When I started this online diary about our plans to move to Florida three and a half years ago, I included links to five other websites in the sidebar that appears on every page of the site. They were inspirations, and I wanted them up front and center. I've never added or removed any of the links there since then. The link you clicked was one of those and it used to take you to Reddit's r/WaltDisneyWorld page. It's a great resource with wonderful contributors who just want to share their love of the parks with stories, news, images, videos and more. But after a recent run-in with the moderators of that subreddit, I've decided to no longer provide a link.
I'm telling the story below because frankly I need to vent and there's no way I'll be allowed to do so over there. But there's absolutely no need for you read this post if you don't want to! I just need to write it!
Long story slightly less long: While using the My Disney Experience App, I got a notification about something fairly big Disney was doing that was time-sensitive. I hadn't seen the news posted anywhere else, so I submitted it to r/WaltDisneyWorld along with a screenshot of my phone to provide the source of the news. My post was deleted almost immediately for being "spam". That was obviously a mistake, so I reached out to the moderators. I was told "any links to personal social media/websites" were considered "blogspam" and "self-promotion", and that they "should be removed before resubmitting" the post.
Now, I did not actually link to this website in the way they seem to be implying. But in order to add an image to a post on Reddit it has to be uploaded somewhere first. So I uploaded it here. There was absolutely no self-promotion. See for yourself. Click that link and you will see exactly what anyone from Reddit would have seen: the actual image and link I tried to add to my post. There's no way to know that's from this site unless you go up to the URL field in your browser and delete half the address!
But it's their site and their rules. So I reposted with the link removed. I added a note saying that while I do have a screenshot of the message as proof of the news, I had removed the image due to r/WaltDisneyWorld's self-promotion and spam rules, so people would have to trust me that this was real. Done, right? Everyone's happy, right? I share this big news, the subreddit doesn't have blogspam, and fellow Disney fans get to learn of the news... right?
Almost. The moderators apparently did not like me mentioning the edit and decided to add a comment to my post "thanking" me for resubmitting with the links to my "professional website removed" and reminding me that I'm "always welcome to promote [my] WDW-specific business ventures" in the appropriate self-promotion thread. What!? They were implying to all the readers there that the link to the ORIGINAL DISNEY SOURCE I was trying to share and was forced to remove was actually some kind of scam to fool people into patronizing my (non-existent) online company!
Needless to say I wasn't happy about being accused of trying to trick people when all I was literally trying to do was share news ABOUT DISNEY, not about me! So I responded... well, I tried to! The moderators had disabled any commenting on their comment! Classy. So I did the only thing I could do. I added an addendum to my post disputing that the link was anything other than a screenshot, that this page is the farthest thing from a "professional website" or "business venture", and that I hadn't even really linked to the blog itself anyway since the link went directly to the screenshot image itself.
They then completely deleted the entire post.
Look, by removing the link to their site I'm not saying don't visit. There's a lot of good stuff there provided by a lot of lovely and sincere Disney fans. I'll still be reading – though I may be done contributing. But it seems like the mods may have a misguided sense about why we're there. Hint: it's not about them! No one else posted the time-sensitive news I was trying to share. People are going to miss out because of the ego of mods. I even asked them to post the information themselves if they weren't going to let me so that no one would miss it. As I said in my last message to them, I don't care about credit! This isn't my news to take credit for, nor is it theirs. But their apparently sacrosanct rules about linking away from their site, and their petty attempt to make me look bad when I casually mentioned the rule preventing me from posting the source of the news seems like credit and ego are what's important to them.
And if they're going to be petty because they want to ensure posts don't in any potentially slight way promote anyone but themselves, then I'm happy to reciprocate that pettiness by not allowing promotion of them on my site. I'm sure all the major traffic my business venture's professional website would have sent their way will be a big loss for them!
OK, I'm not as petty as them, thank goodness! Here's the link to Reddit's r/WaltDisneyWorld page.