Uh... hi. Hatman again. Last time we had a talk it didn't go over so well, huh? Hopefully this one will go better.

Let's go ahead and take care of the elephant in the room. A lot of you were adverse to Rule 11 being introduced. Some supported it, some wanted a formal vote, and some of you were outright against the idea because it came across as "censorship". I really failed you guys by not giving the proper justification that we came to for enacting the rule, so I'll go ahead and give that now, as our thoughts when putting the rule in place:

• The Ghazi and drama threads were off-topic. KiA needs to stay on the path of discussing the various ethical breaches in the gaming industry, as well as important news pertaining to GamerGate. What goes on in GamerGhazi and the Twitter slapfights of e-celebs don't fall into those categories.

• They were cluttering the New queue. On off days, reactionary posts about Ghazi were common. Immediately after e-drama broke out, so did the posts about it. My god, how many people want to talk about InternetAristocrat leaving GamerGate?

• Not a lot of people seemed to like them. These things rarely ever hit the front page, and often received an even amount of up and downvotes. Off-topic posts that nobody likes shouldn't have a place here.

• 8chan does this exact same thing. E-celeb drama is regulated to its own megathread. Given that a megathread on KiA would need prime real estate in the form of a stickied post, the next best option is to regulate that traffic to a sub that we already had, but was not getting much use for—/r/KiAChatroom.

Hopefully that clears things up for you. I know for a fact that I did a bad job explaining the rule in that thread, and it ultimately felt rushed out the door, and for all those mishandlings, I'd like to personally apologize. With all this in mind, the mod team has finally come to an agreement on how to handle Rule 11. Ghazi posts will still be redirected to /r/KiAChatroom or /r/ShitGhaziSays. E-celeb drama or drama in general must contain the [Drama] tag in the post, so posts may be tagged appropriately. This has been split into Rule 11 and Rule 12, to make things a bit clearer. You'll notice that the top bar now has some shiny buttons for filtering posts by tags, too. This is the compromise that we're making, based on the feedback we received in the last sticky. Because of the concerns raised over the very real possibility that official votes could be brigaded, we will not be taking a vote on this matter. We're just going to have to stick with what we believe to be best for the community, and right now. We're going to ask you to trust us, of course, but if some of you can't do that, I understand, and apologize.

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While on the topic of voting, let's talk about the mod nominations. The community nominations for moderator have been closed, and the community vote will no longer take place. A lot of you brought up good points in regards to how nominations could get a less-than-ideal person onto the mod team. We were aware of the possibility that not-so-nice people may get the necessary nomination numbers, and we wouldn't have allowed them on the ballot, anyway. Additionally, we asked for accounts over 4 months old, so that any alts would have to predate KiA, effectively getting rid of the "KiA alts" used by unscrupulous people. But given that there were more votes in favor of "let's not have a vote" than not, it's clear that you guys thought it was an outright bad idea, and we've decided that, yeah, it was pretty dumb, in the end.

However, we do have a bit of good news. Our first choices for the mod selection were the two most popular nominees, by a long shot. Ultimately, we offered positions to both /u/Logan_Mac and /u/Meowsticgoesnya, who have joined the mod team, as of today.

In light of the community vote being closed, and of the mod team's choice overlapping with the most popular nominees, anyway, we've also decided to accept two applicants from the pool. Please welcome to the mod team /u/MannoSlimmins and /u/Hessmix!

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Let's move on to the Boycott Goal of the Day posts.

As some of you heard, we received final clarification on the allowance of BGotD posts. Here is the relevant modmail, in its entirety, as it stands at the time of posting. To sum it up, Boycott Goal of the Day posts are back on, provided we DO NOT include email addresses and names of representatives in the posts, themselves. Linking to customer care/feedback pages IS OKAY, but linking to sites/infographics that contain the email addresses and names of representatives IS NOT OKAY.

Basically, BGotD posts should be in the following format:

• NAME OF COMPANY, WHY WE ARE BOYCOTTING/SENDING EMAILS

• LINK TO CONTACT PAGE

• RELEVANT INFORMATION PERTAINING TO THE BOYCOTT

• REMINDER TO BE POLITE AND RESPECTFUL WHEN COMPOSING EMAILS

Of course, the BGotD posts don't have to follow this format, but it's the suggested template.

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What an update. Rules fixed, new mods are in, and BGotD posts are back on. I think that covers everything, for the most part.

As always, let us know how we're doing. And don't explode.

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Oh, and as pory said, we also have some exciting news for tomorrow.

At 2PM PST, Christian Allen (/u/Serellan) has agreed to do an AMA regarding his thoughts on #GamerGate. You may know him from a recent article he took part in. More on him here: https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/search?q=Christian+Allen+&restrict_sr=on&sort=relevance&t=all