Hey all,

As the title says, myself and /u/Gullible-Computer-43 were given the mod duties for the sub. I have started to unravel what has gone on here the past few months and would like to provide some clarify and apologies to those affected. From what I can tell, the last few years there remained 1 mod for the sub who had been inactive for 4 years on reddit.

I checked, and 10 months ago, a user put in a reddit request to try and takeover mod duties, but was denied. However, 2 months ago, another reddit user put in a reddit request to mod the sub, as seen here, which was accepted. The user then added 4 additional accounts as mod. That user, and all the mod accounts they added have been suspended by reddit, likely their alts. Reddit restricted the sub until they could get that mod sorted out, then reddit reopened it and posted looking for mods.

I also did some digging on mod activity and noticed there were some strange behaviors by the previous mod, where they targeted and removed helpful comments - and sometimes would remove a specific users comments on multiple posts, when they were all informative comments. Going forward, this should no longer be the case. While we were not at all involved with the sub at that time, I want to apologize if you were targeted by the previous mod.

Additionally, automod has been setup, as it was previously not used. I am still tweaking some settings, so if you received a message or comment that your post was removed, I likely approved it after the fact and altered the rule.

I also added a "verified plumber" flair that we can consider using, if it sparks enough interest, but we would need to iron out the logistics on how we verify.

Thanks all, any and all feedback is appreciated.