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"Power" moderators, that is people who moderate a large number of subreddits, are untenable. It is not possible to effectively or fairly moderate dozens of comm

"Power" moderators, that is people who moderate a large number of subreddits, are untenable. It is not possible to effectively or fairly moderate dozens of communities, even if you were to spend all your waking moments doing so. This is, in part, why it's so common for popular submissions to be locked or deleted because "y'all can't behave". The people that do so are largely doing it for their own self-gain (e.g., self-promotion) or because it makes them feel important. I had a very low stress job for a few years and ended up as a moderator for over a dozen large subreddits, including a few defaults. Socializing with Reddit's prominent moderators was enlightening.

Y_Y 4y ago
Please tell us more about what you learned from socialising with these "power mods", I think it would be enlightening to us too.
Mezzie 4y ago
I wonder if/how a hard limit on number of communities moderated would work? Make it so one person could only mod 2-3 subreddits. Unfortunately, this would require some work from Reddit the company to keep those same powermods from just making new accounts so probably won't happen.
- hbn 4y ago
  They already have rules about making secondary accounts to evade bans, upvote yourself, etc. If anything it'd probably be easier to enforce a "no moderating a bunch of subreddits across multiple accounts" rule since it's mainly bigger subreddits that matter, and "mod teams of big subreddits" is a smaller group of people to monitor. And if there was really some big conspiracy to skirt around this system they'd have to organize on a platform outside of reddit, ensure everyone is always accessing through VPNs so reddit doesn't notice multiple accounts modding from the same IP, and hope no one ever defects and exposes the underground moderation ring.
  - Mezzie 4y ago
    It'd be logistically easier, I just doubt Reddit is going to put forth the money and staff time required to enforce it. Current enforcement is based on reporting, I believe, and don't reports go to mods first. And they definitely will organize off site. Discord is huge for this. I also bet they would use VPNs since a lot of them have the barest hint of tech knowledge and a burning ideological conviction they're doing something important. > hope no one ever defects and exposes the underground moderation ring. Man, whoever had the balls or ovaries to do that would be immediately smeared and mobbed.
  - greggarious 4y ago
    >They already have rules about making secondary accounts to evade bans, upvote yourself, etc. If that rule was enforced, huge swathes of the so called power mods (and admins) would be removed. That's probably why, much like Twitter, they declined to hire me on to work on anti-abuse technology. The so called humans in the loop are evil and replaceable.
- awillen 4y ago
  Reddit just doesn't have any incentive to do this - you're talking about people who are doing free labor for them. Maybe it's got problems, but if you get rid of the power mods (and don't change the structure to add any incentives like pay), you probably just end up with a bunch of unmoderated communities that then die off.
  - Mezzie 4y ago
    Yes. This is why I doubt it will happen.
- jimbob45 4y ago
  I would suggest that they follow the US system of government where users can vote out corrupt or useless moderators via referendum.
vikingerik 4y ago
Why do Reddit moderators do their work? They are paid in power. They get to decide what viewpoints are seen or not by others. That is a very compelling wage. And of course they all think they're doing a service by advancing their ideology because of course their ideology is the right one.
- jknoepfler 4y ago
  That's an extremely reductive claim. Can you really not think of more mundane reasons someone might find themselves moderating reddit? It's hard to imagine "ideology" being relevant to the vast majority of reddit... Do you really think the moderators of ELI5 or PeopleFuckingDying or some obscure porn reddit or whatever are primarily concerned with "ideology"? I used to help moderate a poker forum. I was a professional poker player, and an extremely active user of the forums. I don't recall pushing an ideology beyond "keep discussions constructive and topical." The person you just replied to was a mod. Are you implying that their work was somehow about pushing an ideology?
  - aliqot 4y ago
    > It's hard to imagine "ideology" being relevant to the vast majority of reddit... This is egregiously incorrect.
    - jknoepfler 4y ago
      In what sense? Would tipping that scale entail that "all reddit moderators are only and exclusively motivated by ideology?"
  - bitwize 4y ago
    It's common knowledge now that abstaining from politics is taking the side of the oppressor. This has the effect of giving many subreddits and other topical communities a political orientation even if politics is nominally offtopic. To give an example, it is increasingly hard to find an online knitting community that tolerates conservative viewpoints; most have followed the lead of Ravelry.
ilyt 4y ago
> This is, in part, why it's so common for popular submissions to be locked or deleted because "y'all can't behave". But they have no problem digging into downvoted comments and deleting them, even if the system already did the job for them (put the downvoted stuff at bottom and hidden).
- 13of40 4y ago
  Maybe this is already well-known, but I saw another behavior recently on some subrreddits where a lot of new posts are seemingly getting a single downvote to a score of zero. I suspected there was some troll doing it, so I went down the line and gave about 20 or 30 of them a single up vote back to one, refreshed the page, and most of them had immediately gone back to zero. I think the mods must have a button for squashing a post without actually deleting it, and on some subs they use it for a huge number of the posts.
  - traverseda 4y ago
    /r/3Dprinting has no such button for what it's worth. If there is they haven't given it to me.
    - richbell 4y ago
      They've added custom CSS to hide it, it isn't actually removed. You can easily bypass this by disabling custom CSS or using a mobile app.
      - Seattle3503 4y ago
        13of40 was talking about a single button that mass downvotes multiple comments. None of the default (nor popular) clients support this functionality, but you could script your own version using the reddit API.
        richbell 4y ago
        Oh, I guess I misinterpreted that because it's a bizarre speculation. Shwartzworld is correct, the votes are fuzzed and deliberately fluctuate so that it's difficult for bots to tell whether they've been detected.
counttheforks 4y ago
Reddit allowing moderators to lock threads was a mistake. It just enables lazy mods to be even lazier.
- watwut 4y ago
  The laziest thing to do is to not do anything and let someone else moderate. While the disagreements over moderation are normal, complains about volunteers being "lazy" for not doing impossible are absurd.
  - counttheforks 4y ago
    Hardly. Volunteer positions come with responsibilities. No one is forcing them to waste their time on moderating an internet forum, but they chose to do it for whatever reason and then chose to be lazy and actively harmful.
    - watwut 4y ago
      The complaint here is about moderation tactic that is not actively harmful or abusive to people and ease their own load when threads become too much. Complaining about that is absurd.
      - counttheforks 4y ago
        No. The purpose of a subreddit is to let users engage. Excessive locking decreases user engagement and is harmful, not to mention that it punishes users (who are no longer able to continue a already started conversation in the comments) for violations of others.
greggarious 4y ago
>"Power" moderators, that is people who moderate a large number of subreddits, are untenable. At least you know it's just one person, spread across multiple contexts. I had a string of unusual behaviors when I ran /u/dontbenebby, culminating in being involuntarily being made the moderator of several Snapchat related subreddits around the time that Reddit let you view analytics and things I was posting were getting six or seven figure views as I dodged literal assassination attempts every time I tried to take a peaceful walk in the woods. For context, I was (in)famous for not logging IPs, or even numbers of pageviews as far back as when I dropped that Facebook zero day on my blog and virtually planted myself in the middle of the protests against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and then went on to lecture class full of CMU students they should use strong anonymity tools and careful opsec if organizing protests in oppressive regimes like Tehran or Times Square as I threw up an image of a dead protester on the screen. I meant what I said then, and I mean it now. And maybe I spoke offline with whoever made me the moderator of a subreddit I never visited, for an application I have never used? In that case, let's share it with the whole class the three core points my art was intended to drive home: 1.) They are going to nuke Penn Quarter, not Pittsburgh. 2.) It is not my problem if you drop dead of a heart attack because you fucked around and found out. 3.) I am an alumni -- that means I can do whatever I want. Anyways, I'm off to read a book and "do email". Cheers!! - Greg.

Y_Y 4y ago

Please tell us more about what you learned from socialising with these "power mods", I think it would be enlightening to us too.

Mezzie 4y ago

I wonder if/how a hard limit on number of communities moderated would work? Make it so one person could only mod 2-3 subreddits. Unfortunately, this would require some work from Reddit the company to keep those same powermods from just making new accounts so probably won't happen.

hbn 4y ago
They already have rules about making secondary accounts to evade bans, upvote yourself, etc. If anything it'd probably be easier to enforce a "no moderating a bunch of subreddits across multiple accounts" rule since it's mainly bigger subreddits that matter, and "mod teams of big subreddits" is a smaller group of people to monitor. And if there was really some big conspiracy to skirt around this system they'd have to organize on a platform outside of reddit, ensure everyone is always accessing through VPNs so reddit doesn't notice multiple accounts modding from the same IP, and hope no one ever defects and exposes the underground moderation ring.
- Mezzie 4y ago
  It'd be logistically easier, I just doubt Reddit is going to put forth the money and staff time required to enforce it. Current enforcement is based on reporting, I believe, and don't reports go to mods first. And they definitely will organize off site. Discord is huge for this. I also bet they would use VPNs since a lot of them have the barest hint of tech knowledge and a burning ideological conviction they're doing something important. > hope no one ever defects and exposes the underground moderation ring. Man, whoever had the balls or ovaries to do that would be immediately smeared and mobbed.
- greggarious 4y ago
  >They already have rules about making secondary accounts to evade bans, upvote yourself, etc. If that rule was enforced, huge swathes of the so called power mods (and admins) would be removed. That's probably why, much like Twitter, they declined to hire me on to work on anti-abuse technology. The so called humans in the loop are evil and replaceable.
awillen 4y ago
Reddit just doesn't have any incentive to do this - you're talking about people who are doing free labor for them. Maybe it's got problems, but if you get rid of the power mods (and don't change the structure to add any incentives like pay), you probably just end up with a bunch of unmoderated communities that then die off.
- Mezzie 4y ago
  Yes. This is why I doubt it will happen.
jimbob45 4y ago
I would suggest that they follow the US system of government where users can vote out corrupt or useless moderators via referendum.

vikingerik 4y ago

Why do Reddit moderators do their work? They are paid in power. They get to decide what viewpoints are seen or not by others. That is a very compelling wage. And of course they all think they're doing a service by advancing their ideology because of course their ideology is the right one.

jknoepfler 4y ago
That's an extremely reductive claim. Can you really not think of more mundane reasons someone might find themselves moderating reddit? It's hard to imagine "ideology" being relevant to the vast majority of reddit... Do you really think the moderators of ELI5 or PeopleFuckingDying or some obscure porn reddit or whatever are primarily concerned with "ideology"? I used to help moderate a poker forum. I was a professional poker player, and an extremely active user of the forums. I don't recall pushing an ideology beyond "keep discussions constructive and topical." The person you just replied to was a mod. Are you implying that their work was somehow about pushing an ideology?
- aliqot 4y ago
  > It's hard to imagine "ideology" being relevant to the vast majority of reddit... This is egregiously incorrect.
  - jknoepfler 4y ago
    In what sense? Would tipping that scale entail that "all reddit moderators are only and exclusively motivated by ideology?"
- bitwize 4y ago
  It's common knowledge now that abstaining from politics is taking the side of the oppressor. This has the effect of giving many subreddits and other topical communities a political orientation even if politics is nominally offtopic. To give an example, it is increasingly hard to find an online knitting community that tolerates conservative viewpoints; most have followed the lead of Ravelry.

ilyt 4y ago

> This is, in part, why it's so common for popular submissions to be locked or deleted because "y'all can't behave". But they have no problem digging into downvoted comments and deleting them, even if the system already did the job for them (put the downvoted stuff at bottom and hidden).

13of40 4y ago
Maybe this is already well-known, but I saw another behavior recently on some subrreddits where a lot of new posts are seemingly getting a single downvote to a score of zero. I suspected there was some troll doing it, so I went down the line and gave about 20 or 30 of them a single up vote back to one, refreshed the page, and most of them had immediately gone back to zero. I think the mods must have a button for squashing a post without actually deleting it, and on some subs they use it for a huge number of the posts.
- traverseda 4y ago
  /r/3Dprinting has no such button for what it's worth. If there is they haven't given it to me.
  - richbell 4y ago
    They've added custom CSS to hide it, it isn't actually removed. You can easily bypass this by disabling custom CSS or using a mobile app.
    - Seattle3503 4y ago
      13of40 was talking about a single button that mass downvotes multiple comments. None of the default (nor popular) clients support this functionality, but you could script your own version using the reddit API.
      - richbell 4y ago
        Oh, I guess I misinterpreted that because it's a bizarre speculation. Shwartzworld is correct, the votes are fuzzed and deliberately fluctuate so that it's difficult for bots to tell whether they've been detected.

counttheforks 4y ago

Reddit allowing moderators to lock threads was a mistake. It just enables lazy mods to be even lazier.

watwut 4y ago
The laziest thing to do is to not do anything and let someone else moderate. While the disagreements over moderation are normal, complains about volunteers being "lazy" for not doing impossible are absurd.
- counttheforks 4y ago
  Hardly. Volunteer positions come with responsibilities. No one is forcing them to waste their time on moderating an internet forum, but they chose to do it for whatever reason and then chose to be lazy and actively harmful.
  - watwut 4y ago
    The complaint here is about moderation tactic that is not actively harmful or abusive to people and ease their own load when threads become too much. Complaining about that is absurd.
    - counttheforks 4y ago
      No. The purpose of a subreddit is to let users engage. Excessive locking decreases user engagement and is harmful, not to mention that it punishes users (who are no longer able to continue a already started conversation in the comments) for violations of others.

greggarious 4y ago

>"Power" moderators, that is people who moderate a large number of subreddits, are untenable. At least you know it's just one person, spread across multiple contexts. I had a string of unusual behaviors when I ran /u/dontbenebby, culminating in being involuntarily being made the moderator of several Snapchat related subreddits around the time that Reddit let you view analytics and things I was posting were getting six or seven figure views as I dodged literal assassination attempts every time I tried to take a peaceful walk in the woods. For context, I was (in)famous for not logging IPs, or even numbers of pageviews as far back as when I dropped that Facebook zero day on my blog and virtually planted myself in the middle of the protests against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and then went on to lecture class full of CMU students they should use strong anonymity tools and careful opsec if organizing protests in oppressive regimes like Tehran or Times Square as I threw up an image of a dead protester on the screen. I meant what I said then, and I mean it now. And maybe I spoke offline with whoever made me the moderator of a subreddit I never visited, for an application I have never used? In that case, let's share it with the whole class the three core points my art was intended to drive home: 1.) They are going to nuke Penn Quarter, not Pittsburgh. 2.) It is not my problem if you drop dead of a heart attack because you fucked around and found out. 3.) I am an alumni -- that means I can do whatever I want. Anyways, I'm off to read a book and "do email". Cheers!! - Greg.