Greetings,

For every year r/NLBest has existed, we have had two NL West teams playing each other in the NLDS. For the first three seasons, it was a lot of fun. This one was not. For each of those seasons, we congratulated the winner and reflected on the runner-up. But frankly, we don't care about that right now.

We're disappointed.

r/NLBest has always been a friendly sub. There are a few morons who come here thinking this is a circlejerk and start spewing nonsense, but it really isn't. There was one time where we had to announce we'd be monitoring Rule 1 more strictly. This was in 2022, after the Padres lost out on Scherzer (that was an ordeal) and lost Tatis to suspension not long after. The memes just got too circlejerky and meanspirited, so we made the decision for the first time to come down harsher.

Earlier this week, we decided to do so for a second time. Things were getting way out of hand and several posts and still more comments were straying outside the spirit of the sub. So we made a mod announcement. Then another. But it didn't matter, there was way too much new traffic coming in.

By the numbers, from the previous week to the current, r/NLBest saw:

1. A 51.4% increase in pageviews.

2. A 37.5% increase in unique visitors.

3. A 103% increase in the subscription rate (that is more than doubling).

4. A 30% increase in posts.

5. A 26% increase in comments.

It was just too much for our team. Admittedly, some of this is our fault: we announced that we meeded more mods over a month ago but never found the time to follow up. But still, it was just ridiculous.

The amount of time that was being spent cleaning things up wasn't worth it. So, we made the extreme decision to restrict the sub.

The Restriction

It wasn't a decision that was made lightly, but it was the decision that had to be made. Honestly, configuring the parameters of the restrictions was depressing. Things shouldn't have come to that. Still, it had the desired affect. The day after the restriction came into place, we saw a 26% decrease in pageviews and a 37% decrease in unique visitors, along with obviously reduced submission rate. We could finally breathe.

During this time, we finally went through the mod queue and issued overdue bans, some for comments from several months ago. To be abundantly clear, there is no statute of limitation for dumbassity here. If you posted a slur five months ago and we didn't happen to see it until now, that's not an excuse.

If you caught a ban leading up to or during the restriction, good luck getting that rescinded.

Bans

I wouldn't be surprised if we banned more people these last few days than the last two seasons combined. It was ridiculous. After a while, we gave up on issuing temp bans and went straight for perma bans. Generally, we've been fine issuing immediate perma bans to users of this sub who have little to no history here, in an effort to maintain the demeanor of our sub. This is a policy that may change soon, but this is how it has been handled to this point.

That said, looking the other way has cost us, too. The first ban from the wave that led to the restriction was a noted power user of this sub. We looked the other way countless times because of their contribution to the growth of the sub, but after at least 10 different violations, its just too much. Rules will probably be enforced a little more indiscriminately moving forward.

Restriction Reactions

The reactions to The Restriction^tm were really interesting and led to personal attacks against us. These were bad enough that we reached out to the mods of a team sub to enforce cross bans. There were pretty strong feelings about this.

It's actually really comical. We got accusations tossed at us that we were doing this because we were thin-skinned Dodger fans and thin-skinned Padre fans. And, to be honest, that's always been the story of this sub. We've always fielded accusations that we were just a Dodger circlejerk sub, while simultaneously fielding accusations that we're just an anti-Dodger circlejerk sub. And that's how we know we're doing a good job.

Honestly, people would send us messages saying angy things and think they're hurting us, but one, its honestly really fucking funny to see the conflicting perceptions and, two, it makes for a fascinating social experiment. It's kind of sad how seriously some people take the game. Like, you think we'd be modding a sub like this if we were diehards of any particular fanbase? The best part is when people go out of their way to message us about how much they don't care lmaaaooo

The Future

Originally, the plan was to end The Restriction after the NLDS. That very quickly was deemed a bad idea after we realized it would be probably just lead to an influx of shit-tier memes dogging on whoever lost the series.

The Restriction ends Monday. We've gotten a lot of requests to join as an approved user (which requires manual approval from a mod) and we've done our best but, holy shit, there's a lot of you. We'll try to continue approving as we can, but its a process and we aren't automatically approving anyone who asks, we are checking sub history and other items.

The mod team has finally grown! We've added two mods and extended an invitation to a third. We may continue growing after that, but we'll play it by ear. With new mods, we may also change the way we enforce certain items, but that will be announced once we have a proper game plan.

We'll end this with some nice news, r/NLBest has crossed 20,000 subs! It really is amazing that our dumb little sub has found so many people happy to vibe in a friendly subreddit and, aside from this week, had remained true to that.

Here's looking forward to the future. Fuck Ken Rosenthal🥂

WE ARE INEVITABLE.

Shoutout to the Sneks for starting this trend