We are the League of Legends community.

Over the past five years, the League of Legends sub-reddit has become
our home and our primary source for industry news, tournament
results, game play updates and discussions. While not all of these
discussions are intelligent, the point of Reddit has always been that
everyone has a voice. Everyone has the right to speak their mind. In
many ways, Reddit is the pinnacle of free speech in the internet age.
The moderators sole role is to prevent discrimination, spam and
ensure that everyone can exercise this right to free speech equally.
Unfortunately, the moderators of the League of Legends sub-reddit
have taken it upon themselves to abandon this duty and censor
important content. This is not the first time and, until a higher
authority steps in, will not be the last time.

This morning (being May 8th,
2015) , one of the industry's most reliable sources published a
seemingly innocuous article about a competitive team picking up a
player. Incarnati0n joining Cloud 9 is hardly a surprise, and as far
from an incendiary a news story as you can get. It contained official
statements from the organization and essentially functioned as a
press release. The rumors had been flying for months and most of the
community assumed that this roster move was only a matter of time.
Still, Incarnati0n joining Cloud 9 is major news and the article his
the League of Legends sub reddit. Then it was deleted. Not once. Not
ten times, and probably not even 100 times. Each time someone tried
to post the article to the League of Legends sub-reddit, a moderator
deleted it. We understand that there are rules, and that the
moderator team has the right to ban a specific person from posting to
the sub reddit, but what the LoL sub-reddit moderator team is doing
goes far beyond what anyone might consider reasonable. They also
deleted any posts that mentioned Incarnati0n or Cloud 9 by name. They
even started deleted posts that referenced a nameless European player
joining a nameless North American organization. Any post that in any
way referenced Incarnati0n joining Cloud 9 was deleted. Simply
because Richard Lewis was the first to break the news story. As soon
as another news source reported the roster move, direct links to
those news sources and posts that referenced Incarnati0n joining
Cloud 9 were allowed.

Right now, you're probably asking
yourselves why. That's a good question, and one the community has
been trying to get an answer to for a while now. The article in
question was written by Richard Lewis of the Daily Dot. Richard Lewis
has been arguably the most important journalist in the history of
competitive League of Legends. He has broke a wide range of news
stories from player acquisitions, to organizational abuses, internal
Riot (the developer of League of Legends) issues and the abuses acted
upon the journalistic community by the League of Legends sub-reddit
moderator team. He is absolutely a necessary existence for the League
of Legends community as a whole and that community relies on the
League of Legends sub-reddit for easy access to all League of Legends
related content. However, the sub-reddit moderators refuse to allow
any of his content and any content that references his content to
exist. To the League of Legends community at large, this is
unacceptable. We understand that there are rules, and that the
moderator team has the right to ban a specific person from posting to
the sub reddit, but what the LoL sub-reddit moderator team is doing
goes far beyond what anyone might consider reasonable.

Many of us are not Richard Lewis's
biggest fans. It's not easy being Woodward and Bernstein. When you
report on the darker sides of the industry, you make enemies. But
that is why Richard Lewis is so indispensable. He's a throwback to an
age where journalists strove to make a difference over making a buck.
We need more journalists like Richard Lewis.

Reddit is a longstanding opponent of
internet censorship. We as a community, and you as a company, have
fought against SOPA, PIPA and any other legislation that threatened
the freedom of the internet. We've fought against corporate attempts
to segregate the internet based upon how much websites and users were
willing to pay. Legislators and Corporations believe themselves
powerful enough to simply bulldoze their way through. Fighting
against such blatant censorship is easy. It's the knife in the dark
that you have to worry about. We are here to shine a light on the
darkness.

The problem is, our hands are tied. We
have tried to discuss the moderator's behavior, and the general state
of journalism in eSports, but the moderators delete any such attempt.
We've tried to appeal to their sense of justice, and the letter of
the law, but those appeals go unanswered. If we could impeach our
moderator's, we would. But we don't have that power. You do.

Thus, we the undersigned, hereby
petition the Reddit Team to intercede on our behalf and end moderator
censorship to ensure that the League of Legends sub-reddit is allowed
to operate in the manner it was intended. A community where the
veracity and importance of its content is decided by the users, not
by the moderator team.