On Pizzagate, Assange, and more - A Proposal: SwampWatch

Centipedes,

A hot topic lately has been how we as a moderation team have handled some sensitive topics such as pizzagate and the alleged disappearance of Julian Assange. We are well aware that the community wants us to promote awareness of these two topics (among others) and we have heard your feedback and concerns about what is perceived as censorship.

I will do everyone a favor and be completely transparent – yes, we remove quite a bit of this content. Why? The vast majority of what gets posted here in regards to these topics is simply concern trolling about us not giving them sticky space, outlandish and unverifiable claims, or illegal content. We also allow a portion of it to remain on the sub, though we do not provide it sticky space.

I want to gently remind everyone that the_donald is a sub about Donald Trump, his supporters, and their movement. Yes, there is overlap between that and topics like pizzagate. The problem we have found is that, too often, discussions about topics such as pizzagate will completely dominate the sub and drown out any thoughtful discussion or Trump related content. We saw it with the FBI FOIA documents – the sub completely derailed and lost it’s identity. We cannot allow that to happen again.

Additionally, we have detected (more than a few times) shills and trolls intentionally piggybacking on these controversial topics to slander and attack our community. They want to paint us as lunatics and turn our community against the moderators with posts such as, “Mods are clearly compromised, they aren’t stickying this anonymous guy from 4chan,” or what have you. This strain of trolls have successfully created a narrative or idea that we are censoring these topics.

Let me say this as clear as I can: we do not want to censor these topics, we do not want to silence you, and we completely support your investigations into the corrupt workings of politicians such as Hillary Clinton. Yet, we also have to consider that the_donald is not about these things, and while they will always have a home here, we cannot allow them to dominate our sub.

We, as a team, have spent weeks now trying to figure out the best mechanism that will allow you all to have your voices heard and the investigation to continue, while at the same time preserving our culture and identity as Centipedes. However, for such a sensitive topic, we do not want to make a decision without input from all of you. So, that said, here is the plan:

We will create a regular (roughly weekly) “Investigations,” Megathread in which you will all be encouraged to share your best VERIFIED findings with us. In these threads, we will promote subs such as r/pizzagate, where you can continue your work until the next megathread. We would also like to launch our own 100% the_donald run and endorsed subreddit, SwampWatch, with the overall theme of investigating corruption in politics. This sub would be run by our very own u/mivvan who many of you know as the curator for our Wikileaks megathreads. He is well-respected and has connections with prominent researchers into the Clinton Foundation. This sub will become THE place to discuss such topics, and will be officially endorsed and run by us!

This is not an attempt to isolate or splinter the community. This would be an attempt to build a stronger network of communities actively promoting each other. Right now, we simply run links in a sidebar. We want to step up our game and focus in on a small group of subreddits, each with a specialized purpose and the_donald at the core.

We know this idea will not resonate with all of you and that is ok. Please let us know how you feel about it in the comments, and we will take all of your feedback into consideration before making a decision. You are also welcome to contact the mods directly through modmail.