QUARANTINE APPEAL

It has been approximately one month since the Admins deemed it necessary to Quarantine our subreddit. As such, we believe it has been an appropriate amount of time to display a sustained change in our community that should satisfy the needs laid out in our Quarantine Message.

  1. >"we continue to observe and take action on a disproportionate amount of rule-breaking behavior by members of this community. We are also troubled that violent content often goes unreported, and worse, is upvoted. We measured this quantitatively and observed that your subscribers upvote violative content at a significantly higher rate than subreddits of a similar size and topical focus to yours."
  1. >"In addition to downvotes, user reports are an essential way that Reddit functions to moderate content. Limiting them by using CSS to tamper with the report button prevents you from moderating your community effectively. Because of this, we are disabling your custom styling in order to restore this essential function."
  1. >"we would expect to see notable and sustained community transformation before a successful appeal. With that in mind, we recommend these next steps: You unambiguously communicate to your subscribers that violent content is unacceptable. You communicate to your users that reporting is a core function of Reddit and is essential to maintaining the health and viability of the community. Undertake any other actions you determine to reduce the amount of rule-violating content."

In the past thirty days (as of 9/6/19) we have had only 21 admin removals, two of which were for posts made before the Quarantine. Of the 19 posts that were made afterwards, 4 could be reasonably understood to be in violation of Reddit's Content Policy, and 1 is not visible for our review. The remaining 14 seem to fall under the following categories

While these posts may have been against the tastes of the Admins, there are no prohibitions against them under Reddit's Content Policy.  Therefore, it is neither reasonable to have removed them, nor to expect the moderators of r/ChapoTrapHouse to have removed them. With that in mind, in the past 30 days there were only 4, maybe 5, occasions where posts in violation of Reddit's Content Policy were missed by the mod team. Even if we count every one that’s still only a measly 19.  For a subreddit with 10,000 subscribers per active mod either of these numbers are more than acceptable, and quite frankly the Admins should be taking notes.

How did we make such a large and lasting change to our community? We👏 Began👏 To👏 listen👏. We listened to each other, we listened to our subscribers, we listened to your suggestions, and, most importantly of all, we listened to our hearts. We began to work on a Three Pronged Approach™ to meet the goals the Admins had set for us. These Three Prongs™ were as follows:

COMMUNITY OUTREACH 

We implemented several Community Outreach Programs™ in order to help emphasize and steer the culture towards the lighter sides of our community. One example is the Community Spotlight Program™. Following is an overview for the CSP™ that outlines the goals of the program and which is appended to every post that met our strict criteria.

>"The Community Spotlight Program™ is a concerted effort to show the admins and the wider Reddit community the more positive and wholesome sides of r/ChapoTrapHouse! 🙂

>To view previous Community Spotlights Click Here or hit the link in the sidebar!

>Sure we may have made some mistakes in the past but WE are working TOGETHER to fix them and to show the world we're learning AND growing every day!

>We hope and trust our community to make more posts, such as this, that reflect the goodwill and positivity you've always been able to find on this sub if you were willing to see it!"

In addition to The Community Spotlight Program™ we have recently begun hosting Movie Nights™ which are meant to help our community members to form human connections with their fellow subscribers and at the same time instill the idea that behind the usernames of u/CumAnarchist or u/vris92 (Example usernames not intended to reflect any actual subscribers) there👏. are👏. human👏. beings👏. People with hearts and minds and Feelings that are harmed by the words we can so casually, nay callously, lob at one another behind our screens and keyboards. That these demons in our pockets possess us so that we can no longer form the strong human connections we used to have before WiFi or the Apple iPhone™. By cementing the humanity of their fellow subscribers, Movie Nights™ can successfully lead our community to the informed reality of the humanity of those who may not necessarily share their meaningless political or social beliefs.

Another example of our Community Outreach Program™ has been our recent sharing of podcasts that not only fit the interests of our subscribers but can give them a more well rounded understanding of the world outside the metropolitan liberal bubble of the Chapo Trap House podcast. For instance we have shared links to episodes of Trillbilly Worker's Party, available at https://soundcloud.com/user-972848621-463073718 and https://www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty/post, which features the voices of rural Appalachians Tom, Tanya, and Tarence (or The Three Sweet T's as they like to be called). It should be readily apparent how the politics of such people from such an area could differ from 5 Billionaire Brooklynites but our community has enthusiastically taken up the challenge of broadening their horizons. This broadening of horizons has made our subscribers more compassionate and understanding of those that may think differently than them, and has had a dramatically positive effect on their rhetoric.

COMMUNICATION

In order to meet the needs of the Reddit Admins the Mod Team understood the need to effectively communicate to our subscribers how imperative it was for us to change. To do this we followed a Two Pronged Approach™ which delineated both Automated Moderator and Live Moderator communication.

For Automated Moderator communication we immediately made several changes to The Programmed Behavior Of The Automated Behavior Of The Automated Moderator Of The Subreddit ChapoTrapHouse or TPBOTABOTAMOTSCTH. These changes included the filtering of dangerous words or phrases and, very importantly, the informing of where the poster went wrong so that they could better learn, grow, and change their behavior in other areas in order to better match the public face we all want to portray to the world. What is likely the most effective of our changes to The Programmed Behavior Of The Automated Behavior Of The Automated Moderator Of The Subreddit ChapoTrapHouse or TPBOTABOTAMOTSCTH was the creation of a message at the top of every post which politely, and in a way that would be the most resonant for our subscriber base, informed the necessity of downvoting and reporting rule violations. We’ve seen a definite increase in both since.

For Live Moderator communication we did something nigh unprecedented. We published every communication with the Admins we received since our Quarantine. That's right. Every👏. Single👏. One👏. This really helped our subscriber base to understand where we were coming from and what our needs were and we really have to thank the Admins and how they communicated with us for that.

In addition to our Open Inbox Policy™, we communicated calmly and clearly when any of our users violated our subreddit's rules or Reddit's Content Policy. These frank and respectful discussions led to an extremely low recidivism rate for temporary bans, and lower rule breaking overall.

COMPULSION

Sadly cultural changes come slowly, and we couldn't rely solely on them to achieve the rapid and dramatic results that were expected of us. In order to pick up the slack we had to rely on enforcement. To do this we brought on Retired Law Enforcement Officer and Retired Ranger and Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army u/GeraltofRivia as a moderator. We believe both his résumé and his actions as a moderator speak for themselves. We couldn't have kept the subreddit, and those who can't be taught, in line, without him. He brought decades of experience and even helped train us to be more effective at our duties. While he is no longer legally permitted to serve in any official capacity in law enforcement, he will always be welcome to "patrol our streets".

With our new training and guiding light we were more focused in our enforcement of our rules. We’ve even handed out bans, both temporary and permanent, which we may not have distributed before. Of course there are some Moderator Involved Actions that in hindsight maybe should have been handled differently, but we stand together and believe each and every decision we made was the best and only decision for the information we had at the time. We stand by our actions and we will not condemn our fellow Moderators for merely doing their jobs the best way they can.

QUESTIONS

We would like to take this opportunity to ask several questions of the Administrators. Answering these is crucial for our future effective moderation.

  1. Where's sodypop?
  2. Is sodypop okay?
  3. Was there a medical or family emergency that kept sodypop from answering the following questions which he had requested we ask?
  1.  We were unaware of any sitewide rules broken by adding the mods who were then removed. Would you please clarify on this point so we can avoid making such mistakes in the future? We would like to have a mod team made up of regular users who we know well enough to trust with properly moderating the subreddit, so having several moderators removed hinders our ability to ensure we're compliant.
  2. I noticed your second example is a reference to a gulag. Are all references to gulags to be considered violent content? A simple word filter from the automod will help here. Were the same post to have been made with a reference to Guantanamo or Pelican Bay, would that also be deemed as violent content and worthy of removal? I apologize if this seems pedantic, but the bounds of what is deemed violent are somewhat nebulous from our perspective. If it's an "I know it when I see it" issue, so be it, but having more clear boundaries of what qualifies as rule violation would be helpful.  
  3. When alt-right subreddits are banned or quarantined, brigaders eventually make their way to our sub, given that we're one of the largest and most active leftist communities on the site. Over the past several months we've seen an uptick in non-regular posters masquerading as regular users who will then post violent content. We also have seen an uptick in reports on non-violating posts, and even reports with slurs/threats of violence/general vulgarity directed our way. Given the relatively large increase in reports, the mods have taken to mass-approving where we believe content is not in violation. This is more likely what has caused specific "missed reports" where we approved posts that otherwise should've been removed. What tools are at our disposal to report users who we believe are brigading? This makes the task of moderation significantly more difficult than otherwise. As noted above, we are making an effort to add moderators who will help us toward our common goal.
  1. Do you have answers for the aforementioned Lost Sodypop Questions?
  2. In the future, can we expect a similar commitment by the Admins to the clear and timely communication which we have thus far enjoyed?

IN CLOSING

Not only did we implement your suggested actions, We👏 Went👏 Further👏.  We have met all of the quotas and milestones you have put in front of us, and in doing so we made groundbreaking developments in the fields of Social and Community Engineering.  As a community we have grown stronger and closer to each other than we ever thought possible.

We couldn’t have done it without you! We’d like to thank you for this opportunity and look forward to your timely response and prompt restoration of our community 😊

-Sincerely,

All of us down here at r/ChapoTrapHouse Headquarters!

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