Of Mods and Minions

Once again the /r/leagueoflegends Mods have made content decisions for the entire league subreddit. The thread revolving around a video of Montecristo discussing how G2 opted out of practice was incredibly relevant to the subreddit seeing as how it abided by a number of rules, and was subsequently voted on by the users of the subreddit. Citing the submission rules: “Posts must be about League of Legends, LoL eSports, or League culture.” Specifically under the Esports and Culture portions: “Things that affect a player’s or team’s ability to play LoL competitively” and “Content focused around LoL personalities playing or discussing League of Legends”. Not only is a prominent LoL personality discussing the game he’s doing so about a choice that affected a team’s ability to play the game competitively. There can be no argument that the content was not relevant as it was voted on by the community and it fit within the rules of the subreddit.

The mods have cited the removal reason saying rants are not allowed. First let us see what the rules say qualify as a rant: “Posts that consist only of sob stories and/or rant posts are not allowed. We feel for you if League’s changed your life or if you had 3 games in a row with an AFK, but this isn’t the place for it. Do not whine about how everything is unfair without a good argument to back it up. “I lost the game because other people suck” is not a good enough reason.” Under the definition in the subreddit rules did the video qualify as a rant? In the video Monte did say he was going on a rant, which he did. He spoke passionately about his belief that G2 should have practiced for the event. However, does this break the rules of the subreddit? I would say, as we have seen multiple other posts on the front page of the subreddit that have been similar. Just recently a video of Meteos (a popular former pro) was discussing his views about a toxic player. I will admit I agreed with Meteos, but was the video any less of a rant as the content that was removed? In a stroke of irony that particular video might have a stronger case for its removal due to a possible perceived attack on a named individual.

Regardless of the rules governing the subreddit, did the post generate meaningful discussion? There can be no case against the value of the discussion. It had pro-players opinions not only quoted from twitter, but within the comments themselves. The community decided, with their votes I might add, that the content was worth our time. Perhaps the mods thought that the other post with the entirety of Monte’s VOD review was redundant, but was it their decision to make? I would argue that the the two posts addressed different things. The VOD review addressed the strategic aspect of the games, the shorter clip addressed the question of how teams practice.  In any case redditors voted for the content to be there, a core value for the platform.

A disadvantage of such a large community is a lack of meaningful discussion. Our mod team has the most difficult community to manage. With so many voices, content coming at all hours of the day, and a host of irrelevant content that could drag the community as a whole down, the fact that it remains the number one spot for League of Legends is a testament to their dedication. They help cultivate the most influential place for League, but their over action has caused a backlash against them. The mods need to do less, and instead of throwing a temper tantrum and take a week off, accept the valid criticism that they remove content that users have decided is relevant. The second value of the entire website is to Give People Voices. The mod team has lost sight of the goals of the subreddit as well as the site as a whole.