Honestly, it wasn't my intention to clog up your web site with stories about how great Voat used to be, or whatever. It's not exactly healthy for the site, and it's going to lure in the wrong element from Voat if they see a chance for a group cry session. But you guys seem baffled by what Putt is doing. I think it's worth understanding that Putt's overall decision making skills seem below average. I mean something technical when I say this. Like if I asked you that for x=5, would you rather have 5x +10 dollars or 4x + 25 dollars? What you'll notice about that decision that I've asked you to make is that there is a measurably wrong answer. My corollary to this is that despite what most people like to thing, I'd allege that many (if not most) of the decisions that we make have right or wrong answers. To the sense that I've been following Putt's decision making over the last three years, he actually gets it wrong more often than not. He seems like the type of guy who would lose to a group of five year olds at Monopoly, provided that the five year olds were pretty smart and had hustle. This type of deficit becomes very noticeable in someone running a for-profit business, which is exactly what Putt's doing My other point about him, is that I've gotten the distinct impression about Putt that he has below average empathy. I don't think he understands how other people see him, or else he *wouldn't* act the way that he does (see above). In particular, I don't think that he understands that the way that you talk to a group of your friends if you're planning a short rode trip, is different than you address a group of 1,000 users if you're hoping for them to provide you with free content. Especially if you're rolling out major rules changes. I'll call further attention to the big announcement that he had to make about 'builders vs. destroyers'. It's just so patronizing. As above, it's the sort of lecture you would give to a group of five year olds if you were coaching them on a sports team, or something. Or maybe it's something you would say to a group of old men if you were pontificating about life in the middle of a quiet fishing trip. Completely annoying if you're an average shitposter just goofing around at the local online water cooler, to find out that the lead admin views some of his customers as 'destroyers'. It's just not an effective message to sent to people if your overall goal is to inspire confidence. My point about all of this, is that there seems to be some mystique around Putt. But let's face it, during most of the time that Voat was experiencing it's biggest growth, Putt was *nowhere* near the site. Most of that growth was in the form of wave after wave of Reddit refugee. Putt didn't really have to do anything, which was where he seemed the most to shine. I get the feeling that a lot of you guys haven't reached the deduction that Putt was never that great, but it was very tempting for us to assume that he was when he wasn't around much and he let us use his site for free. What changed? As many have conjectured, I think that Putt probably had a day job until recently (or a serious girlfriend or a serious hobby) and so he didn't view Voat as anything other than a hobby project. He clearly had no plans to monetize it. When the Angel investor approached him, it doesn't appear that they had a big impact on things directly - I'll just wager that with money on the line, either Putt was motivated to quite his day job, or else just devote more time to Voat. He can't resist the urge to experiment with the site and just watch the effects of his decision making, assuming he can apologize later. Also he's too passive - his rules aren't strict enough, and so when it finally becomes painfully obvious that someone needs to be banned, he displays typical overreaction. Sorry, Putt I don't mean to slam you. You don't seem like a bad guy at all, you just seem like someone who's accidentally crashing one of my favorite web sites.