[stetrain]

> If people keep upvoting and enjoying the same stupid memes and jokes why do moderators feel like they need to step in and disrupt what the people find enjoyable?

The same question could be asked of Hacker News, which is run very much like a topically focused subreddit with rules, moderation, merging of duplicate topics, etc.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[evandale]

Yeah, I addressed this and you had to skip this sentence to quote the sentence you did: "The only time it doesn't work is in places like r/AskHistorians or r/science which require high quality comments much like this place."

[stetrain]

Ah I missed the “this place” piece. We’ll call that even on misreading each others comments considering your last reply to me.

Well then it’s clear you understand the value of good moderation, even in a place like Hacker News which is not nearly as strict IMO as the subs you mentioned.

I get your examples of over moderation and of course there are plenty of examples of this. I just think you may be in danger of conflating good moderation, which is often invisible and doesn’t involve a lot of moderator posting and onerous rules, with the lack of need for moderation at all.