I think the median mod deserves almost zero credit for "creating" the communities that they oversee. The welfare of the mods and the communities are usually not

I think the median mod deserves almost zero credit for "creating" the communities that they oversee. The welfare of the mods and the communities are usually not tightly intertwined, and scenarios where the mods are committed to destroying these communities should serve as a counterexample to this idea. >Ownership of reddit/r/$name isn't a valuable quantity if the people who contribute react badly to replacing the people running the joint being replaced by management stooges. The idea that Redditors had some sort of prior affection for moderators is laughable. At best this is just tribalism where a vocal minority of Redditors is so upset at spez that they're opportunistically creating a narrative of heroic moderators being oppressed by evil admins that's reminiscent of an inverted Ayn Rand story.