I want to begin by apologizing for my unexplained and unannounced two weeks absence. Two weeks ago today, I suffered a minor heat stroke while at work and haven't felt nearly back at full strength since. I've also been focusing on some IRL matters, and decided it best to stay away for a while. I apologize to anyone who messaged me during my absence; I believe I've replied to all of you, but please let me know if I haven't. Now to other matters.
20k Subscribers
We have hit 20k subscribers! Unfortunately, I am going to have to delay the promised celebration for a multitude of reasons, which I will now explain. I hope that everyone can understand and not hold it against us.
Our first problem was evaluating whether or not vendor prizes for competitions would be allowed by Reddit or whether these prizes would land us in hot water and compromise the existence of the sub. Reddit admins have their eye on /r/DarkNetMarkets and have given us very strict rules to abide by, and vendor prizes may violate those rules. We are still discussing ways around this and will message the admins if necessary to gain clarity.
Secondly, our mod staff is not nearly at full force right now and we would like to have as much moderator involvement as possible when we hold the celebration. Summer is a very busy time for us and lately we've been hard pressed to find a day where we have more than two or three active mods here. This will greatly improve when summer ends.
Due to the above reasons, we will be re-scheduling the celebration for when we hit 25k subscribers. This will give us much more time to plan contests, coordinate vendor involvement (if we get that cleared), and generally making it the best we can.
Thank you to all our subscribers
Lastly, I'd like to again thank all of you for your participation and contributions to /r/DarkNetMarkets. This subreddit is nothing without its users creating quality content and making this place better. You guys/gals rule <3 <3 <3 specifically, I'd like to thank each of you who have contacted the mods in the past three weeks following our request for greater participation and bringing matters to our attention. We've seen a great increase in the number of users messaging us with comments/questions/concerns, and we absolutely LOVE it. You're helping us out a ton while ensuring that we don't overlook what matters to you. Thanks!
nice to have you back.
and hope you feel better!