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In my experience, whenever volunteer mod positions open, there is a near infinite supply of people that want those roles. For whatever reasons, people want it

In my experience, whenever volunteer mod positions open, there is a near infinite supply of people that want those roles. For whatever reasons, people want it and those that have it typically seek to hold onto it. It's borderline inexplicable to me. How could someone want this in the first place and how could they be willing to do it in a volunteer capacity?

Ekaros 3y ago
Some section of population is attracted to power. And just about any type of power. Even if that was 1 in 100 or 1 in 1000 it would still be substantial number in large enough communities. And if it were lets say 1 in 10k those same people would still search for all the places they could have power in.
rincebrain 3y ago
Much like why some people contribute to open source projects, sometimes people find a thing useful but think it could be better, and spend some of their time to make it so, either by helping to organize things so the subreddit isn't frequently the same 6 posts, or organizing community recurring events, or a million other things to foster a community. There's also plenty of people who like the authority, or a thousand other reasons, but that's one example.
wnevets 3y ago
> It's borderline inexplicable to me. How could someone want this in the first place and how could they be willing to do it in a volunteer capacity? Being a gatekeeper for a popular subreddit is a form of meaningful influence. Meaningful influence can lead to money and other benefits. Reddit mods in the past have been exposed for using their influence to push certain content and block other kind.
noirbot 3y ago
Maybe for some major subs, but I've had multiple small-to-medium sized subs die because a mod retired/deleted their account and no one stepped up quickly to replace them. Reddit kills unmodded subs really fast. Sure, the major frontpage subs will be fine, but there's plenty of more niche communities that are already dying/getting banned for being unmodded because no one wants to mod them. I literally opened a link to a sub today that was banned for being unmodded 2 hours ago, presumably because the last remaining mod deleted their account. So many of the discussions here seem to be people mostly thinking of reddit as the big frontpage subs, which also seems to be what Reddit Corporate seems to think. What we're all likely about to see is how much value there is in the longer tail of smaller subs that are being run as a passion project by a few people in a niche community. It's easy to point to the small subs that are some power-trip for one mod or set of mods, but there's also plenty of small little subs that are niche and interesting and simply would never have enough interest or activity to support more than 2-3 mods.
TMWNN 3y ago
>It's borderline inexplicable to me. How could someone want this in the first place and how could they be willing to do it in a volunteer capacity? Remember, "Most of What You Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People". <https://np.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most_of_what_you_read_on_the_internet_is_written/ https://np.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most_...>. This also applies to powermods, assuming they're not being paid on the side to push some ideology.
throw16180339 3y ago
> It's borderline inexplicable to me. How could someone want this in the first place and how could they be willing to do it in a volunteer capacity? I wasn't sure what it was going to be like when I was invited. It's not fun telling people to behave, but I've found a lot of personal satisfaction in coding moderation tasks and working with the team. There are whole classes of work that I've automated away and it's easy to deploy improvements.

Ekaros 3y ago

Some section of population is attracted to power. And just about any type of power. Even if that was 1 in 100 or 1 in 1000 it would still be substantial number in large enough communities. And if it were lets say 1 in 10k those same people would still search for all the places they could have power in.

rincebrain 3y ago

Much like why some people contribute to open source projects, sometimes people find a thing useful but think it could be better, and spend some of their time to make it so, either by helping to organize things so the subreddit isn't frequently the same 6 posts, or organizing community recurring events, or a million other things to foster a community. There's also plenty of people who like the authority, or a thousand other reasons, but that's one example.

wnevets 3y ago

> It's borderline inexplicable to me. How could someone want this in the first place and how could they be willing to do it in a volunteer capacity? Being a gatekeeper for a popular subreddit is a form of meaningful influence. Meaningful influence can lead to money and other benefits. Reddit mods in the past have been exposed for using their influence to push certain content and block other kind.

noirbot 3y ago

Maybe for some major subs, but I've had multiple small-to-medium sized subs die because a mod retired/deleted their account and no one stepped up quickly to replace them. Reddit kills unmodded subs really fast. Sure, the major frontpage subs will be fine, but there's plenty of more niche communities that are already dying/getting banned for being unmodded because no one wants to mod them. I literally opened a link to a sub today that was banned for being unmodded 2 hours ago, presumably because the last remaining mod deleted their account. So many of the discussions here seem to be people mostly thinking of reddit as the big frontpage subs, which also seems to be what Reddit Corporate seems to think. What we're all likely about to see is how much value there is in the longer tail of smaller subs that are being run as a passion project by a few people in a niche community. It's easy to point to the small subs that are some power-trip for one mod or set of mods, but there's also plenty of small little subs that are niche and interesting and simply would never have enough interest or activity to support more than 2-3 mods.

TMWNN 3y ago

>It's borderline inexplicable to me. How could someone want this in the first place and how could they be willing to do it in a volunteer capacity? Remember, "Most of What You Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People". <https://np.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most_of_what_you_read_on_the_internet_is_written/ https://np.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most_...>. This also applies to powermods, assuming they're not being paid on the side to push some ideology.

throw16180339 3y ago

> It's borderline inexplicable to me. How could someone want this in the first place and how could they be willing to do it in a volunteer capacity? I wasn't sure what it was going to be like when I was invited. It's not fun telling people to behave, but I've found a lot of personal satisfaction in coding moderation tasks and working with the team. There are whole classes of work that I've automated away and it's easy to deploy improvements.