It varies by sub, and by the purpose of the sub. Some are terrible, some are quite good.
For example, the mods of r/askhistorians are so strict that in most threads the majority of the comments are deleted. But they apply the rules consistently, and keep the sub tightly focused on questions answered by professional historians, in detail, with sources. If you have a historical question you'd like answered, it's an amazing resource.
AskHistorians is a great resource until you watch how topics in your area of expertise are answered and the kind of diversion from wide consensus that is tolerated with scant sourcing. It basically mirrors whats been happening to academia. As long as you can source a peer review on gay dogs in parks you'll be taken as credible.
I remember seeing posts there talking about how Ancient Sparta was never exceptional and actually lost most battles. As someone who has read all the primary source material on the Spartans...thats total crap.
I'd argue lately that most are terrible and a few are good. AskHistorians does that because they employ literl hundreds of mods. It's not a scalable solution.
I would totally agree. So many of them just seem to be on a power trip and moderate based on their mood. Its sad because its really killed reddit for a lot of people.
My guess is, being a mod means you see patterns and you know when something is going to descend into a shitstorm because you've seen similar comments descent into a shitstorm before.
So eventually mods kill comments not because they particularly dislike them but because they can't be bothered with dealing with the inevitable shit to come.
It's not a job. It's a hobby at best. The people who do it don't have to care about your free speech, nobody has to care about your free speech other than the government.
They treat it like a job. Regardless, I think when you tire of something that's not critical to your livelihood you should step down.
But if that happened, powermods wouldn't be a thing.
>The people who do it don't have to care about your free speech
No, but I don't have to care about the bog swamp of discourse you moderate just because "we have 1 million subs". Well great, everyone is angry and nuance is talked down. I don't want that to be the place.
But if keeping your mod power is more important than, well, moderating your community, you reap what you sow.
> Reddit mods are arguably the worst part of reddit
No, the actual administrators (the ones that work there are). They're the ones that can actually ban entire subreddits and entire users. I had my account permanently suspended for upvoting vaccine hesitancy. That wasn't done by a reddit moderator.
The de facto policy that men and white people as a group aren't covered by their anti-harassment policy also comes directly from the employees, not the mods.
For example, the mods of r/askhistorians are so strict that in most threads the majority of the comments are deleted. But they apply the rules consistently, and keep the sub tightly focused on questions answered by professional historians, in detail, with sources. If you have a historical question you'd like answered, it's an amazing resource.