I like this idea, and went back to upvote it. Steve’s narrative so far has been to deride the protesting moderators as “not wanting to moderate”. This makes it clear that the mods want to moderate, but Steve is taking away the tools they need. Their alternative to opening is even more strict moderation, after all.

Interesting that they made it a upvote poll and not a Reddit poll. Are they throwing a bone to those of us still using third-party apps until they die? Or is it possible the mods have some tools to detect upvote manipulation that they wouldn’t have if it were a poll?

Look at what r/science did also. They announced they would open next week, but directly tied their opening with the mod tool Improvement announcement that was recently announced, and indicated that they would close up again if Reddit doesn’t deliver on schedule.