Reddit Atheists Have New Leadership After Turbulent Coup

[cbayer]

http://mashable.com/2013/06/14/reddit-atheism-mods/




BY MATT SILVERMAN19 HOURS AGO
There's been a coup d'état in Reddit's atheism community, according to its creator, and a political drama has been unfolding for more than two weeks.

It stems from a disagreement over the type of content appearing there. In recent years, r/atheism has become known for memes, images, quote pictures and other content viewed by some as "low brow." At best, they're humorous digs at fundamentalism and ignorance. At worst, they can be inaccurate or hateful. To "clean up" the subreddit, a host of new moderators have come to power, and — in a controversial move — ousted the community's creator via a technicality in Reddit's policy.

"I set up r/atheism to be a very unique kind of sub, run on the philosophy of freedom and openness," Redditor u/skeen, who created r/atheism in 2008, tells Mashable. He requested we not publish his real name. "So what has happened to r/atheism now is in direct contradiction to how it was intended to be."

For about five years, u/skeen's moderation was extremely hands-off. "The subreddit was not bogged down by rules and restrictions," he says, explaining that he left the community to regulate itself through Reddit's normal upvoting and downvoting system. "No comment would ever get deleted, no one would ever be banned. It was a great democratic system, and it didn't turn into this horrible place, like 4chan," he says, referring to the image board often cited as a haven for unseemly content. He touts these policies as the reason r/atheism grew to 2 million subscribers and became a de facto community on the front page.

more at link

[Cooley Hurd]

1. As a new redditor, I have to admit...

...the site is the anti-Facebook stash of info that I've longed for for soooo long.

Nice to know they deal with the same conflicts we deal with here on DU.

[rug]

2. Good, that place needed a flush.

Its memes and cartoons have a habit of oozing over here.

[Phillip McCleod]

4. god forbid!

Edit..damn phone wrote 'evil grin'..

[LostOne4Ever]

3. God to the RESCUE!

Hallelujah!

The LORD, God on facebook, has come to bring salvation to the atheists of reddit!

https://www.facebook.com/TheGoodLordAbove/posts/481568135264228

[goldent]

5. Oh dear

How are we going to learn the real truth about Atheism and Religion without the memes on r/atheism? I'm not about to start reading threads without pictures -- WAY too boring.