hey sibs. this sub has been running whatever the opposite of smoothly is for quite some time now, so it's time to address this and right the ship.

what this subreddit is about:

AGG is a demilitarized zone. this is the place where gamergaters can converse with people critical of gamergate. this isn't the place for you to "win" gamergate. the quality of GG posting has deteriorated sharply in the past week or so, leading to an exodus of the more patient anti posters. this was especially blatant in a thread about a week ago where instead of discussing the content of a post, GG posters here terminally derailed a thread to personally attack the original author of the article as well as a fellow AGG poster. a significant portion of our precious few anti-GG posters left or dramatically reduced their posting frequency after that thread. this isn't really a new phenomenon. subreddits that moderate decorum over decency are notorious for forcing out critical voices (see /r/femradebates for a perfect example of this in action).

with all that being said, i think it's not necessarily too late to turn this thing around.

for the time being, i've set the spam filter to remove every thread so they must be approved manually.
this will hopefully cut down on the number of repetitive shitposts showing up here and cluttering our front page. make sure any thread you make has a descriptive title that isn't excessively editorialized. if you're posting a link to an article or image, explain what you're linking, describe why it's relevant, and pose a statement or question to kickstart the discussion. we'll do our best to keep the modqueue tidy, but if you're not seeing your thread in the new queue after a little while send a modmail with a link to the thread. hopefully after a little while we can relax this restriction and allow posts to appear as normal.

we need some new mods.
this subreddit is really suffering from a lack of moderation currently and the three of us aren't active enough to keep the sub on track. this week has been especially bad as /u/saint2e has been on vacation. if any of you can think of anyone who would be a good fit for the moderation of this sub and has a good amount of moderation experience on reddit, feel free to mention them in the comments (note: this wont be a popularity contest).

we need all of you to be invested in the success of this community.

that means staying on topic even if you feel like the person you're communicating with isn't. that means calling out bad faith on your side just as much as you call out bad faith in your opponents. that means recognizing that the people you communicate with aren't likely to be converted by your arguments and that that's okay. that means assuming good faith and engaging in good faith yourself.

feel free to bring up any additional issues or offer any suggestions for improving the atmosphere of the sub in the comments below.