Not here to start some back and forth argument, but just offering my perspective as a brand new player right before the blackout started. The subreddit is a treasure trove of information over years of questions, answers and discussions. Many questions have already played out to consensus or differing opinions for each to decide on their own via posts on the subreddit. I don’t believe that permanently closing the subreddit is a good idea, as you’re losing an archive of that massive amount of information that has already been discussed. Google already stopped surfacing the search results of blacked out subreddits so using an archive site to research answers is already not a good option, nor is that a good experience. Also lost is being able to continue those discussions as a new user rather than having to start from scratch and everyone have to repeat themselves to even get back to the baseline context of the new player’s additional questions.

I understand some of the stances the mods are taking and understand some are opposed to the APIs causing the shutdown of third party apps, but as a person that works the business side in much of the same situation that reddit has been placed under with the advent of AI hammering APIs and ad revenue becoming harder to come by, I understand why reddit is doing what they are doing. I’m an AWS architect so I understand the cost pressure from the advent of AI training. I’m also a moderator on a large 100K+ Facebook group so I understand mods need to have appropriate tools to do their job and reddit has shown they are working on or have already filled the gaps in the official means of doing so. Reddit is also leaving stuff like bots as-is to continue supporting moderation.

Those arguments aside, I think the best move is for those mods that do not want to fall into the guardrails reddit is placing choose to relinquish their mod status and allow those that want to continue to mod to do so with the sub opened back up. Perhaps some of the community chooses a different place to continue the community discussions. I believe in users having options. I myself prefer reddit/facebook/etc rather than website forums for discussion for various reasons. I like my information in just a few places rather than scattered all over the place and also being able to search and find relevant discussions in other communities is a real benefit and value of a platform like reddit vs dedicated website.

Anyway, hope this doesn’t get flamed. Just trying to show not everyone supports the continued blackout nor permanent closure of the subreddit. See you all in game regardless.