Mod Update: Changing our rules around speculative/unconfirmed discussion in the sub
Hi everyone,
As I’m sure many of you have seen the discussion in the sub today around a post mentioning layoffs being deleted by the mod team, we felt the need to address the issue and offer a path forward that hopefully everyone can support.
To provide some context of the mods’ position, we have generally taken the approach of deleting/removing posts that have heavy speculation or are conspiratorial in nature. Over the past year this has mostly revolved around people speculating when layoffs will occur, who or what employee group will be next, consolidation (such as HR or IT), or sharing unconfirmed information that no one directly involved can verify. We have taken the approach of trying to protect people from misinformation that may impact their mental health at work and outside of work.
We wanted to have verified information before it was widely open to everyone’s eyes and we know there are a lot of eyes here. I’m sure we all have experienced the water cooler talk of what someone saw on Reddit and this happens at every level, including up to ministry and cross-ministry executive meetings. The media has referenced the sub and the BCGEU was regularly posting during bargaining. So overall we saw a lot of risk with allowing a free for all.
Over time we have heard from many of you that felt the mods are silencing discussion, in bed with the PSA, pushing an agenda, etc. We have had this discussion many times with many people in the sub, but this time it has blown up and we now feel we need to act on the desires of the membership. We appreciate the feedback and discussion and ultimately we want this place to be the best it can and four mods can’t do it alone without your input and constructive criticism!
The mods have huddled and have a proposed path forward. We would like to try opening up the discussions and not being as heavy handed with the removal button. Instead of deleting posts like the above examples, we are proposing that mods will have a stickied post in the thread to warn users of unverified information or misinformation. Sometimes posts can have 100+ responses and people can’t read everything. But we hope anyone perusing the sub will read the top post in the thread from a mod. Our goal will be to represent the facts. State that the information as unconfirmed and caution should he taken. State that there is misinformation and it’s not accurate the way the post implies based on the title. Things like that.
As the mods have lives outside of Reddit we may not always be early to the discussions, so we hope you all can continue to ask the right questions and try to get to the bottom of the post and draw out the facts/truth.
Our hope with this is to still allow people to see what others are saying and participate in the discussion. We are open to additional feedback and ideas of what you would like to see or how we can support these discussions better.
One final note - the mod team will be doing a review of the sub rules over the next little while. The issue that has come to a head today is at least partially due to the outdated sub rules that hamstring us a bit. So stay tuned for that as well.