So recently I am having some problems with "Choice of Games subreddit, especially in its moderation since its only moderator (at the time I was writing this) is an employee at COG and his recent actions on the subreddit.
For some context, there is this post of another user asking about the criteria on posts in the subreddit and asked if it was nitpicking from Jason (aka the only mod before he added an inactive 9 months old account that did not interact with the subreddit or whatsoever before) due to the fact that some topics involving Hosted Games (a company that COG created where the people that werenât hired as full employees to COG are allowed to post) were removed with no explanation.
Because It seems to be a real common error that happens in the subreddit, I decided to answer it by explaining that HG posts were removed with no explanation and since there were no rules at the time he posted the question, I explained that if the post had HG content then it should be posted on the HG subreddit instead (even though the subreddit is much less active and has only has 1k members while the COG subreddit has 6k members) and answered that he does remove topics that he doesnât like/made moderation decisions that were nitpicking in which I gave two examples by dramas that Jason did nitpicking and showed an imgur of a thread that Jason nuked because it questioned " if it is company policy to allow the advertisements which the company would be hesitant or outright refuse due to authorâs standing" I also latter showed a link where it had more information from other COG dramas and basically functioned as an archive (NOTE: I would like to say however that this one was 100% my mistake as you could say that it was used to cause unnecessary drama in which I only realised after some time)
After that, Jason went in and deleted my comments and banned me from both subreddits
And he was quite rude when answering some questions and saying things in a passive-aggressive manner and saying things like âI appreciate that you think that, but you are wrong.â when a person corrected him when he said that HG and COG player bases are different even though that everyone pretty much likes the same things and most the times when a poll is created with the options in which company they prefer, everyone ends up voting HG but having favorites in COG.
But even though I donât agree with all of his actions he did recently, I got to give props to him since he added the rules now to not confuse new posters, he also added some more moderators in the HG subreddit soo itâs going to have some other people point of view for a chance.
I have to be honest, Iâve seen people talking about this on 4 different forums and being toxic and Iâd rather not have it spill over here, it seems like it will just attract a lot of ruckus without bringing anything too helpful.
(Note: Iâm just a random forum member and donât have any authority).
In any case, I know from experience it feels bad to be banned from subreddits (I got banned from Indiegames or something years ago for spanning IF links too much) so I know you must be feeling pretty bad!
Yeah, A Lot of people got angry from this from what I saw (hell, even in the post there were a lot of people calling Jason a bad mod and saying to create their own subreddit), I will assume its because since the examples I gave were pretty much âcontained to the publicâ it contributed on making some people becoming toxic.
All I know about this whole debacle is that the new subreddit is called âinteractivefictionsâ. You could pop over there and see if itâs a better place.
r/interactivefictions and the Gathering Stardust people were splinter groups that in my opinion were overreacting in a lot of ways (but they should do them and are perfectly free and welcome to even if the CoG moderation staff felt they should be punished for leavingâŚ) but this thread refers to some of the more dedicated CoG fans who simply wanted to hang on out the reddit and discuss the games they were buying as paying customers, now being treated like theyâre the lowest dirt beneath Jasonâs feet.
The discussion where the ban occurred was on r/choiceofgames in the topic What is the actual criteria for your posts being removed on this sub?
Although I would mention to @Whitenight that the other owner of CoG is prominent in this whole community, hosting the entire IFDB games on his servers and part of the group that runs the IFComp. So I donât see this as a place for ranting or complaining about the way the company is run gaining a lot of traction and wouldnât have bothered making a thread like this myselfâŚbut wow, can fans of the games not be free to discuss the games they PAID for even on reddit? Why is a subreddit for fans run by the owners of the company in the first place? Very good points were raised in that discussion and Jason just goes around sneering âthanks for telling me how to run my own companyâ and that he only answers HONEST questions. âŚw.hen the topic was never how COMPANY felt about Hosted Games, but the way the subreddit is run.
Like others there I donât even understand the point of having a sub if itâs run the same way and by the same people as the same forum, and people get comments deleted for not knowing about rules that
only matter to Jason, most customers do NOT even know Hosted and Choice are different companies. The people who play Choice also play HG and make no distinction.
did not exist as written rules at the time and existed only in Jasonâs mind.
The only other place Iâm aware of to take this discussion is to that other CYOA site with the meme forum that hates CoG so I hope it will be taken seriously here and not shut down, because again we literally canât even feel safe using the reddit to express complaints.
IMO if Jason cares at all about the company, he will step down from running the sub and leave it to the dedicated fans. He is burning up all good faith and good will among the people the company depends on to exist, and itâs not the first time he causes these debacles. Like certain former presidents, maybe some people should just not have a platform to cause division when they only use it for selfish personal reasons.
I will just finish by saying that so many Hosted Games are EXCELLENT AND FUN, I support these authors and itâs a sad day to see them dismissed and talked down about this way by the owner of the very company their hard work supports.
It seems the actual discussion about the Reddit issue comes from new user accounts that have participated in no other forum activity except responding to this thread.
We welcome anyone, and discussion of Hosted Games or Choice of Games is perfectly fine here, but as @zarf said, this is not the venue to name names and publicly air grievances about specific people per our Code of Conduct.