Announcement: Sanderson Subreddits Blackout Poll - June 19

What's Happening

Reddit has recently announced major changes to its API policies. These changes are expected to kill off most commercial third party applications, impact the moderability of massive subreddits, and interfere with the ability of blind and visually impaired users to use the platform. More detail about these changes can be found in links in a stickied comment below.

Last week our community voted to go dark for one week in protest of these policy changes, and to then hold a follow-up poll to determine our next steps. This includes all of the subreddits our team runs - r/brandonsanderson, r/mistborn, r/cosmere, and r/stormlight_archive, with r/imaginary_cosmere and r/skyward joining us. (in addition to some coordination with r/cremposting)

One week has elapsed and we have now set the subreddits to Restricted so that everyone can participate in voting on what we do next. Note that users cannot create posts at this time. We have only made the subreddit viewable, and allowed commenting so that a discussion can take place here.

The Poll and the Survey

Please fill out the poll below to let us know how you think we should proceed. But first, please read this post carefully. There are several things to be aware of.

First, a few clarifications: By "Blackout" we mean the subreddit is set to Private and nobody can visit it. By "Restricted" we mean that only moderators can make posts, and regular users can only make comments on existing posts. This poll only addresses how and when to end Blackout. If the community votes to move to Restricted mode, we will seek some additional input on how to handle that and how long to continue it. We have some additional decisions to make about additional protest options after that.

Second, note that Secret Project 3 is a Cosmere book and it releases on Saturday July 1st. The timeline of this release may be a factor in your decisions. If we are blacked out during the release, obviously people will need to find another place for discussion. If we are Restricted, we created megathreads that discussion would be contained to.

Third, a warning: Reddit's admins have been sending messages to mod teams that refuse to reopen, threatening to replace them with new mods that will, and there have been public claims that they have already carried those threats out in some communities.) While we will try our best to carry out the result of this poll no matter what, if the result is "stay closed for longer" then we can't guarantee that we will retain the authority to do so--that will depend on whether Reddit truly cares about respecting the wishes of communities like they claim.

Fourth, we also want to stress that parsing the results may be a challenge. We have been watching votes in subreddits that are neighboring communities (r/cremposting and r/fantasy, to name two), and the results there have often yielded no clear majority. We will do our best to interpret such results and reach a decision that we believe represents the community's viewpoint, and we ask you to help us develop the insight we need to interpret unclear plurality results.

In addition to the poll below, we have created a 5-question survey to give us further insight into how this community would like for us to proceed. You can take the survey here.

Feel free to discuss the poll, the survey, and your opinions in the comments below. In fact, we recommend taking others' opinions and insights into consideration before deciding how you feel about this. Please do be respectful in the comments. These API changes are problematic for a lot of people, and those who want to protest are just doing the best they can to try and make a difference--they aren't trying to personally inconvenience you. At the same time, this community means a lot to some people, and their desire to utilize this space (especially with a book release approaching) is not an endorsement of Reddit's policies. Let's do our best to respect everyone's opinion on this.

What's next?

Note that survey results will not be immediately available upon completion, but we WILL post the results publically in 48 hours--along with our announcement on subsequent plans.

If the community votes to continue the blackout, we will leave the subreddit in Restricted mode for one additional day, so that people have a chance to see the update. We have also created a temporary blog here, and in the meantime any announcements we make on Reddit will also be posted there. If the community votes to stay dark and you miss the announcement or you are just curious what the survey results were, you will be able to find them there. We recommend saving that link, but if you forget we will also link to it in our subreddit descriptions, so that it will show up if you try to visit the subreddit while it's been set back to private. Sound good?

Lastly, we realize that many of you may not be interested in or able to use Reddit after all of this is said and done. With that in mind, we have been investigating some options for these people. Stay tuned and we'll announce more details when we can. (and don't miss the survey questions about this topic)

If you have any questions or concerns, please voice them on reddit (poll up for 48 hours only).