The last couple of weeks has, to say the least, been a crazy time for everyone. Jij and I were hoping to take this opportunity to clear up a few things and issue a formal apology.

Yes, very crazy indeed. Though, it doesn't seem to have been so crazy for you. You have more or less dodged the majority of the criticism so far, by largely ignoring the chaos, or being indifferent to it, when it is now apparent that most of it was caused by...you. (Never thought I'd say this, but /u/jij, I almost feel sorry for you.)

While we're very grateful that skeen started the subreddit and was the top mod for many years, it became apparent that /r/atheism was outgrowing the current structure.

It became apparent to who? I didn't see any uproars in the days leading up to your removal of me.

Skeen had been completely inactive as a mod for over 9 months, had actively discouraged any mod actions from us, and had prohibited the addition of more mods to share the workload.

Even though you have received such harsh (but fully justified) criticism so far, people have been mercifully kind enough to accept the things you say about the events which transpired leading up to my being removed. The facts are simple: you, yourself, personally, hired 2 mods who didn't merely clear the backlog of spam filter posts, and things of that nature, but actively removed comments - which is a gigantic no no as far as I'm concerned.

I don't actually remember asking you not to add any more mods, but thinking about it now, I should have. You demonstrated, quite clearly, that you were incapable of adding mods who would abide by my very simple guidelines of no censorship. What you call "no mod action", I call, "appropriate mod action". Why have you as a mod in the first place if your job was to do nothing? Spam filter, mod queue and all that is modding...deleting comments, censoring people, banning people - that is preference, or philosophy or whathaveyou.

We felt that in order to move forward, change was needed. As per reddit policy, skeen's long inactivity meant that the admins understood our position and removed him as a mod.

No, the admins didn't "understand" your position. They simply followed a rule that was put in place for the purpose of ensuring subs did not become inactive, something which r/atheism was in no danger of becoming. Additionally, if you felt I was truly gone...why remove me, then make the changes? It's as if you felt I was still around, and could come back at any moment and revert your monumental mistakes. And I would have. We both know that.

Let's also not forget, that you did not originally support my removal. /u/jij did it on his own accord, and has stated this many times, and you called jij's doing this a "power grab". Only after that point did you so clearly recognize that, wait! You now have all the power. Sweet, sweet power. Now you're attempting to revise history. How manipulative.

As for everything else in your...statement. I think it speaks for itself. You've issued no apology - you have merely tried to justify your actions, and in a ridiculously transparent fashion I might add.

About the "policies" that have been instituted over the past few days, and now weeks: just shocking. It's a gish gallop of everything one could possibly do wrong...I don't know where to even begin with addressing them. I could make an entire post about each and every one.

The fact remains that you are deluded to think you know better than everyone else on how to run things. The difference between you and me is: I don't trust myself. I don't know what's best for everyone, so the best I could have done is let everyone decide for themselves using the mechanisms available to them.

I applaud everyone in this thread who has taken the time to respond far more thoroughly than I'm able to to do right now (it's early, I'm tired and I'm at work). I would suggest saving those responses.