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I don't understand how they still have mods. Reddits boss hates them. Everyone else, too. They have 100% a negative impact. The site would be wonderful without

I don't understand how they still have mods. Reddits boss hates them. Everyone else, too. They have 100% a negative impact. The site would be wonderful without moderation as that's already covered by the voting mechanism.

CryptoBanker 3y ago
What are you talking about? The mods are the only thing letting Reddit get away without employing or contracting content teams of their own. Reddit would lose so much more money than it already does if it had no mods
tayo42 3y ago
I would say mods are a little to heavy handed. But I think they handle spam? And also some community stuff like mega threads and weekly stuff? Idk I feel like there's a better middle ground then what we experience now with reddit mods and having it be a total free for all
- TulliusCicero 3y ago
  > I would say mods are a little to heavy handed. Some mods are, but the only reason people really think this is because the heavy-handed aspects are the visible ones. Nobody really sees mods removing random spam threads and comments, that's the whole point. Good modding is mostly invisible.
  - tayo42 3y ago
    Maybe, I think it seems like that. I felt similar until I had some posts moderated away or banned, which made me realize there is probably a lot more of those going on then I realized. There isn't a big notification when things get removed. There is also trying to post and dealing with automoderator. There's subreddits I don't read or participate in anymore becasue of how annoying it is to get a post through. I get their necessary, at least for now, because of spam. But like I'm said I think there's a better middle ground and we can rely on the community users more.
    - TulliusCicero 3y ago
      You cannot, in fact, rely on the community users more. It does not scale. You'll see situations where most people are nominally opposed to low-effort memes while everyone upvotes the low-effort memes, and then people complain that there are too many low-effort memes cluttering the front page and now the sub is trash and they're leaving. edit: though honestly I don't think volunteer mods scale well either. A tiny niche sub can get by with just a couple mods just fine, but when they get 100x as popular, can they then have 200 mods? Or have 2000 mods for the most popular subs? No, there's just no way to coordinate that many volunteers sensibly, not in an environment like Reddit.
nemothekid 3y ago
>The site would be wonderful without moderation Is this tongue in cheek? I can't tell if this is sarcasm. Reddit would be awful without moderation.
- bun_terminator 3y ago
  4chan is close to heaven, they do just fine with much less moderation
  - nemothekid 3y ago
    1. 4chan has plenty of moderation; "jannies" are regularly derided over there. This is easily debunked, posting on about crypto on /g/ will get your post deleted. /a/ pretty much has the same content as reddit.com/r/anime. 2. I believe you, like many others, conflate 4chan's right-ward overton window, with "less" moderation. moot had a saying "one man's shitpost is another man's board culture". You perceive 4chan as having "less moderation" because your world view aligns with 4chan, not because they do less moderation.
    - sickofparadox 3y ago
      I agree and disagree. Reddit moderators often get very involved into the community and make high-visibility changes and proclamations, and actively try to influence the culture of subreddits. Janitors do delete things and ban users, but in general they are far more hands off in their curation of boards.
      - nemothekid 3y ago
        >but in general they are far more hands off in their curation of boards. This is exactly what RapeApe did with /pol/. Because 4chan is less transparent, it feels like there's no curation; especially when what stays on the board feels like "board culture". Would infinity-chan and other boards would exist if they did their current style of moderation of silently deleting posts instead of moot coming out and openly lambasting gamergate? 4chan moderation used to be way more visible, especially under moot, because moderators actually openly interacted with the board. Now that moderators are functionally anonymous, it seems like they don't try to influence the boards, when in actuality, 4chan mods are far less transparent. People once believed 4chan was less moderated because they stopped seeing "(USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)", when in actuality they just removed the posts instead.
csa 3y ago
> I don't understand how they still have mods. This makes me think that you’ve never been a mod of an active forum or subreddit. Without mods, popular forums will be spammed and/or gamed into oblivion. Most voting mechanisms are trivially easy to manipulate when potential earnings are involved.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- bun_terminator 3y ago
  Of course i have never been a mod, everyone hates these people Mods only worsen the manipulation problem
post_break 3y ago
As a mod of a larger subreddit this comment makes me laugh. Good mods are invisible. In fact I do everything in my power to not use my power for bad, and only to help people out.
- psunavy03 3y ago
  Unfortunately many subs are set up so that if you go against the hivemind, you get instabanned, or close to it. There seem to be many mods on Reddit who have nothing more rewarding going on in their lives, or else just cherish that small bit of power over others.
  - TMWNN 3y ago
    >There seem to be many mods on Reddit who have nothing more rewarding going on in their lives, or else just cherish that small bit of power over others. Correct. There are powermods who "moderate" hundreds of subreddits. This is not an exaggeration. Hundreds. At least one has/had thousands. Why do they do this, when they are not paid? When questioned, they invariably say that they "just watch the incoming queue" or something, and the other mods "do all the work". While likely true in the literal sense (again, hundreds), such answers of course completely evade the question. 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 (/r/politics being an obvious example). As you said, losers who crave ruling a petty fiefdom because it's the only thing they can exercise agency over in their lives. And/or are mentally ill. Quoting another: >and for each moderator there are 100 sycophants and narcissists lined up to take their place Most mods know this, which is why so many surrendered and reopened their subreddits during the recent "protest" the moment admins told them that otherwise they would be replaced. /r/formula1's mods forthrightly said as much; those of /r/nba claimed that negotiations had progressed far enough to justify reopening, which the thousands of replies show that the userbase 100% disbelieves. Even worse, a) /r/nba's top mod made more than 150 comments to six other NBA teams' subreddits during the blackout. b) /r/nba mods posted secret threads—including the Game 5 discussion that they denied from their own users—and made comments during the blackout. When users discovered the threads the mods of course scrubbed the comments, but there is no way for mods to actually delete (as opposed to hiding) posts, so evidence of their hypocritical behavior will live on forever. Bonus: The classic post in which a mod thinks what he does is worth $175K a year <https://np.reddit.com/r/35orquit/comments/qw1v3e/what_do_people_here_think_of_reddits_moderators/ https://np.reddit.com/r/35orquit/comments/qw1v3e/what_do_peo...>. Be sure to read to the end, where he explains how he "saves lives".
TulliusCicero 3y ago
> The site would be wonderful without moderation as that's already covered by the voting mechanism. Tell me you've never moderated anything popular without telling me you've never moderated anything popular. Even 4chan has some moderation these days.
- bun_terminator 3y ago
  4chan mostly does legal moderation and offtopic. I think the latter is already too much. But still, 4chan is by far the best online community out of the big ones - exactly because there is so little censorship ("moderation")
bloopernova 3y ago
May I suggest you sign up for moderator duties on a medium sized subreddit. Then report back in 8 weeks.
- bun_terminator 3y ago
  why would I do that? I despise these people
AbraKdabra 3y ago
I help moderate a large sub, a country sub. I dare you to just be a mod for one week, the amount of SHIT that gets posted every single fucking day is insane, without mods (good or bad) reddit would be worse than 4chan in its crappier moment. A disclaimer, I'm super against on how reddit is being managed nowadays, I've been a user since 2010, the golden era, no political bias crap, no stupid woke mods, everyone was happy and content was objectively moderated. Having said that, I can assure you moderation is a necessity.
- struant 3y ago
  Is it mostly spam that makes you think moderation is necessary or is it something else? I ask because I have some ideas about how to implement a moderation-less reddit-alike. (I think I know how to eliminate spam)
seattle_spring 3y ago
Reddit would be an absolute, unmitigated disaster without moderation.

CryptoBanker 3y ago

What are you talking about? The mods are the only thing letting Reddit get away without employing or contracting content teams of their own. Reddit would lose so much more money than it already does if it had no mods

tayo42 3y ago

I would say mods are a little to heavy handed. But I think they handle spam? And also some community stuff like mega threads and weekly stuff? Idk I feel like there's a better middle ground then what we experience now with reddit mods and having it be a total free for all

TulliusCicero 3y ago
> I would say mods are a little to heavy handed. Some mods are, but the only reason people really think this is because the heavy-handed aspects are the visible ones. Nobody really sees mods removing random spam threads and comments, that's the whole point. Good modding is mostly invisible.
- tayo42 3y ago
  Maybe, I think it seems like that. I felt similar until I had some posts moderated away or banned, which made me realize there is probably a lot more of those going on then I realized. There isn't a big notification when things get removed. There is also trying to post and dealing with automoderator. There's subreddits I don't read or participate in anymore becasue of how annoying it is to get a post through. I get their necessary, at least for now, because of spam. But like I'm said I think there's a better middle ground and we can rely on the community users more.
  - TulliusCicero 3y ago
    You cannot, in fact, rely on the community users more. It does not scale. You'll see situations where most people are nominally opposed to low-effort memes while everyone upvotes the low-effort memes, and then people complain that there are too many low-effort memes cluttering the front page and now the sub is trash and they're leaving. edit: though honestly I don't think volunteer mods scale well either. A tiny niche sub can get by with just a couple mods just fine, but when they get 100x as popular, can they then have 200 mods? Or have 2000 mods for the most popular subs? No, there's just no way to coordinate that many volunteers sensibly, not in an environment like Reddit.

nemothekid 3y ago

>The site would be wonderful without moderation Is this tongue in cheek? I can't tell if this is sarcasm. Reddit would be awful without moderation.

bun_terminator 3y ago
4chan is close to heaven, they do just fine with much less moderation
- nemothekid 3y ago
  1. 4chan has plenty of moderation; "jannies" are regularly derided over there. This is easily debunked, posting on about crypto on /g/ will get your post deleted. /a/ pretty much has the same content as reddit.com/r/anime. 2. I believe you, like many others, conflate 4chan's right-ward overton window, with "less" moderation. moot had a saying "one man's shitpost is another man's board culture". You perceive 4chan as having "less moderation" because your world view aligns with 4chan, not because they do less moderation.
  - sickofparadox 3y ago
    I agree and disagree. Reddit moderators often get very involved into the community and make high-visibility changes and proclamations, and actively try to influence the culture of subreddits. Janitors do delete things and ban users, but in general they are far more hands off in their curation of boards.
    - nemothekid 3y ago
      >but in general they are far more hands off in their curation of boards. This is exactly what RapeApe did with /pol/. Because 4chan is less transparent, it feels like there's no curation; especially when what stays on the board feels like "board culture". Would infinity-chan and other boards would exist if they did their current style of moderation of silently deleting posts instead of moot coming out and openly lambasting gamergate? 4chan moderation used to be way more visible, especially under moot, because moderators actually openly interacted with the board. Now that moderators are functionally anonymous, it seems like they don't try to influence the boards, when in actuality, 4chan mods are far less transparent. People once believed 4chan was less moderated because they stopped seeing "(USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)", when in actuality they just removed the posts instead.

csa 3y ago

> I don't understand how they still have mods. This makes me think that you’ve never been a mod of an active forum or subreddit. Without mods, popular forums will be spammed and/or gamed into oblivion. Most voting mechanisms are trivially easy to manipulate when potential earnings are involved.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
bun_terminator 3y ago
Of course i have never been a mod, everyone hates these people Mods only worsen the manipulation problem

post_break 3y ago

As a mod of a larger subreddit this comment makes me laugh. Good mods are invisible. In fact I do everything in my power to not use my power for bad, and only to help people out.

psunavy03 3y ago
Unfortunately many subs are set up so that if you go against the hivemind, you get instabanned, or close to it. There seem to be many mods on Reddit who have nothing more rewarding going on in their lives, or else just cherish that small bit of power over others.
- TMWNN 3y ago
  >There seem to be many mods on Reddit who have nothing more rewarding going on in their lives, or else just cherish that small bit of power over others. Correct. There are powermods who "moderate" hundreds of subreddits. This is not an exaggeration. Hundreds. At least one has/had thousands. Why do they do this, when they are not paid? When questioned, they invariably say that they "just watch the incoming queue" or something, and the other mods "do all the work". While likely true in the literal sense (again, hundreds), such answers of course completely evade the question. 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 (/r/politics being an obvious example). As you said, losers who crave ruling a petty fiefdom because it's the only thing they can exercise agency over in their lives. And/or are mentally ill. Quoting another: >and for each moderator there are 100 sycophants and narcissists lined up to take their place Most mods know this, which is why so many surrendered and reopened their subreddits during the recent "protest" the moment admins told them that otherwise they would be replaced. /r/formula1's mods forthrightly said as much; those of /r/nba claimed that negotiations had progressed far enough to justify reopening, which the thousands of replies show that the userbase 100% disbelieves. Even worse, a) /r/nba's top mod made more than 150 comments to six other NBA teams' subreddits during the blackout. b) /r/nba mods posted secret threads—including the Game 5 discussion that they denied from their own users—and made comments during the blackout. When users discovered the threads the mods of course scrubbed the comments, but there is no way for mods to actually delete (as opposed to hiding) posts, so evidence of their hypocritical behavior will live on forever. Bonus: The classic post in which a mod thinks what he does is worth $175K a year <https://np.reddit.com/r/35orquit/comments/qw1v3e/what_do_people_here_think_of_reddits_moderators/ https://np.reddit.com/r/35orquit/comments/qw1v3e/what_do_peo...>. Be sure to read to the end, where he explains how he "saves lives".

TulliusCicero 3y ago

> The site would be wonderful without moderation as that's already covered by the voting mechanism. Tell me you've never moderated anything popular without telling me you've never moderated anything popular. Even 4chan has some moderation these days.

bun_terminator 3y ago
4chan mostly does legal moderation and offtopic. I think the latter is already too much. But still, 4chan is by far the best online community out of the big ones - exactly because there is so little censorship ("moderation")

bloopernova 3y ago

May I suggest you sign up for moderator duties on a medium sized subreddit. Then report back in 8 weeks.

bun_terminator 3y ago
why would I do that? I despise these people

AbraKdabra 3y ago

I help moderate a large sub, a country sub. I dare you to just be a mod for one week, the amount of SHIT that gets posted every single fucking day is insane, without mods (good or bad) reddit would be worse than 4chan in its crappier moment. A disclaimer, I'm super against on how reddit is being managed nowadays, I've been a user since 2010, the golden era, no political bias crap, no stupid woke mods, everyone was happy and content was objectively moderated. Having said that, I can assure you moderation is a necessity.

struant 3y ago
Is it mostly spam that makes you think moderation is necessary or is it something else? I ask because I have some ideas about how to implement a moderation-less reddit-alike. (I think I know how to eliminate spam)

seattle_spring 3y ago

Reddit would be an absolute, unmitigated disaster without moderation.