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The note Reddit sent to moderators threatening them if they don’t reopen

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Re: The note Reddit sent to moderators threatening them if they don’t reopen

#301

I think this will be a net positive even if they are replaced with worse moderators. Users are more than capable of self-regulating their communities and upvoting quality content. Moderators are too concerned with weeding out people and bad content as soon as possible and as much as possible. But it's OK to have a bunch of low quality comments and posts, and just let the users decide what gets seen by most of the peo…

I don't know if you have much experience managing an online community, but I believe you will discover eventually that everything you claim about self-regulation is false. A small fraction of bad actors can do enough damage to make a community not-self-sustaining.

There's a reason every bar has bouncers.

Re: The note Reddit sent to moderators threatening them if they don’t reopen

#302
post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you look through the top voted AMA's of all time there That doesn't account for user growth though. You should normalize the figures by dividing by the total number of Reddit users, or at least IAmA subscribers.

If the sub is experiencing substantial user growth isn't that an indication that the sub is doing well?

No, /r/IamA was a default subreddit for many years, thus all new users would get subscribed to it (I think defaults have been gone for some years now, but subscriber inflation already happened)

Re: The note Reddit sent to moderators threatening them if they don’t reopen

#303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's unfortunate, and you've managed to present one of the few good counterexamples there. Unfortunately, " " isn't really a great topic for a singular community, since cities, by nature, host multitudes, and are inherently political entities. The best alternative is probably to create your own sub, or try to talk to one of the mods about it in private so as not to create drama.

Unfortunately messaging the mods about moderation activity is also against the rules of that particular subreddit and will also result in a ban.

Okay, you got me, those mods are on a power trip lol.

Although it depends on the size of the subreddit - you tend to get a lot of idiots who complain incessantly about plainly justified moderation, and we have to remember that these are literally unpaid volunteers, they're entitled to take actions that make their job easier.

Re: The note Reddit sent to moderators threatening them if they don’t reopen

#304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counter-argument: 99.996% of Reddit users apparently don't want to be moderators or they already would be, so finding more will be very hard.

I really don't think that's the case. If you want to mod r/politics, you don't just raise your hand and then get mod powers. Moderators are a closed group.

You can create your own subreddit and be the sole moderator of it in about sixty seconds of effort.

Re: The note Reddit sent to moderators threatening them if they don’t reopen

#305
post #282

I mod a top-1000-by-subs subreddit with about 800-900K subs. It has tight rules and aggressive automods. And people like that subreddit. Not gonna lie, if reddit strips our moderation, once the automod rules get figured out by the spammers, the value that particular subreddit will collapse into trash and spam. so, sure, aim that footgun and start pulling the trigger... go on then.

[flagged]

Gosh that’s a bit mean

Re: The note Reddit sent to moderators threatening them if they don’t reopen

#306
post #16

They’re gonna be left with bottom of the barrel mods. It’s a thankless task to begin with - a marginal proposition at best. Add some threats as a thank you for the unpaid work and it becomes downright abusive Who the hell is going to want to mod in that context?

Wouldn’t a properly prompted LLM be an OK mod?

No. It would be able to do some of the parts of moderation everyone would find easy, none of the stuff people would find hard and would cost a lot.[1] There are AI-powered companies and tools[2] that help with moderation but nothing that can automate everything that human mods do on any site with a reasonable user community.

[1] Source: am responsible for trust and safety including the tech solution and the moderation team for a 1bil+ views site. [2] For example https://hivemoderation.com/ or https://www.openweb.com/

Re: The note Reddit sent to moderators threatening them if they don’t reopen

#307
post #282

I mod a top-1000-by-subs subreddit with about 800-900K subs. It has tight rules and aggressive automods. And people like that subreddit. Not gonna lie, if reddit strips our moderation, once the automod rules get figured out by the spammers, the value that particular subreddit will collapse into trash and spam. so, sure, aim that footgun and start pulling the trigger... go on then.

[flagged]

Id agree that some mods are mostly narcissists with elitist visions on a power trip. Ive been banned from large subs that I have been contributing to for years. When my political believes did not conform with the mods political beliefs, I was perma-banned without warning for a post made in a different sub.

These mods are not democratically voted for, and it shows. r/newjersey is more like r/liberals or r/ilovephilmurphy and that's unfortunate. How can a sub that represents an imaginary boarder only allow for political discussion that aligns with current elected leaders? Reddit is starting to show its true colors through this black out.

Re: The note Reddit sent to moderators threatening them if they don’t reopen

#308

Facebook has ~a billion or so~ users and is worth ~$500B. Reddit has ~hundreds of millions of~ users and is not worth anything like that. Why? Facebook's content is provided by all its users for free? So if Reddit can figure out a way to monetize it like Facebook, it's worth literally hundreds of billions of dollars. Which is why the leadership of Reddit will do anything if there's a chance that they can dramatically…

There’s no way reddit has anywhere near a billion users. It has millions. Facebook is ubiquitous, pretty much anyone from any age, gender and a country has heard of Facebook. Reddit is a big site, but it’s still a niche site when compared to the big social media giants. It probably has less users than twitter, which has a fraction of Facebook’s.

Re: The note Reddit sent to moderators threatening them if they don’t reopen

#309
post #84

I don’t blame them. Reddit owns the subreddits, not redditors. I have no idea why someone would put the time required into moderating a large sub for no money just for Reddit’s benefit in the first place. A Reddit model where the mods share in profits (kind of how YouTube creators do) would be interesting. But if you’re going to sign up for that, you can’t expect Reddit to just let you tank their site. It was never y…

> I have no idea why someone would put the time required into moderating a large sub for no money just for Reddit’s benefit feeling of power and purpose?

Pretty much.

Remember, "Most of What You Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People". https://np.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most_...>. This also applies to powermods, assuming they're not being paid on the side to push some ideology.

Re: The note Reddit sent to moderators threatening them if they don’t reopen

#310
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds to me like there are Top Mods who want to continue the boycott, with others who don't and that Reddit is looking at giving the other mods a path forward. One of the things I have noticed is that the boycott is not from the users but from the mods of the community. Even if the community had a vote, if you want to boycott fine but they are forcing others to go along with with them. So either they are not the…

Huh? All subreddits that have ran votes, the community has been in majority favor of closing.

Very likely non-representative due to sampling bias and brigading.
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