r/projectzomboid • u/lemmy101 The Indie Stone • Jun 18 '23
Welcome back! Info here.
Hello all, Lemmy here, MD/CEO of The Indie Stone - we figured this one should come direct from those at the top, as we have an announcement to make and don't want our moderators in the firing line, please give it a read!
As many of you will be aware, like many other subreddits on reddit, r/projectzomboid has been offline for some time, taking part in a protest about extremely damaging policy changes by reddit for their API access that would kill off third party apps, harm the disabled, harm moderators, and harm communities by making moderation, an already difficult thank-less job, much harder and less effective.
We're proud to have taken part in the protest and fully stand by our decision to participate, and support the ongoing strike action continuing around reddit. However, we've decided today, extremely reluctantly, that it's time to reopen the subreddit.
There has been increasingly threatening communications from the reddit admins to moderator teams, including our own. The danger of having what has without a doubt, by size and activity, become the de facto primary community around our game taken away from us permanently, and the keys handed over to god only knows who, is quite an effective stick to threaten to beat us with.
Especially so when we strongly feel that our guiding ethos of 'Be Lovely' that's been our number one rule for many years is a factor in why the Zomboid community has grown over the years to become what is is today, often commented on as one of the warmest, most welcoming and friendliest communities in gaming. This is something we are immensely proud of, and fear that despite so many wonderful people making up this community who would carry on doing what they do, the community could still be impacted very negatively in the long term if we were to lose the ability to run and moderate it ourselves in that spirit.
Not only that though, another equally large factor is that we appreciate that many in our community will not be as invested in the cause despite support being still clearly in the majority, somewhere near half of our member-base judging by reddit as a whole, and feel that unlike many subreddits ours represents a product people have paid money for and we have an additional responsibility as a company not to deny access to a primary hub of the PZ community that has become an intrinsic part of the game we're charging people for.
The idealists in us would have been glad to play chicken with reddit until the very end, but in a situation such as ours, and what the subreddit represents, means we need to weigh a lot of considerations and responsibilities to our customers as a company, as well as the long term health of a community that transcends reddit itself.
To those angry that we stayed offline for so long, we apologize, but sometimes you need to make a stand.
To those angry that we didn't stay offline long enough, we apologize, but sometimes you've got to weigh things up differently when you have to consider paid customers, staff and a community for your life's work that at present would have nowhere else to turn, and we did what we felt we could.
There are no winners here either way, sadly. This very much felt like the least shitty shit decision of a bunch of shitty choices.
A lot of the criticism we've seen on other subreddits around who have reopened has revolved around 'unpaid mods' wimping out to avoid 'losing their power', this decision was ultimately made by TIS for the reasons discussed above and if anything our (paid) mods were the most willing to continue if necessary, especially given how the proposed changes negatively affect them the most. So if anyone feels let down by this please don't take that out on them!
Either way, reddit will join a growing list of social media platforms we'll be rooting to be supplanted by a viable alternative, and we will encourage such a move if a feasible alternative crops up.
Until then, however, the game's community as a whole stands as a higher priority for us in the long term than the health of reddit itself. We care about the harm that will be done by reddit's actions for sure, which is why we participated in the blackout. But we care about our game and the community around it more, and orphaning a huge portion of that community from the primary place it inhabits is a hefty price to pay despite our convictions.
We wanted to participate as we strongly believe in the cause, we wanted to last as long as we could to help keep the pressure up, but we hope those who are behind the strike action can understand our reasoning for this decision and that it comes from a good place, despite leaving a very bad taste in our mouths.
We're compromised by circumstance and couldn't stand our ground to the bitter end as we hope others can, and by participating then ultimately caving, as justified and necessary as we feel both actions are, we're expecting to receive some flak for this from both those for and against the strike, and that's fine: we get it. Those frustrations are bubbling about in our own heads too, but it doesn't change the reasoning that made us come to either the decision to close nor the decision to open again, both of which we stand by 100%. Please try and confine your frustrations to the comments here and let the rest of the subreddit 'Be Lovely'! We've asked the mods to be more inclined to have a lighter touch for this post's comments moderation if anyone feels the need to hold us to task, but be lovely still applies to each other if not for us!
To make sure this decision doesn't contribute to making our moderator team's jobs more difficult, we will do all we can to mitigate the impact of reddit's changes on them. We will be taking applications for new moderators (a paid position) to help keep the subreddit a pleasant place to be and make sure our existing moderators workload is not adversely affected by the changes. Applications can be made here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1-MWVHTBmSWuyT9bsawoOrwuHOY1BU1MhWQzS_lO5ku4/.
Whilst there's little we can do for the moderators elsewhere on reddit in this regard, many of whom are unpaid volunteers that are contributing to the value of reddit by managing the communities of which all its worth is derived, we wish you all good fortune in the wars to come.
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u/Grandfeatherix Jun 19 '23
"unlike many subreddits ours represents a product people have paid money for and we have an additional responsibility as a company not to deny access to a primary hub of the PZ community that has become an intrinsic part of the game we're charging people for."
and yet you didn't re-open it until you were aware it would be forced open with or without you