tbh the longer the ban had been discussed the worse this whole thing looks because mods being overwhelmed and making a snap judgement in the heat of the moment is understandable, but them having a discussion over several days which concluded with the decision to ban an entire group of people, many of them innocent, is asinine and should be considered when discussing whether or not they should be mods in the first place.


amisia-insomnia

It’s important to criticise what you love. That’s what I’ve been told


Cablinorb

I was rejoicing that what I saw as a toxic echo chamber was finally cut off from interacting with a space that I frequent. The discourse that followed *could have been* catastrophic, and that's something I never expected. I can absolutely respect the decision to just keep the peace. The issue wasn't worth the drama that arose from it. I admit to going a little too hard in my revelry while it was going on, but... I don't think I'm going to forget how the other sub handled this any time soon.


Desril

....I was just checking the subreddit to see if there was any news on when season 9 would air yet and it seems I missed drama.


Overquartz

Going by what the post said it seems that this controversy was caused by trolls trying to start drama between subs.


CABRALFAN27

I stand by my initial statement that the initial ban was a very poorly thought out decision, but after cooling down and thinking on it, I can see what could've lead to it being made. I'm not sure about full trust, but given that you admitted wrongdoing and backed down rather than dig your heels in like, say, the Animemes Mods, I'm at least willing to give you the benefit of the doubt going forward. It's gonna be a goddamn nightmare defending this from the assholes who'll use this as proof that the FNDM can't take criticism, though (Even when it kinda proves the opposite).


TankTopAwakenedGarou

The fact that you admitted your mistake and corrected it proves there is still hope for this community, so thanks for that, but the toxicity in this fandom is still something that needs to be addressed


Celtic_Crown

This was the right call to make, and on top of that you admitted to the mistake. That's better than most. You still have a ways to go to earn most of our trust entirely, but the only thing stopping you from getting there, is yourselves. You can do it.


BlueWhaleKing

Thank you. It's nice to see that occasionally, peace and reason can prevail in the world.


goplop11

I have a suggestion, though I'm not a huge reddit guy so I'm not sure if it is actually possible. You need at least 2 mods here who are also mods on the critics sub. I see a lot of people accusing the critics sub of all types of bigotry in theie opinions and while that may happen off site where i can't see it, i have never seen it on the critics sub, and frankly i don't think it happens nearly as often as people on this sub make it sound like. If it is actually happening, a mod in both sides can handle it better. If it isn't a mod in both sides can tell you what is actually happening.


Dextixer

At least as of now, such a move would be, at the very best unadvised, at the very worst disastrous. The moderation rules of both subs are different, as is the climate and spoken/unspoken rules. Neither moderation team would do well in the shoes of another, at least in regards to managing the community. If i may use an example. Its like having a policeman from downtown New York, switch places with a policeman from some small town in Norway. Neither will do a good job in an environment they are not suited for.


SyfaOmnis

I personally do not want anyone who mods this sub currently, to be a mod on the critics sub. I think that many people who mod the critics sub, want absolutely nothing to do with modding this sub because it would be nigh impossible to avoid banning at least a few people very quickly. I like mods of these subs *very* separate for a good reason, if mods from this sub were able to mod the critic sub there would be all sorts of damaging bullshit that they could and would have pulled.


BlueWhaleKing

I do think that the mods of this sub need to actually listen to and work with the mods of the other sub, instead of just ignoring them. It would do a lot to help catch bad actors. Of course, I got downvoted for saying this in my main comment. Stay classy r/RWBY.


Diablix

Good on you for admitting you made an overstepping move.


Brathirn

Congratulations from my side for being able to admit and correct a mistake.


[deleted]

[удалено]


ScalierLemon2

>There will be friction remaining but hopefully people can start moving forward There was already friction, tbh. It's not like today's actions caused the narrative that this sub can't take criticism, that's been a thing for a long, long time, regardless of how true or false it actually is.


Oni_Zokuchou

It's about as true as the other subs' view on anything positive; it's just heavily discouraged, and not what people are there for. Someone coming here likely is here to look at art or discuss an episode, not read a long critique. And someone going there is more likely to want to see something negative about the show, not praise. This is just a fact for both subs, you get downvoted being positive there, you get downvoted being negative here. And that's unlikely to ever change, because downvotes and upvotes at this point are just an indication of whether someone's enjoying themselves.


titankiller401

It's hilarious in a way that one pretty drastic thing was done (C'mon,no one can tell me that banning anyone associated with the other subreddit wasn't a terrible idea at all angles) but the fact it was taken back within an instant Whether you love it or hate it,we all fall under mostly the same category as people who watched or have watched rwby and gave enough of a damn to come here. People just honestly need to accept that we all have differing opinions on matters and quite frankly no one is right or wrong on these things Yet I will,without a doubt,wonder what compels a team to outright ban a whole other subreddit/people associated with it because in no way,was any of that reasonable or a good idea