Greetings /r/Europe!

We have tallied up the votes of the [API voting thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/14egl02/api_protest_next_steps_voting_thread/). We once again would like to point out that we’re aware that our method had to exclude many lurkers as well as anyone who would have liked their votes to remain secret, given the lack of options by reddit itself to ask for community input this approach was however the best we could come up with so far.

Thank you to all of you for your participation and your mostly wholesome comments, no matter your opinion on the issue. <3

## The options were:
A. I want /r/Europe to continue participating in the protest. (If this option wins, a second vote will be held where you can choose your preferred form and duration of protest.)

B. I want /r/Europe to return to business as usual as quick as practicable

Because we wanted this vote to be as representative as possible of the r/Europe community, we only counted votes of people with at least 200 karma on r/Europe while also having an account older than 4 weeks. As a results, we discarded 4309 votes. If we includes these votes, option A wins with an even higher percentage: 83.38%.

## The results:
### Total valid votes: 3095
### A: 2434 / 78.59%
### B: 662 / 21.41%
### Invalid A (due to karma threshold): 3740
### Invalid B (due to karma threshold): 569

###[Accumulated votes per hourly slot](https://i.imgur.com/BNtqL9U.png)
###[Votes aggregated by hourly slot](https://i.imgur.com/REJGbms.png)

## **/r/Europe will stay in the protest in some form and we will communicate as such to the Admin account that is in touch with us.**

## What are our options? What is off-limits?
* Some communities (for example /r/Finland) have been told that “closing forever does not make sense” and that “polling to close is not a viable option” – **Any option available will have a strict time limit** after which voting will continue ~~until morale~~ until Reddit Inc. improves or our community wishes to stop protesting.
* Some communities (for example /r/interestingasfuck) have chosen to turn NSFW and spamming explicit content. In response their moderator teams have been removed with the following explanation: “*Mods should not make malicious changes to their communities, such as allowing rule-violating behavior or encouraging the submission of sexually explicit (18+) content in previously safe-for-work spaces.*” – **Any option available will not be one that asks of the /r/Europe mod team to encourage submission of sexually explicit content or allow rule-violating behavior regarding [reddits side wide rules](https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy).**

###Some obvious suggestions:

* Go back to private for 7 days. Reddit Admins have told other communities that going private indefinitely is not an option, this option would cause obvious issues with search indexing and ad revenue. This option also removes any ability to share content with other users on reddit and is likely to be immediately rejected by the Admins. /r/Europe so far has not received any official communication that we’re not allowed to do that however.
* Go back to restricted for 7 days. This option has so far been tolerated by Reddit Admins. It also would allow for select posts or memes to go through.
* Make /r/Europe a more specific place for the next 7 days. Since sexually explicit content is known to be forbidden (rest in piece /r/euROPE, the bondage sub for all of Europe) we could for example limit posts to the finer aspects of European life: Alcohol and tasteful art in all of its forms (including artistic depictions of nudity). While not sexually explicit, we would also be inclined to mark those as NSFW. The mod team would have to deal with arguing where art ends and porn begins instead of where massacres end and genocide begins.

### But more important than that: What do **you** think?
* How would you like to see /r/Europe continue to protest?
* How would you like future votes to go and why?
* What would you like from us the mod team specifically?
* Anything you consider so crucial we should try to keep running?
* You’re welcome to state that you disagree with the result or method of the original poll but please try to be civil and constructive. We’re trying to work around the tools reddit does not have for this kind of issue so please have some patience with us as well.

____

We will do our best to turn some of your suggestions into options for a poll that will be posted on the 23rd of June at 19:00 CEST. Or 19:22 CEST again because the mod team enjoys arguing just as much as all of you do.

###**Restrictions regarding subreddit Karma are still in place, if you have less than 200 combined post/comment karma your comment will be autoremoved.**

###**HOW TO CHECK YOUR SUB-REDDIT KARMA**: Go to [your user page](https://old.reddit.com/u/me). On the top right hand, you’ll see “show karma breakdown by subreddit.” Click on that, and hey presto.

We sadly don’t have any other option available to us to limit the general userbase of reddit from participating. We are aware that this likely excludes many, many lurkers who care just as much as other users and we’re open to suggestions on how to handle this better. This is territory reddit is not designed for and we’re stuck between this option and letting all of reddit in on the discussion.

Thank you for trusting us and we wish you all a wonderful day.

Kind regards,

the mod team of /r/Europe.
_____

Update log:

22:07 20/06/2023: Prettified vote graphs

19 comments

  1. One idea I had, would be:

    Forbid speaking english, english articles are still allowed to be posted, but have to have their title translated into another european language. Also, I feel like, a 7 days limit is too short.

  3. I still thinks its ridiculous to hold a sub with over 4m subscribers hostage because barely 2.4k people voted for it in a massively brigaded poll, that by all means was layed out for this exact result.

    I think mods should just raise the requirements to make new posts, only enforce the absolute minimum sidewide rules and other than that dont participate. The last part goes to anyone else too, if you want to protest reddit go vote with your “wallet” and dont give reddit the ad revenue/user count.

  4. Do a series “penises of Europe” where people submit statues with the best penises. Then do ”Tits of europe” where people submit the best depiction of breasts in European art, a la marseillaise. That should get us through a week or two.

  5. There is nothing crucial or life saving here, so principals can be held.

    How about allow posting of links (but no original content), but absolutely no comments / discussion. This allows the sub to open and share interesting content, but removes the primary profit driver for Reddit which is user generated content in the form of OC and comments.

    Also, not for 7 days. Do this until a reasonable conclusion is found.

  6. I’d say leaving the fate of a community with 4.5 million members in the hands of 3000 people isn’t the best move, but at this point, seeing how the rest of Reddit is doing, it’s safe to say the platform is probably doomed and there’s not going to be a return to normal any time soon.

    In my opinion, we should make the sub nsfw and just fuck around until a real and viable competitor (not lemmy, lmao) comes around in a few months or so.

  7. Keep it to approved users only and randomly select 10 users with karma >1000 every week to be the content creators. You can’t do moddig from 3rd party programs, so you have to safeguard the community the best you can *wink*

  10. poll must be open up to when 10% of subscribers AT LEAST participate.

    If only less then 0.1% has voted, time for voting is too short or 99.9% of subscriber does not care about it.

    And that’s the result in fact.

    subscribers of r/europe don’t care, they just want to scroll in peace.

  11. As someone else suggested, mandate that everyone speak their mother tongue, and just have the post titles in English.

    We get to shoot into the dark what and whom to reply and if it’d be on topic.

  12. 4.5M subscribers, 3k valid votes and more than 4k invalid. Pretty telling of how important this protest really is.

  14. Make it only with AI generated nfsw pictures of former EU leaders.

    Also people should join Lemmy/Kbin or any of the alternatives and dump this shithole.

  17. I think the proposals that “Make /r/Europe a more specific place for the next 7 days” are too soft – reddit can still get ad revenue and with the free publicity they are getting from this debacle it might even be to their advantage in the long run.

    Could you set the subreddit to NSFW while announcing in a stickied post that NSFW material is in fact strictly prohibited and that normal rules apply? My understanding is that so long as the subreddit is set to NSFW reddit won’t get ad revenue from it. Failing that I would say we go private for 7 days and then have another vote on how to proceed.

  18. I think NSFW marked art posts would be a good compromise only if it actually impacts Reddit’s ability to advertise on the subreddit.

    My proposal would be to
    1) close r/europe
    2) create a new subreddit called r/EuropeNSFW or whatever which is marked NSFW so it is ineligible for advertising
    3) Pin a post to the top of r/Europe redirecting people to go to r/EuropeNSFW

  19. I’m for the “offend the American” option. Drinking, aesthetic nudity and art, naturism, benign objects that look like genitals or breasts… basically anything that gives the average prude an anheurism but doesn’t technically break the rules.

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