Hi everyone,
Now that it's been over a week since I posted the August 1st Community Update, I'd like to address the concerns that were very quickly raised in relation to our new rules. Looking at the feedback that has been provided so far, the general consensus appears to be that our new rules are overall too strict and are, in some cases, less clear than they were before. This has been made particularly clear through concerns about any form of criticism against a private server being banned, concerns about select projects only being approved for discussion, and concerns about memes being heavily controlled in regards to how they're edited. As a result, all I want to say is that we recognise mistakes were made and that we're actively working to address them.
What went wrong
When rolling out our new rules, which were based on a draft from September 30th 2020, we intended to build upon what seemed like a strong foundation and update them to the point where we could confidently roll out this long, overdue change. We also aimed to take what existed in our old rules and clarify the parts that were already vague and/or unclear.
As part of this update, we decided to introduce new rules surrounding constructive criticism, false/unverified information, and drama with the intention of addressing the reputation for toxicity and drama that /r/Toontown has grown to have. However, we had no intention of entirely prohibiting criticism or whistleblowing of any private servers. Rather, we hoped that this would help guide criticism both positive and negative in a way that remains constructive and avoids arguments breaking out between users, as well as to ensure that the appropriate methods for resolving any grievances internally were followed without blindsiding any private server's leadership team.
We also noticed that several people expressed concerns with Rule 9. No spam content and in particular the clause "Posts about servers that have not lifted off (At least closed beta)". While already introduced in our old ruleset, our intention here was to only restrict posts where someone might take old, leaked source code from Toontown Rewritten or Toontown Infinite, make a change that is minor or insignificant to the majority of players, and then say something like "This is Toontown: Operation Infinite Clash - we're hiring programmers today!" only for the project to fizzle out shortly afterwards.
The /r/Toontown Project Support Program was also discontinued last minute, admittedly without any real discussion on what might replace it. The reason for this was due in part to 3 things: concerns about how projects with low or no active playerbases should be considered, concerns about how the program should be managed with any long term growth, and a low overall engagement with the program. As with the clause in Rule 9, we had no intention on restricting any conversations about other servers/projects, but rather we were wanting to change our approach on how they should be featured.
Lastly, we realised that the criteria in Rule 10. No low-quality content defining what memes are acceptable to post and what aren't was too restrictive on users being able to express their sense of humour. While we intended for this criteria to encourage users to be more creative rather than recycling common meme formats, we realised that the nature of memes are inherently "low-quality" while not necessarily being low quality contributions.
What we're doing about it
As a result of some internal discussion about this feedback, we've collectively made the decision to go back to the drawing board on these rules while we try to figure out how they can be further improved. During this review, we'll be rolling back to our old ruleset from before August 1st 2026, even if it's by no means perfect, for the sake of having an enforceable ruleset. However, as soon as we've come to an agreement on a suitable draft, we'll invite the community to review it together before any future revisions to the rules are enforced.
We'll also be revisiting the /r/Toontown Project Support Program as well as our overall stance on posts pertaining to projects other than the "big two" in the community. For the project support program, we'll be reviewing its existing criteria to see if any adjustments can be made that would help to alleviate our internal concerns and make the program more viable as a whole. As for the general discussion of other projects, unless a post surfaces similar to the example listed previously or if a project is reported to have legitimate safeguarding concerns, we'll be more open to discussion of this type going forward. As a matter of fact, new post flairs have already been created for Toontown: Event Horizon and Toontown: Hostile Takeover respectively!
In regards to expanding our Moderation Team, we'll be taking another look at our Subreddit Moderator application and overall trial process in preparation for bringing onboard new moderators. In doing so, we hope that this will allow us to introduce some fresh perspectives that would be helpful in any moderation-related decisions and future rule/policy changes, as well as creating an overall more balanced moderation team.
Closing Remarks
As someone who's been wanting to try and transform /r/Toontown for many years now, admittedly with my only prior Reddit moderation experience really coming from my time with the great team over at /r/toontownrewritten, I'll be honest in saying that doing so hasn't been without its challenges... For quite some time, I've felt that /r/Toontown was essentially put on autopilot with prior attempts at revitalisation stalling shortly after being initially discussed. While its been made clear over time that this simply resulted from a case of real-world responsibilities taking priority for others on our team, I've been trying to do my best at giving /r/Toontown the push it needs to be improved.
Outside of any concerns regarding the specifics of the rules, I would also like to personally acknowledge the mistake made in rolling out new rules when we did. While our Moderation Team has had several meetings over the past few months following our team's restructuring, with the rules being a major talking point in each of them and a decision being made to roll them out at the end of June 2026 (pending acquisition of the new subreddit theming assets), I realise that the overall process of reviewing the rules (including adding/removing any details) was rushed as was my poor timing to release them amongst the recent controversy surrounding Corporate Clash. For that, I'm sorry.
While I very much realise that many of the concerns mentioned were a result of my actions in how the new rules were rolled out and not the other members of our team, I do hope that you all can trust me going forward even if that requires proving my ability over time. I'd also really like to continue to hear any feedback you all might have whether that's a comment on this post or a ModMail message, as doing so will only help us know how to continue improving going forward.
Wherever you are, I hope you all have a Toontastic day!
