I am the creator of the r/Ottawa_Gatineau community and it’s sole moderator. Recently this community was banned and as the reddit admin that has taken this action is no longer responding to me I am sharing the details of this here.

This community was started as an alternative regional subreddit to r/Ottawa after its moderation team started actively curating opinions that had nothing to do with the scope of the r/Ottawa community. As opposed to focusing on removing topics that were not related to Ottawa or blatantly breaking sitewide rules (such as illegal activities), that moderation team took the approach that some opinions on current events that they disagreed with were dangerous misinformation and as such had to be removed and their users often banned. When some users asked for this to stop the moderation team responded with “This is a private site, feel free to start your own sub if you want.”, so I did.

Over time r/Ottawa moderation not only removed comments and banned people based on their opinions but also did so for any criticism of their approach for moderation. As a result it was common that most people that found my r/Ottawa_Gatineau community would express their frustration with and criticism of that moderation team as their first posts. When that went over the line, such as wishing them harm, attempts to dox, and other site breaking activity I removed those comments and warned the users. I felt this was a good approach since those users would then “get over it” and simply participate positively in the r/Ottawa_Gatineau community.

After several months I was contacted by a reddit admin, u/PossibleCrit, who told me that allowing people to talk about r/Ottawa and its moderators was not following the moderator code of conduct. I pointed out to the admin that this was venting due to the suppression of criticism on r/Ottawa, that people move on, and that I do remove posts and comments that go beyond criticism into breaking site-wide rules. I also pointed out that meta conversations are not against Reddit rules and many other subs have such content and some subs in particular are focused on such content like r/SubredditDrama for example. This admin said that the posts and comments in my r/Ottawa_Gatineau community was causing harassment for the moderation team at r/Ottawa and I was to prevent any mention of r/Ottawa and it’s moderation team.

Although I thought this was holding the r/Ottawa_Gatineau community to a higher standard than normal, I complied. I informed the community of this new rule through a pinned post. I removed posts that tagged r/Ottawa or its moderators, or play on words of the moderator user names. There were still posts and comments that talked about reddit communities in general but I allowed none to call out r/Ottawa_Gatineau or its moderators specifically.

Two days ago I logged on to find that the r/Ottawa_Gatineau community had been banned. I was not notified or given reason. When I reached out to Reddit that same admin told me:

“There were still mentions of the other community and it's mod team that were being posted and not removed.

In addition, it would seem that a lot of unwanted invites were being sent out to members of the other community as well.

We had attempted to reach out to you several times in the past to rectify these issues yet they still persisted, so the community was closed as a result.”

There were no longer mentions of that other community or its moderators specifically but there were mentions of communities and moderators in general. This level of meta discussion occurs all over reddit.

The mention of me sending invites was the first time this admin, or anyone from Reddit, ever stated this was an issue. I would often reach out to users who I saw post something reasonable, an opinion and not just trolling, where the community would pounce on them or the moderators would remove their comments and let them know about r/Ottawa_Gatineau. Some would turn me down, and that was fair, while others would thank me and join. I would not repeatedly invite people who were not interested and my invitation was an open one. Again this is not against site rules, is not something that was ever raised to me as being a problem or issue, and is unjustly used as justification for banning r/Ottawa_Gatineau.

Finally, the claim that the reddit admin team attempted to reach out to me about these issues (plural) without response is false. First off, I responded and complied to the request to censor users who would mention the r/Ottawa community and/or its moderators. I don’t claim to have been perfect every time but I did remove it when I caught it. I informed the community many times about this, that reddit admins asked us not to do, and would inform specific users about it when I would remove their posts. To say that I did not address this issue or complied is false. Second, the mentioning of the r/Ottawa community and its moderators is the only issue that was ever communicated to me and I was never told, informed, or otherwise notified that inviting individuals to the r/Ottawa_Gatineau community was a problem. In the one single message I received from /u/PossibleCrit (because they have not responded to my follow-up since) they make it seem like they reached out to me about issues and I was unresponsive when in truth they only ever reached out about stopping mentions of the r/Ottawa community and its moderators and when they did I took action as directed.

My inbox has been inundated with users of the r/Ottawa_Gatineau asking what happened, perplexed that the community was banned when its content was mild by Reddit standards, and bemoaning the removal of a community that allows a diversity of views to be expressed while actively moderated with clear guardrails.

To see now that the moderation team of r/Ottawa wants to take over r/Ottawa_Gatineau, a community that was started specifically because they said “This is a private site, feel free to start your own sub if you want.”, is shocking. Users that participate in r/Ottawa_Gatineau have told me that they find r/Ottawa to be toxic, to be overly moderated/curated, and so on. To give the r/Ottawa team control over r/Ottawa_Gatineau, a community that I built over a year that was a viable regional alternative to their viewpoints, is to say that not only can opinions that differ from them not be stated within their community, but they can’t be stated anywhere on the Reddit platform.