As you know, our ability to moderate the subreddit has been impacted by reddit’s choice to eliminate many third-party tools. Others are not working as well as they did previously. One of the tasks we are no longer able to perform is sending modmail to a user who has blocked mods. This was possible previously, but no longer works.
Any user is welcome to block any other user they do not wish to hear from. This includes moderators – if you don’t want to see a moderator’s post, you can block them. Most of the time, we don’t even know when this has happened – until someone breaks a rule and we cannot send them modmail. Because modmail is how we do our jobs, we cannot moderate people we can’t communicate with. As a result, if you have blocked a moderator and break a rule, you will be banned from the subreddit because we have no way to communicate with you about the rule issue.
We are happy to reverse bans if the moderators are unblocked. A ban for blocking a moderator does not factor into the usual “three strikes” process – if the ban is removed, then only other warnings (posting spam, etc) will still apply. However, future rule-breaking will result in re-banning as appropriate, even if the user is not blocking moderators.
This rule change is a reflection of how moderation tools have changed due to reddit’s recent API pricing. We wish this were not the case, but this rule is in effect immediately and will remain in effect until the ability to send modmail to users who have blocked moderators is restored.