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I was banned from r/streetphotography with my first post because, despite it being a street photograph, the moderator on the clock at the time thought it was 't

I was banned from r/streetphotography with my first post because, despite it being a street photograph, the moderator on the clock at the time thought it was 'too derivative' - It was a permanent ban. Since then, I have taken tens of thousands of street photos, and the fact that I cannot post them on the most-used street photography subreddit is confusing and shitty.

practice9 4y ago
Similar problems exists with Wikipedia and StackOverflow moderators. IMO people who become moderators just enjoy exercising their (often unchecked) power in these online communities.
- Brusco_RF 4y ago
  When you frame it like that it becomes the tale as old as time; absolute power corrupts absolutely.
jrockway 4y ago
I got banned from r/AskReddit for posting the Chicago Transit Authority's customer service phone number, because it was "personal information". (In a thread about the CTA, no less. The rule is any comment that matches the regular expression /\d{3}-\d{4}/ is a permaban.) I also got kicked out of a Discord server I moderated because someone asked to be nagged about doing their homework, and I nagged them, and then someone in the server created fanart of my anime profile picture hitting their anime profile picture on the head with a magic wand, and I pinned it. I thought it was hilarious and I treasure it to this day. But that apparently was the last straw. ("There must have been some underlying issue," I hear you cry. There was. There were some differences of opinion on how to moderate the channel and the discord server. The community skewed about 60% female, and I was pretty quick to time stuff out like "women should be in the kitchen, not watching a stream" when the inevitable edgelord showed up to troll. This was apparently a controversial opinion, and all the other mods that would back me up on those decisions had long since left. I was pretty late to the giving up party, but I'm glad I eventually left. Even if not on my own terms ;) The TL;DR here is yeah, it's really easy to be a bad community manager, and people are pretty good at easy things. Stir in a spoonful of power tripping, and the results are predictable.

practice9 4y ago

Similar problems exists with Wikipedia and StackOverflow moderators. IMO people who become moderators just enjoy exercising their (often unchecked) power in these online communities.

Brusco_RF 4y ago
When you frame it like that it becomes the tale as old as time; absolute power corrupts absolutely.

jrockway 4y ago

I got banned from r/AskReddit for posting the Chicago Transit Authority's customer service phone number, because it was "personal information". (In a thread about the CTA, no less. The rule is any comment that matches the regular expression /\d{3}-\d{4}/ is a permaban.) I also got kicked out of a Discord server I moderated because someone asked to be nagged about doing their homework, and I nagged them, and then someone in the server created fanart of my anime profile picture hitting their anime profile picture on the head with a magic wand, and I pinned it. I thought it was hilarious and I treasure it to this day. But that apparently was the last straw. ("There must have been some underlying issue," I hear you cry. There was. There were some differences of opinion on how to moderate the channel and the discord server. The community skewed about 60% female, and I was pretty quick to time stuff out like "women should be in the kitchen, not watching a stream" when the inevitable edgelord showed up to troll. This was apparently a controversial opinion, and all the other mods that would back me up on those decisions had long since left. I was pretty late to the giving up party, but I'm glad I eventually left. Even if not on my own terms ;) The TL;DR here is yeah, it's really easy to be a bad community manager, and people are pretty good at easy things. Stir in a spoonful of power tripping, and the results are predictable.