From what I saw the shutdowns began on Friday evening and subs started coming back on the Saturday morning (EST, and it was a holiday weekend in the US).
As it was a spur of the moment thing, subreddit mods couldn't have polled users for more than an hour or two or the momentum would've been lost
Yeah, that comes across as a hand-waving dismissal. 203 out of 230 voters in a one hour window in a community of 31,000 is -not- indicative of consensus, no matter how you slice or dice it.
Can't edit my original post, so here will have to do.
Do you honestly think that every sub which went dark for a few hours (when a large percentage of their users were probably asleep) should've held a week long 'should we go private or not?' poll?
As it was a spur of the moment thing, subreddit mods couldn't have polled users for more than an hour or two or the momentum would've been lost