EDIT: Awww you're all a bunch of ass kissers lol, and we love you all. Thanks for the support guys and gals. It takes all of us to make this place wonderful.
TL;DR: Read the bold shit for sure, and at least skim the rest. I'd like to start off by thanking each and every one of you for your presence and contributions to /r/DarkNetMarkets. The very nature of our content here fosters a huge amount of controversy, fights, and unpredictable events; however, you guys and gals typically do a great job of always being as helpful and courteous as possible. This not only makes /r/DarkNetMarkets a great place to learn about and discuss the DNMs, but also makes our (the mods) jobs much easier because everything runs more smoothly. Again, thank you so much <3 despite the unavoidable dirty laundry and whatnot that every medium/large subreddit has to deal with, I'm very proud of our community here and what we represent; and it's all made possible by the content provided by our subscribers.
On that note, I'd like to cover a few points that will hopefully help our subreddit grow and mature further. This is all just stuff off the top of my head, so I apologize if I skip around a bit. I'll try to organize it as best as I can.
We are ALWAYS open to hearing suggestions/concerns, and in fact we'd love more of them than we've been getting. It's been unsettling (to say the least) to read some of the comments in the past few days pertaining to discontent with how /r/DarkNetMarkets is operated; not unsettling simply because of the criticisms themselves, but because none of these issues were ever brought to the mods before they were posted. The very last thing we want is to have frustrated users. I want to make this as clear as possible: ANY suggestion/concern you may have can be discussed if you simply message the moderators about it. We have made many subreddit changes directly because of messages from our users. You may see something we don't see, or have an idea that has never even crossed our minds; but we have absolutely no way of implementing them if they never reach us. Anything submitted to the mods will be properly discussed and addressed, no matter how trivial or stupid it may seem to you (or us lol). All we ask is that when you send us a concern/idea, you come with a good attitude. It's hard for us to discuss your issue if you're being rude or snarky. Give us respect and I promise we'll give it right back. TL;DR: We welcome and appreciate your concerns/ideas, but we're not mind readers. Hit us up with a message and we'll discuss it together.
As we rapidly approach the milestone of 20,000 subscribers, the mods are preparing to go all out to celebrate this accomplishment. We're still in discussion about what all we want to do and the details, but I have a feeling that it's going to come out awesome. There will likely be some competitions, and while Reddit gold is cool and all, we'd love to have some more enticing prizes to offer; this is where we want to ask for help from vendors, and hopefully we can help you as well. Any vendor who would like to contribute a contest prize, large or small, can message the mods and we'll work it out. We don't expect charity and we understand that most vendors can't/won't be able to help, but we appreciate any that can and we hope that your contribution will be paid back to you in the amount of publicity you receive. Anyways, we're excited for the plans in the making, and the party starts when we hit 20,000!
This is just a note regarding the mod team and our duties here at /r/DarkNetMarkets, in an attempt to get us all on the same page with similar expectations. Please keep in mind that every single one of us are unpaid, real people who fulfill our mod duties in our spare time in order to contribute to this community as best we can. There have been many users lately who have expressed dissatisfaction with the mod team, but I believe that this comes as a result of greatly differing expectations. This subreddit in particular requires a large number of mods and time spent daily moderating, in order to keep things under control as well as keeping our subreddit free from material that could get our sub banned by Reddit admins. We have been given strict rules on what we can and cannot allow, so we have to keep a watchful eye at all times. As you can imagine, this isn't always easy when you have shit going on in your real life. Some of our moderators have made sacrifices in order to spend more time here that no one but the mod team will ever know about; at the end of the day, we choose to be here and we want nothing more than to be able to make this community the best it can be.
We are human beings, which means that we are imperfect and will (and have) let you down. We make bad decisions at times, we lose our tempers, we can be immature and childish. We can admit that. But we are dedicated to what we do and I personally feel blessed to be a part of a team that works their asses off to help make /r/DarkNetMarkets better every day. If you do not like something we have said, how we conduct ourselves, or anything else, again, come talk to us and maybe we can do something about it. We're not unreasonable people; all we ask is that you communicate with us and don't bring a negative attitude.
END NOTE: One last reminder that we'd love to have vendors who are willing to contribute a contest prize, and please message us if this interests you. We're ridiculously excited for the day we hit 20,000, this may be more of a week long celebration than a one day fiesta lol, so be prepared. Thanks to everyone for your understanding and cooperation.
Hugs 2016.