I’m going to open this with a disclaimer: I do not presume to speak for Seraph and his version of events. I can only present what the intentions from the rest of the team were as acting head mod. (Also apologies for rapid fire pins this morning, as you can tell it’s a lot)

Many of you remember Seraph’s post yesterday asking for community feedback. While the post itself was positive and I have no doubt I’ll be going back through it in the near future, it was something that wasn’t done as a unified mod team effort.

As a team, we’ve been going through some internal shifts behind the scenes to quietly re-organize ourselves without rocking the boat. The intent was to streamline our deliberation process and roll out new and improved features and events quickly to you guys. Naturally we were in the early stages of working on this, but Seraph kept bringing up additional (and rather large) points he wanted addressed. By this time we had a list of tasks that was already pretty sizable, and since we were still ironing out and making sure our internal process was something that could work along with the addressed points being rather large-scale questions that we didn’t feel we could address at that time.

We asked him to hold off on these points and I reassured him I would make sure these were re-addressed in the future.

Fast forward to the post, asking for community feedback. While we 100% do value the feedback all of you have to give, we weren’t at the stage, nor in the position, to address what was being discussed in that thread. With this having being created, posted, and pinned without the knowledge of the acting head moderator or the rest of the team, we pulled Seraph aside to ask him what the heck was going on.

He believed that we had reached a deadlock and that this needed to be taken to the community, while the rest of us didn’t even feel we had reached an impasse, as we were already working on our list without issue. The team has acknowledged Seraph’s good intentions on this matter, however he acted alone without anyone else on the team even being aware of his actions.

Before and now, the mod team never acts on large scale decisions or takes large steps on said decisions without a majority agreement / permission from acting head mod. There were instant concerns that Seraph was now not being a team player, and in the unfolding discussion this only became more apparent that there was a rift between us and him, a difference in ideologies if you will.

There were in fact very heated discussions that took place in the hours that followed. Because I myself was going to be away, I called in the man from above Soah to help. As has been stated already, our NSFW mods came to weigh in as well, and it got heated.

I won’t go into detail. I consider a lot of this to be a personal matter at this point, but I will say I have pulled, and will pull them both aside again. More is in review, since I really haven’t had a solid chance to review the full logs.

Following what happened, the rest of the mod team fully agreed that action needed to be taken, however we still valued Seraph for his contributions and I personally valued the opposing viewpoints and discussions, as roundabout as they got.

This is how last night ended before I slept:

He was issued a six month probation for pinning threads, meaning he had to review with another member of the mod team before pinning a thread.

We agreed on additional moderators without applications, since we already had our candidates in mind and we didn’t need to look for more. (This had not been finalized)

Given that Seraph was very keen on addressing very loose (and clearly incomplete) guidelines, a more extensive set of guidelines was created. (The guidelines were created as a general “how to mod.” It was created in the spirit of cooperation, and thus had holes for details we believed obvious)

Seraph was, again, no way asked to step down. This was never asked of him in any way.

Now, upon waking up this morning Seraph’s ban does stand at this time, and I’ll be reviewing the case to make a final verdict. I will address the major concerns now. I will answer as many questions related to this as possible.

Seraph was never retroactively punished, and if there were plans to do any more than the 6 month probation for pins I would have shut it down. This was the agreed action to be taken.

Seraph was banned from the sub for sharing private conversations within the moderator discord. We had no plans for banning him for sharing his thoughts in that thread, he is free to do this and we support this. It is his side of the story. However the conversation with these images should not have been on the sub.

I will be reviewing moderator conduct since I have been awake and will be taking appropriate action.

Again, I will be answering as many questions as possible.

EDIT 1: After initial reviews, Seraph's ban has been reduced to 14 days. More updates are likely to come in the coming hours.

EDIT 2: New moderators are currently on hold, and no changes will be taking place until at least 2020, (unless it's an emergency or something) Conduct violations have been handed out to a few members of the team, resulting in probation periods mirroring the ones Seraph was given.

We're only human and not perfect, the mod team isn't going dark per say but we are taking a break from any major efforts for a while. We need to take time and step back, and let the sub just be a fun place for people to hang out. We'll 100% be around to still laugh and meme with you all.

EDIT 3: This post is being un-stickied, but I'll be answering questions and clearing things up now that I'm back from work. No hiding for us on this one.