[yanderekko]

>Yet Reddit removed both moderators from their positions this summer because the mods refused to end r/canning's protest against Reddit and its new API fees; the protest had made the entire subreddit "read only." Now, the ousted mods fear that r/canning could become subject to unsafe advice that goes unnoticed by new moderators. "My biggest fear with all this is that someone will follow an unsafe recipe posted on the sub and get badly sick or killed by it," Dromio05 told me.

bikespokememe.jpg

I totally buy the argument that the protest probably lead to their being some sort of marginal shift from hobbyist moderators to admin-friendly powermods. But to this point:

- This happened to the extent that hobbyist mods rendered their own forums unusable on an indeterminate basis. They chose the hill they died on, and cannot claim they were acting in the interests of their community in doing so.

- Powermods dominated wide swaths of the site prior to the protests and this sort of concern was never raised (there were concerns about powermods, but not powermods vs. hobbyist mods.) So the entire article likely represents an act of concern trolling. The underlying point may still be valid, but its bad-faith motivations deserve to be called out.

[johnnyanmac]

>Powermods dominated wide swaths of the site prior to the protests and this sort of concern was never raised

I don't think most powermods really revolted. Many probably have financial motivations to keep running, so they can see inconvvinence as the cost of doing business.

I am very worried about the "hobbyist mods". And yea, they weren't talked about for the same reason you don't talk about stuff you expect is "the ideal". If a mod is kind, has clear rules, and is even a domain expert in some cases, what is there to talk about?

Reddit isn't like HackerNews where they will praise the Dangs of their site everynow and then. Mods are also pseudoanonymous and as such praise is minimized, or reduced to zero. You don't know what you have until it's gone.

[yanderekko]

>I don't think most powermods really revolted

Well, at least a substantial minority did.

>I am very worried about the "hobbyist mods". And yea, they weren't talked about for the same reason you don't talk about stuff you expect is "the ideal". If a mod is kind, has clear rules, and is even a domain expert in some cases, what is there to talk about?

Actually, this raises a good point. The hobbyist mods who were yeeted were probably disproportionately likely to be the sort of intemperate, authoritarian mods that given Reddit mods a bad name. Additionally, these mods are probably the most likely to see the easing of their authoritarian policies as tantamount to opening the doors to hatred, spam, misinformation, etc. Can their judgment really be trusted?

[johnnyanmac]

>The hobbyist mods who were yeeted were probably disproportionately likely to be the sort of intemperate, authoritarian mods that given Reddit mods a bad name.

I don't know how you took my point of "if a mod is kind, has clear rules, and is a domain expert" and spun it around to "these mods lack self control and have bad rules". They were NOT talked about to begin with, that was my entire assertion.

>Can their judgment really be trusted?

I don't know, because I don't know your methodology of moderation. It sounds like you prefer a lasseiz faire approach and only want mods to keep out spam. if you don't want moderators to determine what hate and misinformation is, and are fine with low effort memes being on the front page of a sub, the current approach is ideal for you.

But, the kinds of subreddits being interviewed here were not those kinds of meme subreddits. They clearly cared about the content presented and wanted some level of quality in posts and comments.

- canning has a bit over 100k subscribers

- ender3 is 200k subs and I don't even think it's the largest 3d printer sub on Reddit

- homeautomation is the largest of the 3 mentioned with 2m subs

2/3 of these can "easily" be replaced with a different sub with looser rules if you feel strongly against their moderation style. Is it wrong for them want to maintain that level of quality?

Regardless, even a 2M sub isn't holding a candle to what actual powermods are controlling. They aren't too relevant to the discussion the author brings up.