I don't really see why he decided to shut down the entire subreddit. He said that he left a decision on /r/art to the moderator's decision, but never said anything about consulting the team on /r/crappydesign. I mean, even if he really didn't want to moderate it anymore, he could have just left it to another person and peaced out. He didn't need to delete the entire sub. Even then, what does that really accomplish? Yeah, it's this symbolic protest against this "oppressive regime", but is shutting down one of the 900,000 subreddits really going to affect that much? If people really want to still see the same content, they can just make a /r/crappydesign2 or /r/truecrappydesign and continue on like nothing happened. However, it would have just been better to give it up, still make the same post, and just save everyone the hassle of finding a new place for the same content. On top of that, what is the message here? You protest a website that does whatever it wants without the consent of the community, even going as far as shutting down whole subreddits, by shutting down a subreddit without consulting anyone? There's giving them a taste of their own medicine, and in this context it sort of works, but is this action really any better than what the admins are doing right now? It'd be a more empathetic situation if he asked community, or at least the rest of the modteam, "Hey, mind if I shutdown the subreddit in protest?" That would make it look less like a temper tantrum. That's why I really like this site - the lack of centralization. Nobody can shut down a tag. Nobody has control over anything. It's all decentralized, which makes everything fair, which stops people from going on power trips.
A bunch were shut down Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/GoldTesting/wiki/amageddon Edit: fixed formatting
Those were just made private for a bit - he actually deleted the sub. It's just an overreaction.