4 ms·

Isn't a mod a volunteer position? Why waste years working for free without any control?

• julienreszka 7y ago
  Reputation. Power hunger. Ego trip. Many possibilities.
• erikpukinskis 7y ago
  Building wealth is not everyone’s primary goal.
  • philwelch 7y ago
    True. Wealth, at the scales most of us are familiar with, gives you autonomy over your own life. The motivations described here have more to do with the desire to exercise power over others.
• randrews 7y ago
  Precisely so you can enforce your views about wrongthink.
• greggman2 7y ago
  do volunteers for not-tech things have control? I don't feel like I'm working for free when I contribute to stack overflow. I feel like some company is running a mostly free site (until recently just job ads you can turn off). I volunteer to help others. I assume most others do the same. It just feels good in the same way I'm assuming other volunteer activities feel good. Of course not everything feels good but over all when I've managed to answer someone's question it feels like the same feeling I get helping someone on a non-tech way.
  • wolco 7y ago
    I understand the helping feeling. Stack overflow just hired a ceo to extract as much value as possible. They should pay you or reward you for years of service. You've saved them personally over 250k if you have been doing this for 5 years or more. Volunteering so a for profit company feels helpful but who are you helping? If no one volunteered then someone paid would perform the same tasks...
• faissaloo 7y ago
  It makes you feel important
• Permit 7y ago
  Same reason many people contribute to open source projects for free, often without any control (ie. they can be removed from a project for similar violations as the one linked here).
• michannne 7y ago
  Power is what it usually boils down to - power to control what may or may not viewed, power to revoke privileges, power to ban, it's very tempting, look no further than Twitch mods of large streamers.