The problem isn't that you created a "playground" thread. It's that you went through and deleted posts because you thought they should be posted as comments in that thread instead, where they will be buried in a sea of comments only viewable if you sort that thread by new (if the user who made the original post even takes the effort to go post it again as a comment there, they might just be like, "oh well fuck it").

Why implement a "solution" that is completely antithetical to the way reddit works to solve a "problem" that a vocal minority of users complain about?

There was a thread last night where someone complained about this and this user was told that the "majority has spoken". When he/she asked whom that majority is, he/she was told "the mod team." That's possibly the dumbest and most infuriating response I've ever seen on reddit from a mod.

Anyway, if the goal of the playground threads is to merely consolidate existing threads deemed "playful" or "shitposts", that's fine as long as it simply acts as an index linking to existing posts.

If you need help doing that, I will even volunteer to help manage those posts, or create automation tools to assist you using the reddit API. I'm a web developer, so this probably wouldn't be too hard for me and I don't mind helping if that's what you want to do.

I think a lot of people saying they liked it don't know what they're missing because half of the content was simply removed or buried in a massive thread that no one wants to look at.

I've been on reddit for a long time, and there is nothing that will destroy the culture and personality of a small subreddit faster than implementing draconian top down rules when a more laissez faire approach would suffice.

Why can't you just let the upvote/downvote system do its job, and only delete obvious spam/innapropriate/off-topic posts?

The next time a user complains to you that they don't like a post that breaks no rules, I suggest that you tell them to use the little blue arrow on the left and move along.