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Removed as moderator of /r/Celebrities after over 14 years

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31–40 of 181 posts

Re: Removed as moderator of /r/Celebrities after over 14 years

#31
post #28
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The community subreddits are different - they often have a much more defined culture and purpose. Those are the ones which, if the moderators give up, will die. I am in some "community" subreddits and moderators are just there to enforce the rules that they made up and not everybody necessarily agree with. As an example, it's very common to have vague rules that silence some flavour of on-topic conversations... and…

Some of the smaller communities only exist because someone created and promoted them, set ground rules, etc. In the olden days the subreddit would be their personal PHPBB forum. Now they are just sharecroppers for Reddit, and guess what, Reddit isn't a better admin.

Most of the smaller communities only exist because someone was first to take the subreddit name, period. That doesn't say anything about the quality of their mods. And as I said most mods are power tripping and/or want to control the conversation. I am glad that they are getting removed for the good of the community.

Re: Removed as moderator of /r/Celebrities after over 14 years

#33

What's with the mostly nsfw content? Was that part of the r/celebrities protest?

It is part of a campaign based on the fact that Reddit doesn't run ads against NSFW content, so high user count subs can mark everything NSFW (whether it is or not) and hurt Reddit in their cashflow.

For some of the subreddits this isn't as far fetched as for others; /r/videos is more of a work to rule to protest given they're now taking swearing very seriously. You have to think of the 14 year old kids that use reddit.

Re: Removed as moderator of /r/Celebrities after over 14 years

#34
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Moderators absolutely can moderate without the API. Practically, and literally impossible. There's CP and other illegal material being posted in these subs every second. Without API access, you have to have dozens of moderators at all times checking every single incoming post.

Not to mention spam. There's lots of bots posting just avalanches of garbage upvoted by click farms. It's like these people are coming in driving cars and Reddit management is offering a sturdy pair of walking shoes to try to keep up with them.

Reddit found the one real solution for dealing with spam (human workers) for FREE and pissed it down the drain.

Re: Removed as moderator of /r/Celebrities after over 14 years

#35
post #19

[flagged]

At the same time, Reddit entirely depends on these people to keep these segments of website safe and decent (not to mention ad-friendly). And these people depended on efficient 3rd party tools to carry out this form of free labor.

It is a much more delicate balance of power than what is found on most other social platforms. Some described (aptly in my view) this status quo as more akin to feudalism than to a nation state. Yeah the "land" may belong to you, but being nice to your stewards goes a long way if you want your head to remain attached to your neck.

Re: Removed as moderator of /r/Celebrities after over 14 years

#37
post #5

It's interesting seeing this situation play out across different subreddits. There seems to be 2 kinds of subreddits - the "category" kind (simple, descriptive name) and the "community" kind (have a defined purpose, could exist under a whole range of names) The moderators of all of them see themselves as somehow owning the community, but I think that's less clear to the users. To most users, r/Celebrities is a catego…

I don't think ownership is the right descriptor for how most mods feel about "their" subreddit.

I would hazard a guess that most mods feel more like stakeholders, having already done a large amount of unpaid labour should entitle them to have some say over the future direction of that subreddit.

Re: Removed as moderator of /r/Celebrities after over 14 years

#38
post #31
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of the smaller communities only exist because someone created and promoted them, set ground rules, etc. In the olden days the subreddit would be their personal PHPBB forum. Now they are just sharecroppers for Reddit, and guess what, Reddit isn't a better admin.

Most of the smaller communities only exist because someone was first to take the subreddit name, period. That doesn't say anything about the quality of their mods. And as I said most mods are power tripping and/or want to control the conversation. I am glad that they are getting removed for the good of the community.

Yeah, it's not nearly as clear cut as someone running their own forum. It's almost irrelevant that someone happened to register /r/politics or r/worldnews first - those are categories of discussion, and so their size is directly proportional to Reddit's size. The moderators don't own that community (even if they think they do). If the moderators declare that they're moving to Lemmy, let them. I think they'll quickly realise that people aren't on those subreddits because of them.

There's a real frustration when you join a new subreddit, and you think you're joining a category of discussion and quickly discover (by having a post removed) that this particular category has someone who enforces a huge list of arcane rules.

Obviously there are exceptions. Some subreddits have non-obvious names, and were built into focused communities by the efforts of the moderators. But not all subreddits are equal, and I think this situation has revealed the gulf between them.

Re: Removed as moderator of /r/Celebrities after over 14 years

#39
post #5

It's interesting seeing this situation play out across different subreddits. There seems to be 2 kinds of subreddits - the "category" kind (simple, descriptive name) and the "community" kind (have a defined purpose, could exist under a whole range of names) The moderators of all of them see themselves as somehow owning the community, but I think that's less clear to the users. To most users, r/Celebrities is a catego…

You’re right that no mod owns a particular subreddit, but Reddit does not have a monopoly on communities either.

There are a bunch of forums online which will gladly accept an influx of refugees from reddit, and the world will move on. If there isn’t one, one will form, somewhere.

However, past behaviour also predicts future behaviour. The current actions of board of directors (and the silence of others) speaks volumes.

Reddit may go as far as salting the earth for communities that do end up successfully migrating. I wouldn’t put it past them to hire a troll farm to spam a niche community with low-quality content.

It’s been a nice break away from Reddit.

Re: Removed as moderator of /r/Celebrities after over 14 years

#40
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could not be more wrong. The work is mostly invisible to end users.

Not really. Sort by new and take a look yourself. Nonsense posts get downvoted before a moderator has to do anything. People who sort by top or whatever never see it.

I moderated a subreddit that went from 50k to 200k subscribers and a lot of automation makes it easier to handle standard spam, but 5-6 mods still spent a few hours every day to make it work. This doesn't show up in any sorting.

That's why I left.

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