Reddit has two conflicting aims. First, it tries to be a "community hub", like Forumer in the old days, where anyone can set up an "autonomous" messageboard (s

Reddit has two conflicting aims. First, it tries to be a "community hub", like Forumer in the old days, where anyone can set up an "autonomous" messageboard (subreddit) to support discussion among a particular subculture. Consider e.g. /r/smashbros. Second, it tries to be a "community-in-itself", complete with its own demonym "redditor", and a shared set of values, etiquette, and jokes/memes. These goals are fundamentally at odds. A community of competing factions -- some of which openly hate each other -- is hardly a community. A board for Super Smash Brothers players which must hew to the diktat of reddit at large is not really a community of Smashers. When a norm on Reddit at large is violated by a subreddit, the general population is incensed. When a rule is handed down from the admins to the moderators of a subcommunity, the members of that community feel they are being manipulated by outsiders -- even if they might have decided to enforce that rule on their own, if they had been left to their own devices. Reddit splits the baby and nobody's happy.