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This article is falling on me as tone deaf. Most people who frequent the site dont care at all about the plight of the moderators. Moderators are not elected,

by basch 11y ago

This article is falling on me as tone deaf. Most people who frequent the site dont care at all about the plight of the moderators. Moderators are not elected, they arent forcefully drafted, they dont step down when the community dislikes them. They are landowners who got there first, followed by a lot of cronyism/nepotism. It's an old boys club. They do a lot of hard work for the site, but they would be easily replaceable if the site rules didnt protect them. The moderators think they are special, the admins see them as interchangeable. Moderators are largely faceless human spam filters. It is a task that could be crowdsourced better so more people are doing less work. Slashdot had better moderation tools than reddit. When I see the moderators throw tantrums demanding more respect, it reminds me of Reagan firing every air traffic controller who went on strike, people who thought they were above being replaced. The reddit admins should fear the power they have given the moderators, and are probably brainstorming ways to reduce it. The "woe is me" cry of the moderators doesnt resonate with the majority of the userbase, because the moderators volunteered. The apathetic majority doesnt comment in situations like this, so you wont hear their voices. In the immortal words of southpark, if you dont like America, then you can get out. But everyone knows they wont actually step down, because they crave the power they have accumulated, and are using the veneer of "we do this because we love the community" to generate a populous outcry that they know will gain them even more power. Theyre not fooling me. https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3cbo4m/we_apologize/csu119e https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3cbo4m/we_ap...

munificent 11y ago
> Most people who frequent the site dont care at all about the plight of the moderators. They care about the quality of the comment they see on the subreddits they follow. That transitively means they really care about the plight of the moderators. They just don't know it. > Moderators are largely faceless human spam filters. On the well-moderated subreddits—which are increasingly the largest ones—they do a hell of a lot more than spam filtering. Moderators at subreddits like /r/NoStupidQuestions, /r/science, or many of the "Ask ___" subreddits are responsible for instilling the voice and culture of the subreddit. > When I see the moderators throw tantrums demanding more respect, it reminds me of Reagan firing every air traffic controller who went on strike, people who thought they were above being replaced. I'm not saying they couldn't be replaced. But if you do that, those subreddits will fundamentally change. And, in many cases, the userbase may go elsewhere before the subreddit finds its feet again. > In the immortal words of southpark, if you dont like America, then you can get out. I don't think reddit needs to worry much about moderators leaving. But they should really worry about content contributors leaving. The Digg v4 exodus happened virtually overnight. There's nothing magical about reddit that ensures that can't happen to them.
- basch 11y ago
  >they really care about the plight of the moderators no they dont. its like henchmen in a movie. if some fall more will take their place. its a thankless task. they dont care at all about the individual, they just care that the group functions. the group will function without the individual as long as there are reenforcements. >in many cases, the userbase may go elsewhere before the subreddit finds its feet again. probably to another subreddit, like when /r/trees replaced /r/marijuana (thats still a win for reddit corp)
  - Nadya 11y ago
    >no they dont. its like henchmen in a movie. if some fall more will take their place. its a thankless task I find most people who say things like this have 0 moderating experience, or at least no experience handling communities larger than 100 (or even 1,000) people. Administration connection with moderators is important. If it's lacking, people willing to moderate will go to sites with better tools and better access to administration. There are "alternative Reddits" popping up, such as voat.co, to fill that position. Mods aren't as easy to replace as people think they are. Finding someone who fits and follows the community culture, is able to act as a mediator in case of community conflicts, and enforce the rules with as little bias as impossible is actually quite hard and a moderator unable to do this can easily kill a community. There is a fine balance in the relationships between lurkers::creators::mods::admins.
  - iaw 11y ago
    There was a post on reddit by a user emphasizing your reasoning but reaching a different conclusion. The user argued that he didn't not care about the plight of the moderators or content creators in one bit, he just wanted to selfishly consume his content. He recognized the importance of the people that do care in creating the community that provides the quality of experience he desires and he was quick to emphasize that the second the quality drops he will find a new community. The quality in subreddits are a direct function of the capabilities of their moderation staff.
    - basch 11y ago
vonklaus 11y ago
> it reminds me of Reagan firing every air traffic controller who went on strike Unionized laborers collectively bargaining for more money from the company they work for is almost the exact opposite of unpaid volunteers maintaining the profit making infrastructure of a for profit corporation.
- basch 11y ago
  you clipped the second half of the sentence ... "people who thought they were above being replaced"
  - vonklaus 11y ago
    Sure, I wasn't trying to be disingenuous. The difference I was illustrating was that asking for respect and communication is different than money and benefits.
  - ska 11y ago
    They are certainly replaceable, but they just as certainly not fungible. Reddit management clearly made a mistake here, not because it annoyed some moderators, but because they showed poor understanding of a fundamental part of their business (i.e. this is a lot of avoidable bad press, if nothing else) They seem to have realized this, and are working on amending process. Nothing wrong with that, this is how things can improve.
    - vonklaus 11y ago
      I agree with this. Many social networks (friendster, myspace, Digg, etc) die of community collapse. If someone funded voat.co so they could keep their servers up and the mods and community jumped ship reddit's business would take a serious hit.
    - Karunamon 11y ago
      They seem to have realized this, and are working on amending process. I'm not holding my breath. Reddit has promised moderators better tools and users better transparency and more features for months and years. So far, all those promises have been completely empty, and I see nothing to suggest things will be different this time. Put more crudely, at least two people on the reddit staff, Ohanian and Pao, are completely full of shit.
VonGuard 11y ago
I totally agree that Reddit is an old boys club. But this is how all online communities seem to work: age = power and respect. How would you solve this problem? It's been like that since newsgroups. It seems to be just a human tendency.
- basch 11y ago
  slashdot randomly assigned the task of moderation to logged in users. that moderation was then metamoderated. it was just part of your duty as a logged in user to contribute a little metadata about content. http://slashdot.org/faq/mod-metamod.shtml http://slashdot.org/faq/mod-metamod.shtml
  - nostrademons 11y ago
    The Reddit equivalent to this is voting, and then the Reddit equivalent to meta-moderation is moderation.
    - Karunamon 11y ago
      Not really. Reddit's system is a pale shell of Slashdot's system and doesn't have any kind of "watching the watchers" features. Imagine how Reddit would be if you could pick reasons for votes, and then, say, filter posts so you see things which were upvoted for being insightful, rather than being merely funny.
      - okasaki 11y ago
        Reddit moderation is about controlling submissions, not voting on comments. Last time I checked slashdot's submissions are controlled by its staff.
  - Yhippa 11y ago
    Not sure why this got downvoted. IMO this was probably one of the best ways I've seen moderation done on comments online. When you got a chance to metamod you took it seriously since there was no guarantee that you would consistently get it. That worked great for a vertical focus. Not sure how it would work with as big of horizontal focus as reddit.
ChrisPebble 11y ago
Fair points, but the comment "because the moderators volunteered" made me cringe. I have a great deal of respect and sympathy for mods because I've helped moderate other forums and the task is both rewarding, unrelenting, and filled with ceaseless drama. Even though they volunteered I still give them a lot of credit if they're running a successful board. It takes a lot. I'm really intrigued to see if you're correct and we will eventually see mechanisms to replace mods. StackOverflow has moderator elections yearly, but the company has a tight control on the direction of the product. Mods have a lot more freedom to dictate the course of a board so I don't think elections would work for every board. Would be interesting to see though.
- basch 11y ago
  im not talking about you, im talking about the majority of the userbase who just want imgur pictures. most content consumers dont care about the mods. and im not saying I dont respect the work the mods do, but what I will say is that there has been quite a circlejerk of support with very little contrarian view being upvoted.
digitalzombie 11y ago
> But everyone knows they wont actually step down, because they crave the power they have accumulated, and are using the veneer of "we do this because we love the community" to generate a populous outcry that they know will gain them even more power. I was a moderator and I left... Also League of Legend mod left not too long ago, he had other responsibility and being a moderator was taking a toll on him and LoL is a big subreddit compare to my subreddit. So you're argument doesn't hold for all. It also ignore the fact that Reddit is partly run by volunteer people, moderators. You can't just handwave this fact by saying people are power hungry. The fact is if people leave like Digg then Reddit would be screwed.
- basch 11y ago
  if every iama moderator stepped down, new ones would assume the mantle
conradfr 11y ago
> Moderators are largely faceless human spam filters. It is a task that could be crowdsourced better so more people are doing less work. Like an upvote/downvote system.
anthony_romeo 11y ago
I guess the only concern I can think of is that if the majority of content submitters are angry, they may become less involved, switch to being commenters/lurkers, or move on to another site entirely. If the content diminishes, then the users might frequent the site less or look elsewhere. I'm not trying to make any predictions of doom or anything (frankly, I think this kerfuffle is just a flash in the pan), but an unstable community can have an impact on the majority of users if enough people get fed up.
stcredzero 11y ago
Moderators are not elected, they arent forcefully drafted, they dont step down when the community dislikes them. They are landowners who got there first, followed by a lot of cronyism/nepotism. It's an old boys club Many reddit moderators have caused many subreddits to feel like webforums from the early 2000's. Many are heavy-handed and feeling their power a bit. There are some subreddits where a newbie can carefully read all of the instructions about posting, try their best to comply, then still have their post removed or down-voted, then be told that all such posts should be in a certain weekly discussion.
- dredmorbius 11y ago
  Part of the challenge with that is the available tools. If there were more tools for re-parenting, editing and revising, or otherwise going through an editing process for submissions, the process could be far less confrontational. Medium operates in this manner, from what I understand. On Reddit, there's no such cycle. There's no concept of an editorial submission queue (though some subs can and do hold all submissions for approval via AutoModerator hacks). Moderators cannot edit self-posts, even to correct obvious issues (misspelling, broken formatting, broken links). Not even the submitter can correct errors in titles, for which the only option is to delete and re-submit content (losing, of course, all discussion). I'm OCD enough that I do this, though my own subs are small enough that the content loss isn't overly significant. In other words: many of the apparent limitations of Reddit moderation are the result of poor and or outgrown moderation tools. Though even at best, the editorial process is brutal, and for newbies can be quite frustrating. Take a look at Wikipedia, where even with collaborative editing, revision history, controls, etc., I'm told that conflicts occasionally occur.
kevdigital 11y ago
I've had the same thoughts through this ordeal. If it's such a burden go ahead and stop being a mod. There's plenty of users that would gladly take your place. Yet I've not heard of any doing so. Letting Victoria go probably sucks since she helped coordinate so much. But that kind of chaos or disorganization happens in any company I've worked for when a key employee is let go. Large corporations with paid employees don't always get this right. So to me Reddit's actions were no surprise, once the decision is made the employee is notified and shown the door.
- tsotha 11y ago
  Most companies will make plans to deal with associated problems, though, particularly when the company dictates the timing. I would expect problems if an employee suddenly quit without notice or became somehow incapacitated, but reddit seems to have made no effort to cover her job. It's as if they didn't realize what she was doing.
dredmorbius 11y ago
Reddit's moderator system isn't perfect, by a long shot. As with its voting systems, it's subject to abuse: calous moderation, power-tripping, and a lack of integrity, if not outright corruption. Reddit's own rules make ensuring quality moderation difficult -- admins cannot remove moderators unless they violate site rules. This leads to situations such as /r/xkcd being overtaken by a group of neo-nazi holocaust denying anti-semitic MRA promotors. Eventually resolved (see the subreddit's wiki for details). But: Reddit absolutely relies on moderators. Which means that it's putting power in the hands of an unpaid workforce. I actually find Reddit's moderation tools and systems pretty useful and better than most, though I manage only two small subs (each <300 subscribers) So, no, individual Redditors may not individually care about the personal plights of moderators, much as you probably don't put much thought into the working conditions of the person who installed and adjusted the brakes of the car heading toward you. But you absolutely have a vested interest in the consequences of their work. More on what does and doesn't work well at Reddit, from about a year ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/20yhxc/reddit_and_community_what_works_what_raises_flags/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/20yhxc/reddit_...
Aaronontheweb 11y ago
But that's exactly why the moderators are important. Overwhelmingly most redditors are lurker content sponges. As soon as the people who invest in making the content and maintaining the content sources leave, so will the vast majority of users who consume it.
celticninja 11y ago
actually there have been plenty of rebuttals to this sort of statement, so I will briefly paraphrase the general content for you. Most users dont care, they dont care about reddit, they dont care about the mods, they dont care about the drama, all they want is their new content. They have no loyalty and would jump ship to an alternative site quite easily if the content was appearing elsewhere first. So if those mods/content creators to go to voat.co, or whatever alternative is being suggested, so will apathetic users who dont care where they get their fix. Redit wasnt the first social media sharing site, digg.com was way pout in front for a long time, then came along v4 and killed the site dead in its tracks. Users fled because they changed the way stories were submitted and who submitted them. All those apathetic users jumped ship to mainly reddit and whilst reddit was growing and catching digg in term sof page views etc, Digg's failure is what boosted reddit to the number 1 position and the same thing can happen again.
smacktoward 11y ago
> They are landowners Landowners who don't actually own the land they spend so much time improving. So more like sharecroppers, actually.
jaawn 11y ago
The negative tone of this comment may be off-putting for some, but aside from that, this is very insightful. Calling "we do this because we love the community" a veneer especially makes a lot of sense to me, based on what I've seen of Reddit mods.
dummy7953 11y ago
Please don't quote South Park.

by basch 11y ago

munificent 11y ago

> Most people who frequent the site dont care at all about the plight of the moderators. They care about the quality of the comment they see on the subreddits they follow. That transitively means they really care about the plight of the moderators. They just don't know it. > Moderators are largely faceless human spam filters. On the well-moderated subreddits—which are increasingly the largest ones—they do a hell of a lot more than spam filtering. Moderators at subreddits like /r/NoStupidQuestions, /r/science, or many of the "Ask ___" subreddits are responsible for instilling the voice and culture of the subreddit. > When I see the moderators throw tantrums demanding more respect, it reminds me of Reagan firing every air traffic controller who went on strike, people who thought they were above being replaced. I'm not saying they couldn't be replaced. But if you do that, those subreddits will fundamentally change. And, in many cases, the userbase may go elsewhere before the subreddit finds its feet again. > In the immortal words of southpark, if you dont like America, then you can get out. I don't think reddit needs to worry much about moderators leaving. But they should really worry about content contributors leaving. The Digg v4 exodus happened virtually overnight. There's nothing magical about reddit that ensures that can't happen to them.

basch 11y ago
>they really care about the plight of the moderators no they dont. its like henchmen in a movie. if some fall more will take their place. its a thankless task. they dont care at all about the individual, they just care that the group functions. the group will function without the individual as long as there are reenforcements. >in many cases, the userbase may go elsewhere before the subreddit finds its feet again. probably to another subreddit, like when /r/trees replaced /r/marijuana (thats still a win for reddit corp)
- Nadya 11y ago
  >no they dont. its like henchmen in a movie. if some fall more will take their place. its a thankless task I find most people who say things like this have 0 moderating experience, or at least no experience handling communities larger than 100 (or even 1,000) people. Administration connection with moderators is important. If it's lacking, people willing to moderate will go to sites with better tools and better access to administration. There are "alternative Reddits" popping up, such as voat.co, to fill that position. Mods aren't as easy to replace as people think they are. Finding someone who fits and follows the community culture, is able to act as a mediator in case of community conflicts, and enforce the rules with as little bias as impossible is actually quite hard and a moderator unable to do this can easily kill a community. There is a fine balance in the relationships between lurkers::creators::mods::admins.
- iaw 11y ago
  There was a post on reddit by a user emphasizing your reasoning but reaching a different conclusion. The user argued that he didn't not care about the plight of the moderators or content creators in one bit, he just wanted to selfishly consume his content. He recognized the importance of the people that do care in creating the community that provides the quality of experience he desires and he was quick to emphasize that the second the quality drops he will find a new community. The quality in subreddits are a direct function of the capabilities of their moderation staff.
  - basch 11y ago

vonklaus 11y ago

> it reminds me of Reagan firing every air traffic controller who went on strike Unionized laborers collectively bargaining for more money from the company they work for is almost the exact opposite of unpaid volunteers maintaining the profit making infrastructure of a for profit corporation.

basch 11y ago
you clipped the second half of the sentence ... "people who thought they were above being replaced"
- vonklaus 11y ago
  Sure, I wasn't trying to be disingenuous. The difference I was illustrating was that asking for respect and communication is different than money and benefits.
- ska 11y ago
  They are certainly replaceable, but they just as certainly not fungible. Reddit management clearly made a mistake here, not because it annoyed some moderators, but because they showed poor understanding of a fundamental part of their business (i.e. this is a lot of avoidable bad press, if nothing else) They seem to have realized this, and are working on amending process. Nothing wrong with that, this is how things can improve.
  - vonklaus 11y ago
    I agree with this. Many social networks (friendster, myspace, Digg, etc) die of community collapse. If someone funded voat.co so they could keep their servers up and the mods and community jumped ship reddit's business would take a serious hit.
  - Karunamon 11y ago
    They seem to have realized this, and are working on amending process. I'm not holding my breath. Reddit has promised moderators better tools and users better transparency and more features for months and years. So far, all those promises have been completely empty, and I see nothing to suggest things will be different this time. Put more crudely, at least two people on the reddit staff, Ohanian and Pao, are completely full of shit.

VonGuard 11y ago

I totally agree that Reddit is an old boys club. But this is how all online communities seem to work: age = power and respect. How would you solve this problem? It's been like that since newsgroups. It seems to be just a human tendency.

basch 11y ago
slashdot randomly assigned the task of moderation to logged in users. that moderation was then metamoderated. it was just part of your duty as a logged in user to contribute a little metadata about content. http://slashdot.org/faq/mod-metamod.shtml http://slashdot.org/faq/mod-metamod.shtml
- nostrademons 11y ago
  The Reddit equivalent to this is voting, and then the Reddit equivalent to meta-moderation is moderation.
  - Karunamon 11y ago
    Not really. Reddit's system is a pale shell of Slashdot's system and doesn't have any kind of "watching the watchers" features. Imagine how Reddit would be if you could pick reasons for votes, and then, say, filter posts so you see things which were upvoted for being insightful, rather than being merely funny.
    - okasaki 11y ago
      Reddit moderation is about controlling submissions, not voting on comments. Last time I checked slashdot's submissions are controlled by its staff.
- Yhippa 11y ago
  Not sure why this got downvoted. IMO this was probably one of the best ways I've seen moderation done on comments online. When you got a chance to metamod you took it seriously since there was no guarantee that you would consistently get it. That worked great for a vertical focus. Not sure how it would work with as big of horizontal focus as reddit.

ChrisPebble 11y ago

Fair points, but the comment "because the moderators volunteered" made me cringe. I have a great deal of respect and sympathy for mods because I've helped moderate other forums and the task is both rewarding, unrelenting, and filled with ceaseless drama. Even though they volunteered I still give them a lot of credit if they're running a successful board. It takes a lot. I'm really intrigued to see if you're correct and we will eventually see mechanisms to replace mods. StackOverflow has moderator elections yearly, but the company has a tight control on the direction of the product. Mods have a lot more freedom to dictate the course of a board so I don't think elections would work for every board. Would be interesting to see though.

basch 11y ago
im not talking about you, im talking about the majority of the userbase who just want imgur pictures. most content consumers dont care about the mods. and im not saying I dont respect the work the mods do, but what I will say is that there has been quite a circlejerk of support with very little contrarian view being upvoted.

digitalzombie 11y ago

> But everyone knows they wont actually step down, because they crave the power they have accumulated, and are using the veneer of "we do this because we love the community" to generate a populous outcry that they know will gain them even more power. I was a moderator and I left... Also League of Legend mod left not too long ago, he had other responsibility and being a moderator was taking a toll on him and LoL is a big subreddit compare to my subreddit. So you're argument doesn't hold for all. It also ignore the fact that Reddit is partly run by volunteer people, moderators. You can't just handwave this fact by saying people are power hungry. The fact is if people leave like Digg then Reddit would be screwed.

basch 11y ago
if every iama moderator stepped down, new ones would assume the mantle

conradfr 11y ago

> Moderators are largely faceless human spam filters. It is a task that could be crowdsourced better so more people are doing less work. Like an upvote/downvote system.

anthony_romeo 11y ago

I guess the only concern I can think of is that if the majority of content submitters are angry, they may become less involved, switch to being commenters/lurkers, or move on to another site entirely. If the content diminishes, then the users might frequent the site less or look elsewhere. I'm not trying to make any predictions of doom or anything (frankly, I think this kerfuffle is just a flash in the pan), but an unstable community can have an impact on the majority of users if enough people get fed up.

stcredzero 11y ago

Moderators are not elected, they arent forcefully drafted, they dont step down when the community dislikes them. They are landowners who got there first, followed by a lot of cronyism/nepotism. It's an old boys club Many reddit moderators have caused many subreddits to feel like webforums from the early 2000's. Many are heavy-handed and feeling their power a bit. There are some subreddits where a newbie can carefully read all of the instructions about posting, try their best to comply, then still have their post removed or down-voted, then be told that all such posts should be in a certain weekly discussion.

dredmorbius 11y ago
Part of the challenge with that is the available tools. If there were more tools for re-parenting, editing and revising, or otherwise going through an editing process for submissions, the process could be far less confrontational. Medium operates in this manner, from what I understand. On Reddit, there's no such cycle. There's no concept of an editorial submission queue (though some subs can and do hold all submissions for approval via AutoModerator hacks). Moderators cannot edit self-posts, even to correct obvious issues (misspelling, broken formatting, broken links). Not even the submitter can correct errors in titles, for which the only option is to delete and re-submit content (losing, of course, all discussion). I'm OCD enough that I do this, though my own subs are small enough that the content loss isn't overly significant. In other words: many of the apparent limitations of Reddit moderation are the result of poor and or outgrown moderation tools. Though even at best, the editorial process is brutal, and for newbies can be quite frustrating. Take a look at Wikipedia, where even with collaborative editing, revision history, controls, etc., I'm told that conflicts occasionally occur.

kevdigital 11y ago

I've had the same thoughts through this ordeal. If it's such a burden go ahead and stop being a mod. There's plenty of users that would gladly take your place. Yet I've not heard of any doing so. Letting Victoria go probably sucks since she helped coordinate so much. But that kind of chaos or disorganization happens in any company I've worked for when a key employee is let go. Large corporations with paid employees don't always get this right. So to me Reddit's actions were no surprise, once the decision is made the employee is notified and shown the door.

tsotha 11y ago
Most companies will make plans to deal with associated problems, though, particularly when the company dictates the timing. I would expect problems if an employee suddenly quit without notice or became somehow incapacitated, but reddit seems to have made no effort to cover her job. It's as if they didn't realize what she was doing.

dredmorbius 11y ago

Reddit's moderator system isn't perfect, by a long shot. As with its voting systems, it's subject to abuse: calous moderation, power-tripping, and a lack of integrity, if not outright corruption. Reddit's own rules make ensuring quality moderation difficult -- admins cannot remove moderators unless they violate site rules. This leads to situations such as /r/xkcd being overtaken by a group of neo-nazi holocaust denying anti-semitic MRA promotors. Eventually resolved (see the subreddit's wiki for details). But: Reddit absolutely relies on moderators. Which means that it's putting power in the hands of an unpaid workforce. I actually find Reddit's moderation tools and systems pretty useful and better than most, though I manage only two small subs (each <300 subscribers) So, no, individual Redditors may not individually care about the personal plights of moderators, much as you probably don't put much thought into the working conditions of the person who installed and adjusted the brakes of the car heading toward you. But you absolutely have a vested interest in the consequences of their work. More on what does and doesn't work well at Reddit, from about a year ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/20yhxc/reddit_and_community_what_works_what_raises_flags/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/20yhxc/reddit_...

Aaronontheweb 11y ago

But that's exactly why the moderators are important. Overwhelmingly most redditors are lurker content sponges. As soon as the people who invest in making the content and maintaining the content sources leave, so will the vast majority of users who consume it.

celticninja 11y ago

actually there have been plenty of rebuttals to this sort of statement, so I will briefly paraphrase the general content for you. Most users dont care, they dont care about reddit, they dont care about the mods, they dont care about the drama, all they want is their new content. They have no loyalty and would jump ship to an alternative site quite easily if the content was appearing elsewhere first. So if those mods/content creators to go to voat.co, or whatever alternative is being suggested, so will apathetic users who dont care where they get their fix. Redit wasnt the first social media sharing site, digg.com was way pout in front for a long time, then came along v4 and killed the site dead in its tracks. Users fled because they changed the way stories were submitted and who submitted them. All those apathetic users jumped ship to mainly reddit and whilst reddit was growing and catching digg in term sof page views etc, Digg's failure is what boosted reddit to the number 1 position and the same thing can happen again.

smacktoward 11y ago

> They are landowners Landowners who don't actually own the land they spend so much time improving. So more like sharecroppers, actually.

jaawn 11y ago

The negative tone of this comment may be off-putting for some, but aside from that, this is very insightful. Calling "we do this because we love the community" a veneer especially makes a lot of sense to me, based on what I've seen of Reddit mods.

dummy7953 11y ago

Please don't quote South Park.