Everyone needs to chill. /r/Splatoon went private in support of the reddit community as a whole.
Reddit has had problems support the moderators that devote their time to curating content FOR FREE. /u/Chooter's dismissal from the company was just the straw on the camel's back. This is something that has been building up for a long time that is just now getting the chance to fully develop.
Even so, There was no warning, asking, or even running it by the community (many other subs at least talked with their communities before doing so), and when a mod did reach out they simply told us to chill... Not everyone on that sub frequents all of reddit. So the sudden blockage would be surprising for anyone who's not a big reddit goer. Even if they went private to support the "community as a whole" they needed to run it by their own friggin' community before going for the gusto, and not immediately responding to frustration with condescension. Mods shouldn't be making arbitrary decisions that affect everyone like that.
Besides apparently only a handful of mods knew about it, and the "head mod" just did it without running it by anyone, which surprised even a few mods... I'm sorry, but they handled it horribly.
EDIT: I also want to add: most forum moderation has been free since dial up - it's kind of a community service type job. You're not supposed to expect things out of it aside from a rewarding community. I'm not saying they don't deserve respect, but they also took it too far. We're users and we add the content to curate... Without us they don't have that. It's a machine every gear needs to work in tandem to produce results, when they start grinding, or one gear stalls out for some seemingly random reason - you get problems, and working in tandem means communication BEFORE you make big decisions like that.
