8 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
View submission: The history of the /r/xkcd kerfuffle.
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Comment by FunnyMan3595 at 09/02/2014 at 16:11 UTC
16 upvotes, 1 direct replies
It's not cowardice. Cowardice would imply that they would face some danger if they made the change, or that it was difficult. It's their site; making the change would be easy.
The problem is that it's a hard issue. They don't want to put themselves in a position where they're disrupting their users. And they don't want to become arbiters that try to herd all of us cats. Subreddit drama is a pretty common occurrence. Control from the top is both untenable and undesirable.
I'm sure that /r/holocaust and /r/xkcd bother them, but they already made the choice to let subreddits have autonomy. Their hands are tied unless they go back on that promise. I'm sure they'd love to find a perfect solution that keeps the autonomy but prevents abuse, but we live in an imperfect world. It may not exist.