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I moderated a few decently popular subreddits for a while (a couple hundred posts a day, nothing crazy). I will say that most moderation work on Reddit can be

I moderated a few decently popular subreddits for a while (a couple hundred posts a day, nothing crazy). I will say that most moderation work on Reddit can be done independently of a particular sub and scales okay across subreddits. Like the additional effort of moderating 100 subreddits vs 1 would be nowhere near 100x. It would probably be closer to like 5x the amount of work. And there are benefits to moderating many subreddits. Most moderation is keeping your automod filters up to date to stop the never-ending onslaught of porn bots, crypto scammers, and obvious fake accounts looking to farm karma. Everyday I'd scan through both the stuff the filters caught and the stuff they didn't and tweak the automod settings to be better, then most of the time I'd copy paste those settings across subs. The other hard part of being a mod is communicating with the other mods. Like I would only be online moderating one hour out of the day and so all communication with async with anonymous strangers. This again benefits from having mods span many subreddits because you can quickly get to know the other moderators in similar spaces and you all pass information around to each other. For subs that require user verification this again is a better user experience if you moderate several similar subs because users can verify with you once and be approved across many subs. The communities actually tend to do a pretty good job of moderating themselves via reporting and downvoting so even if there's only one mod on a subreddit they act way more like an appeals process than an initial judge of fate, most content moderation is actually outsourced to the community as a whole with the mods only responsible for curating a space free of obvious spam and acting as an appeals process for people who have content on the borderline.

101011 3y ago
Very interesting perspective, thanks for sharing. What are your thoughts on a mechanism to oust existing mods? Is there any path you'd be willing to see? Or a lesser of two evils? E.g. mods being able to kick each other out with some plurality vs community members holding that power at some high voting threshold
- CSMastermind 3y ago
  I'd be fine with some kind of election mechanism built into subreddits settings that could be turned on to allow community member to vote on mods. With that said consider a subreddit for a podcast or youtube channel where the host/channel might legitimately want to have total control over moderation and I don't think it'd be appropriate to remove them. Also consider that the vast majority of subreddits are moderated by volunteers who are only doing it because no one else will. You'd probably get more milage out of a way to force community members to take turns serving as moderators than you would having a mechanism to remove existing mods. When someone says Reddit moderator you're thinking of /r/news or /r/funny not the person running the sub for their favorite book or local sports team or interest group. There are way more of those moderators and you almost need to handle the two use cases differently. For the truly top subreddits I think Reddit should be employing people directly or indirectly to do the moderation. At the very least they should be compensating those people and reviewing their performance. Reddit should also make better mod tools and do way more to help with moderation. It's offensively bad what they offer today. If Reddit actually gave a damn they would force every software engineer at the company to spend 2 weeks as the moderator of a subreddit once a year and I guarantee this problem would be solved quickly. I also think some semblance of moderator hierarchy would be extremely helpful. Have some sort of mod council that oversees all of Ask* subreddits and another for sports subreddits and another for NSFW subreddits. Those content domains will all have similar needs and having someone looking at the bigger picture across individual subs would be very helpful.
  - stcroixx 3y ago
    The host of a podcast having total control of a community seems like the perfect example of illegitimate control. I'd assume they'd remove any critical discussion to the point it would devolve into their own personal website where all it's good for is promoting the product. Users with anything critical to say would be banned, posts removed. That's about as anti user as it gets.
    - slikrick 3y ago
      then those people can make their own different sub, there is no need to completely take over and remove a moderator team. that has been the standard in all of reddits history.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
FemmeAndroid 3y ago
Thanks for writing this down. I don’t know about the details of Reddit moderation for popular subs, but I’ve moderated a pretty tiny one, and have some friends who moderate small communities elsewhere. The perception that Mods are all power hungry and looking to impose their will is all consuming in some circles, ans it frustrates me. Most of the moderation is pure drudgery that is uninteresting and un controversial. Occasionally a mod will be wrong, or cross a line, and that sucks. But there is a real lack of appreciation for the work these volunteers do day to day. Like, when I talk about this stuff with some friends who are nerds but don’t hang out in the same circles as any mods, they have no idea that mods are actually doing work beyond occasionally banning someone.
- pbae 3y ago
  It can be one way for many subs, and another way for others. Go to a sub that deals with controversial issues, find a threat with a lot of deleted posts, and look up that thread on unddit.com. Often times you will see mods deleting all dissenting opinions and not allow any discussion about it to even take place.
- dclowd9901 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - Nexxxeh 3y ago
    Are you being sarcastic or otherwise intentionally contrary, or do you genuinely believe that some people (if not you) like helping others?
mrtksn 3y ago
Thank you for writing these interesting insights. However, I wonder what was your motivation to do moderation and what made you stop?
- CSMastermind 3y ago
  I was a contributor to a sub with a specific interest group (think something like your favorite programming framework). I got some value out of the community and so when someone suggested 'it would be really nice if a sub existed for xyz' I just went ahead and made the subreddit and was like, well here you go. By default, when you make a subreddit you're the moderator. Then once that subreddit grew a little bit two things happened: first moderators of similar subreddits asked if I would be willing to help them out on their subs. The second was that moderators from other subreddits who enjoyed the community would reach out and ask if I needed any help moderating the sub. I both cases I said sure and eventually I ended up just being added to a bunch of subreddits as a moderator. I would spend about an hour a day doing it and I think I kept it up as long as I did for the social aspect of it - I didn't want to burden the other moderators by leaving. Then there was a highly politically charged let's say discussion that cropped up on the subreddit around some specific language (think similar to the default git branch being called "master"). It was exhausting to moderate, and it all suddenly felt like it wasn't worth it. I also said to myself, hey I've got a lot to lose here, I've got a high paying job at a top company, and what happens it someone upset about this issue decides to email my employer and cause trouble? That could have real consequences for me. I'm taking a risk here and it's no longer worth it. So yeah, I deleted the account and just walked away.
taude 3y ago
thanks for your perspective on how this worked....

101011 3y ago

Very interesting perspective, thanks for sharing. What are your thoughts on a mechanism to oust existing mods? Is there any path you'd be willing to see? Or a lesser of two evils? E.g. mods being able to kick each other out with some plurality vs community members holding that power at some high voting threshold

CSMastermind 3y ago
I'd be fine with some kind of election mechanism built into subreddits settings that could be turned on to allow community member to vote on mods. With that said consider a subreddit for a podcast or youtube channel where the host/channel might legitimately want to have total control over moderation and I don't think it'd be appropriate to remove them. Also consider that the vast majority of subreddits are moderated by volunteers who are only doing it because no one else will. You'd probably get more milage out of a way to force community members to take turns serving as moderators than you would having a mechanism to remove existing mods. When someone says Reddit moderator you're thinking of /r/news or /r/funny not the person running the sub for their favorite book or local sports team or interest group. There are way more of those moderators and you almost need to handle the two use cases differently. For the truly top subreddits I think Reddit should be employing people directly or indirectly to do the moderation. At the very least they should be compensating those people and reviewing their performance. Reddit should also make better mod tools and do way more to help with moderation. It's offensively bad what they offer today. If Reddit actually gave a damn they would force every software engineer at the company to spend 2 weeks as the moderator of a subreddit once a year and I guarantee this problem would be solved quickly. I also think some semblance of moderator hierarchy would be extremely helpful. Have some sort of mod council that oversees all of Ask* subreddits and another for sports subreddits and another for NSFW subreddits. Those content domains will all have similar needs and having someone looking at the bigger picture across individual subs would be very helpful.
- stcroixx 3y ago
  The host of a podcast having total control of a community seems like the perfect example of illegitimate control. I'd assume they'd remove any critical discussion to the point it would devolve into their own personal website where all it's good for is promoting the product. Users with anything critical to say would be banned, posts removed. That's about as anti user as it gets.
  - slikrick 3y ago
    then those people can make their own different sub, there is no need to completely take over and remove a moderator team. that has been the standard in all of reddits history.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

FemmeAndroid 3y ago

Thanks for writing this down. I don’t know about the details of Reddit moderation for popular subs, but I’ve moderated a pretty tiny one, and have some friends who moderate small communities elsewhere. The perception that Mods are all power hungry and looking to impose their will is all consuming in some circles, ans it frustrates me. Most of the moderation is pure drudgery that is uninteresting and un controversial. Occasionally a mod will be wrong, or cross a line, and that sucks. But there is a real lack of appreciation for the work these volunteers do day to day. Like, when I talk about this stuff with some friends who are nerds but don’t hang out in the same circles as any mods, they have no idea that mods are actually doing work beyond occasionally banning someone.

pbae 3y ago
It can be one way for many subs, and another way for others. Go to a sub that deals with controversial issues, find a threat with a lot of deleted posts, and look up that thread on unddit.com. Often times you will see mods deleting all dissenting opinions and not allow any discussion about it to even take place.
dclowd9901 3y ago
[flagged]
- Nexxxeh 3y ago
  Are you being sarcastic or otherwise intentionally contrary, or do you genuinely believe that some people (if not you) like helping others?

mrtksn 3y ago

Thank you for writing these interesting insights. However, I wonder what was your motivation to do moderation and what made you stop?

CSMastermind 3y ago
I was a contributor to a sub with a specific interest group (think something like your favorite programming framework). I got some value out of the community and so when someone suggested 'it would be really nice if a sub existed for xyz' I just went ahead and made the subreddit and was like, well here you go. By default, when you make a subreddit you're the moderator. Then once that subreddit grew a little bit two things happened: first moderators of similar subreddits asked if I would be willing to help them out on their subs. The second was that moderators from other subreddits who enjoyed the community would reach out and ask if I needed any help moderating the sub. I both cases I said sure and eventually I ended up just being added to a bunch of subreddits as a moderator. I would spend about an hour a day doing it and I think I kept it up as long as I did for the social aspect of it - I didn't want to burden the other moderators by leaving. Then there was a highly politically charged let's say discussion that cropped up on the subreddit around some specific language (think similar to the default git branch being called "master"). It was exhausting to moderate, and it all suddenly felt like it wasn't worth it. I also said to myself, hey I've got a lot to lose here, I've got a high paying job at a top company, and what happens it someone upset about this issue decides to email my employer and cause trouble? That could have real consequences for me. I'm taking a risk here and it's no longer worth it. So yeah, I deleted the account and just walked away.

taude 3y ago

thanks for your perspective on how this worked....