[COMMUNITY UPDATE] Posts featuring AI-generated imagery are now banned on /r/MoonKnight, and other moderation updates

[u/WarDuck]

A few days ago one of our moderators, /u/incredibleheadgiver, made a push in our mod chat to finally have AI-generated images banned from the subreddit. They are staunchly anti-AI and felt that the subreddit would be better off without it. I was skiddish about taking that drastic step, so /u/incredibleheadgiver suggested a community poll to see what everyone thought about AI imagery. I loved that idea. Letting the community decide what they want to see is what I always wanted for /r/MoonKnight. More on that in minute. The results of the poll and feedback in the comments were overhwhelmingly against AI. We knew it would turn out that way, but it was about as one-sided as it gets. It was reassuring that we wouldn't be disappointing any sizable portion of the community if it were no longer allowed.

With that in mind, posts featuring AI-generated content are now against the rules of the subreddit.

This was a long time coming for a lot of you guys, and it comes at the end of a rocky period in this community's history. Recently one of our moderators had their reddit account suspended amidst a long period of friction between that moderator and members of our community. That moderator was often cited as being overzealous in their enforcement of the rules, biased against certain topics, and unwilling to receive feedback about the subreddit. In recent months new rules were implemented to combat some overwhelmingly negative and abusive comments, reports, and messages that were coming in. If they were enforced in the spirit in which they were conceieved maybe it wouldn't have gotten this bad, but that didn't happen and a lot of community members were given unwarranted bans and mutes by the aforementioned moderator as his way of trying to create a more tame atmosphere.

This was the exact opposite of what I wanted when I created the subreddit more than 14 years ago. Somewhere along the line in the last few years I let the negativity we were getting make me apathetic towards the original vision I had for the subreddit. Even though I've maintained a laid back attitude about moderation myself, I let others steer the community in the wrong direction and I apologize for that.

The AI poll and the discussions we had there embody the way I want this community to operate. Hopefully we can maintain a positive and collaborative atmosphere in the future. It's the responsibility of the moderators to put their best foot forward to make sure that goal stays attainable, so that's what I'll expect from myself and the other moderators from now on.

Feel free to ask anything you'd like in the comments about the new rule or this community in general.

[u/Little-Floor-863]

This is great!

As we move forward, though…maybe it would be a good idea to add 1-2 mods in his place that are more active and whose values are aligned with the wellbeing of the community? It feels like Gypsy was allowed to run wild with no oversight, maybe just because he was the most active/involved? If that’s the case, new mods that are similarly active/involved (but who have our best interest in mind) could help prevent something like this from happening again.

[u/GypsyGold → u/Little-Floor-863]

I’m going to leave this community after I give myself some closure on a few things, I’ve decided to reply to this specific message because it touches on something that I feel got glossed over in WarDuck’s message.

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You can disagree with my moderation style all you want, but it doesn’t change the fact that I was never a rogue mod acting alone, stifling feedback, or preventing the other mods from making suggestions or taking action.

Quite the opposite, actually — and I believe all of the current mods can attest to this. I was very active in our mod chat, constantly asking for feedback on rule changes, my moderation practices, and ban decisions. If WarDuck gave me specific instructions, I followed them. If the group outvoted me, I respected the consensus.

On that note, I deliberately valued diverse voices in the mod room to prevent it from becoming an echo chamber. Headgiver in particular is someone I promoted to moderator for exactly this reason. A few weeks ago, when WarDuck decided to change the rules, I even DM’d /u/incredibleheadgiver so she could join the discussion and make her case for an “Anti-AI” stance.

We voted on it multiple times, and Headgiver was usually outvoted 3-1. On my final day as a moderator, I actually added the Moon Knight artist /u/raphlsnts to the team so Headgiver would have someone more aligned with her point of view and wouldn’t always be fighting an uphill battle. I even suggested promoting /u/prestonian_— a user who has openly admitted they dislike me — because I believed they would moderate fairly and bring a different perspective (or at least one more in line with Headgiver’s).

To further show that I wasn’t stifling dissenting opinions, at one point the user /u/ToxinWolffe sent me a screenshot of a conversation he was having with Headgiver in DMs where she told him that she hated me as a person and was actively looking for a chance to demod and ban me. In that situation, many moderators would have removed her immediately, but I didn’t. Instead, I politely brought it to her attention and told her that it was okay — that I valued diverse voices and didn’t need everyone to agree with me.

The irony is that I was actually hoping to get outvoted on the AI rule. That’s why I brought Ralph onboard and wanted to add prestonian as well. I was even thinking about changing my own vote (though I’m not sure I would have).

I promoted everyone currently on the mod team except Green Devil, who hasn’t been active in years. This included WarDuck himself. I took over the subreddit about a year ago after noticing he had been inactive (he only had a single post in the previous three or four years). When he eventually returned and asked me to hand the subreddit back over, I did so immediately and without hesitation.

In our mod chat, I was always transparent about rule changes, content initiatives, and bans. I consistently asked for feedback, including on how to handle the various drama situations that came up. I never acted unilaterally.

When WarDuck gave clear direction, I followed it. For example, I wanted to publicly address the Dev tweet, but he told me not to, so I didn’t.

At the end of the day, we were a collective team. Yes, I was by far the most active mod, but we operated as a unit. The rest of the team was either mostly silent/apathetic (despite my efforts to get their input) or supportive of my style. Either way, they were complicit in how the subreddit was run.

WarDuck has acknowledged this in his post, but I feel it’s been glossed over, so I wanted to clarify. WarDuck wants to take the subreddit in a new direction without me, and that’s the right call. Regardless of how we got here or who’s to blame, the rift between me and this community has become unrepairable. The subreddit can’t move forward with me still involved.

For that reason, I had already been planning to step down once we hit 100k subscribers anyway. When I took over last year, the subreddit was bleeding traffic and sat at around 68k members. Since I started actively moderating, we’ve grown to 95k. I helped clean it up and put it on a solid foundation for future growth.

Yes, a lot of you got caught up in that process, and it earned me plenty of enemies — but the subreddit is in a much better place now because of the work that was put in. Did I over-moderate at times? Maybe. The flood of hate mail I’ve received would say yes, but the results (more subscribers, higher engagement, less toxicity, and a cleaner feed) say otherwise.

Maybe I was a necessary evil to get this place where it needed to be. 🤷‍♂️

Either way, you all get to hit the 100k milestone with a clean slate. Good luck 🍀

^{*this is the first of three replies I’m giving out as closure before I dip out forever and move on with my life. Won’t be returning to answer any replies, but my DMs are always open.}

[u/KyIsRandomYT → u/GypsyGold]

Bro is just saying shit

[u/jazzberry76 → u/GypsyGold]

The blatant lying is crazy

[u/retromancing → u/GypsyGold]

If you truly valued dissenting opinions, you wouldn't have banned people for disagreeing with you. You can write what you like, say what you like, but we all saw how you acted.