r/TheoryOfReddit • u/SoullessGamesDev • 20d ago
I think that Reddit is over and undermoderated at the same time, and both of those combined create an awful user experience.
I was a mod in the past. And looking at the current generation of mods, I fail to comprehend why they even bother doing that? Why do any kind of task if you do not intend to do it correctly? Because I believe that not doing the task at all, or letting someone more competent do it instead is always a better choice than doing a sloppy job. So, I just had to speak up. Most likely it will go in vain, but maybe someone will listen and improve.
The first and the most obvious sign of a slopmod is punishing the people because the mod is too lazy to do his job. A person creates a post that is not against the rules. Some people make comments that are against the rules. And then mod closes the post, not because it was violating anything, but... because there is too much comments breaking the rules. So instead of doing literally only thing he needed to do - moderating, the mod decides to punish a legit OP and all the users who were engaged in a totally legit discussion and did not broke any rules. If you are too lazy to moderate... maybe just don't? Quit, do something else instead. But do not deny people from discussing interesting subject just because of your laziness.
Anothter lovely example are the mods who write extremely vague rules, and add "if unsure, ask the mods". And then don't answer to modmail. At all. But somehow still find time to remove posts, that would not been created if they answered the modmail, directly asking them "if this post can be created or it will break the rules". Many do not answer even if you simply want to clarify something about the rules.
Not explaining the reasons for removal is nothing but lazy. How do you expect for your users to improve and correct the part that breaks the rules, if they don't even know which rule they are broken, and why exactly? What would you feel if you would recieve a fine, but without any explanations what for? It's not that hard to attach automated message with at least saying which rule was broken, and, if necessary - briefly explaining why.
Then, comes the rules. The rules are the law of this land. And there is nothing more hummiliating for a mod than to punish someone who did not actually break them. You did not account for something? Your fault. There is a loophole? Your fault. In reality of civilized world the court say that anything that does not break the rules are allowed. So, if your role models aren't Putin or Trump, you should accept your mistake, issue no punishment, but rewrite the rules to make sure it will not happen again. Learning to lose and having the humility to accept defeat is important. If you are not a tyrant, of course.
More rules. Subrules for rules. Sometimes over 50% possible themes that are directly related to the subreddit theme are forbidden because mods personally dislike them. If you are aiming to build a community, and not a regime, stop forbidding things that you personally dislike. It does not matter what you think or feel about those. The community has votes, they will sort it out. Your job is to keep things secure, and not to role-play a moral police from Temu.
Yes. The job is unpaid. Yes, you are volounteers. But no job done is often better than bad job done. By accepting the role and not doing what is required you hurting the community more than if you did not had the role. It is fine to step down when you feel like you can no longer handle the pressure. I did that and have no regrets for giving power in hands of people who have time and energy to do the task properly.
It was especially ironic that when i make the post with these questions in moderator's sub, asking them if they really think that they are helping reddit instead of hurting it this way, it was instantly removed, without any reason listen, and modmail was ignored - basicly proving half of the points that i made.
So in the end, i believe that the problem is that people giving moderator rights to certified narcissists, who seek that kind of a power only to abuse it. I even wrore a test for the song about that: https://youtu.be/6t2iTWeW3r4
And what do you think about this? Do communities benefit from having a sloppy tyranny?
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u/MairusuPawa 20d ago
Mods have changed largely when the API debacle happened. Good people just left, and no one should blame them.
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u/GiganticCrow 19d ago
And people with agendas took over to fill the gaps.
All of my country's news and politics subs became far right shitholes after the mod protest.
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u/RedditConsciousness 19d ago
Agreed about people with agendas. Though I think I've seen polarization on both sides. There are definitely some major subs who will ban you if you are a moderate and not far enough to the left.
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u/NihiloZero 20d ago
The largest main subs, like... /r/Poltics, for example, used to allow self-posts where people could post their opinions or ideas and be upvoted or downvoted accordingly. Nowadways... that subs like that severely restrict most posts that aren't from some sort of mainstream approved source. They instead send you to /r/PoliticalDiscussion -- which is a small sub and any top-level self-post must be presented in a "neutral" manner and in the form of a questions. The totally unbiased and impartial mods of that sub will decide if your post is too leading or otherwise unworthy.
I see such changes over the years as bait-and-switch rug pulls. All the people who participated and helped such subs grow over the years... have mostly just ended up helping to build a corporate media news aggregator with a very limited and hollow range of opinions.
Similarly, another things large subs will do is "lock the thread" just as discussion is growing. Why have 50 mods in your sub if they can't simply remove egregious content or ban the most offending users? It's so stifling of potentially productive conversation.
Also, "mega-threads" serve a similar purpose. Instead of allowing a post that explores a unique aspect of a topic... they mods will just remove such posts and bury them at the bottom of a mega-thread where they will be ignored or more difficult to focus upon and discuss. Again, it's completely stifling of discourse and actually minimizes discussion. And, of course, the completely unbiased and not-at-all-arbitary mods can still then pick and choose if they personally think that a post about an important topic doesn't need to in a megathreads.
It's all bad for civil discourse and works against democracy, IMHO.
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u/SoullessGamesDev 20d ago
It is especially funny since reddit has a dumb rule about "self promotion", that requires posts to link variety of sources. But limiting links to only approved ones they not only forbid any opinion that will go against the agenda, and thus not published on the big outlets, but also forcing people to use same sources, triggering the "self-promotion" issue.
And megathreads is just a polite way to put your opinion to the dumpster because it is uncomfortable, and almost nobody reads it. They know it, and use it as a way to dispose of unwanted posts without looking like they just want them gone.
It is being done to discourage any kind of discussion that does not align with certain views, ending up in creating boring echo chambers where i can't even debate people because having a debate is somehow wrong now.
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u/Bonegirl06 20d ago
Of course the reason why posts like that on r/politics are no longer allowed is very obvious. For every quality post there are 10 troll and/or offensive posts. Any rule is going to have trade offs. And just because a team has 50 members on paper does not mean all are active nor is everyone on all at once
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u/ValhirFirstThunder 19d ago
From my many years of experience on reddit, those post are not as common as you think and get downvoted pretty quickly to oblivion. The tradeoffs from a UX favors not doing what r/politics does.
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u/Bonegirl06 19d ago
We still don't want "But what if Hitler had a point?" posts on the sub, down voted or not. Requiring posts to be tied to a reputable source keeps things manageable in a large and contentious sub. It just is what it is.
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u/ValhirFirstThunder 19d ago
I honestly hate the opinion but would be open to the discussion. And I would rather have upvotes and downvotes control that. The real problem with reddit are the users who want their space sanitized so it becomes over moderated. So yea me and you are in completely opposing ends
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u/NihiloZero 19d ago
So you remove the bad posts and allow the good posts to remain. It's pretty simple. And if you're worried about troll/offensive post being up for too long... just require poss to be approved before the appear. Again, it's pretty simple. And if you've got 50 mods it shouldn't be a problem at all.
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u/Bonegirl06 19d ago
Except it's not simple at all when you've got a giant sub. Requiring every post to be approved would mean a lot of posts get out date quickly and its a lot more work for mods, who believe it or not have lives outside reddit. Trade offs.
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u/NihiloZero 19d ago
Those are just excuses, not actually good reasons.
You can tell the subscribers that their post might not appear immediately (that's how they do it in the nevertheless stifled /r/PoliticalDiscussion). But, really, if you've got a dozen mods and the post isn't egregiously bad in some way... it should be approved before too long. Putting a cap of 500 words on self-posts would be much better than simply disallowing them, but even that isn't really necessary. Let the users decide via upvotes or downvotes if a post is worthy of being at the top of the page -- just like it originally worked. Users can also be encouraged to report things that slip through the cracks or comments that are over the line. The main thing is that political discussion wouldn't be relegated to simply mainstream media sources.
Reddit could actually be the virtual town hall and good for actual discourse -- and there is no good reason that it shouldn't be. And discussions don't need to be quickly locked just people disagree or argue. Admittedly banning most content and locking threads immediately is easier, but if you've got a good mod team who actually cares about the content... it's not too difficult to simply remove inappropriate content and ban the most egregious users. Look for reports, skim the comments, and press he remove/ban button -- easy. If mods can't be arsed to do that... they're not really doing much anyway.
Mods don't need to preemptively ban self-posts or lock threads at any sign of anger or argumentation. If a post is bad... they can hit the remove button, like George Jetson. If a commentator is overtly racist or breaking truly fundamental rules... ban them -- it's not difficult, just leave a little note about why they were banned. It's not rocket science or a herculean task, it just demands more than preemptively banning all self-posts and immediately locking all heated threads.
And while I think this is all largely true for even the bigger subs, it should especially be true for subs that one would reasonably expect more free and open discourse, like in /r/PoliticalDiscussion. But if the average Redditor can't even share their top-level posts, or if threads constantly get locked before a long thoughtful comment gets posted -- what's the point in being anything but a passive consumer of infotainment? Why even bother trying to share new ideas or thoughtful opinions? It is that culture change which I believe has hurt Reddit the most over the years. The way things are currently run in many large subs just encourages lazy linking to a small group of websites and minimal engagement in the comments.
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u/Bonegirl06 19d ago
I'm not sure where you're even hanging out that discussions are locked on a regular basis. I almost never encounter a locked post on the subs I frequent.
Lots of subs allow users to post their thoughts as discussions. Politics is one of the only ones that doesn't for reasons I already stated. It feels like you have very specific complaints that you're globalizing to the whole site.
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u/femannon 17d ago
I think the problem is that Reddit has just outgrown the volunteer mod model. The largest subreddits are also the largest forums on the internet and would take literally hundreds of people to moderate properly. It's just not reasonable to expect volunteers to do. You basically need a corporate style hierarchy and chain of command to do it. A $30B company that pays its CEO a 9-figure salary should be paying for labor not relying on volunteers.
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u/NihiloZero 17d ago
People start and moderate subreddits because it is enjoyable for many of them. For large subs, people are still interested in things like sports, politics, and science, and so forth -- so you could find enthusiastic mods if the mod positions were easily accessible and explained well. Enthusiasts would moderate those subs if they weren't crowded out by power mods who just like to mod because they want control over the content. Power mods should be frowned upon and free and open discourse should be preferred.
If you set up Reddit so that there was a bit of transparency (in terms of what content was being removed) and the rank of mods determined who gets the final say on an action (so that the newest mod couldn't override something by an older mod), it wouldn't be a huge issue to not lock every other thread and restrict all sorts of content. The thing is... there is no transparency and the mods don't have any real accountability -- and if they take unpopular actions in the large subs it doesn't matter because those subs have momentum. They don't care about losing subscribers and, in many cases, they really just care about pushing their own agenda or their own preferred sources. MSM getting control of a sub means that they can throttle their competitors and such. But that is the type of thing which shouldn't be allowed. Instead... they remove naughty words, or arguments, or simple disagreements. They lock threads at the drop of a hat and they hide popular opinions in megathreads -- instead of just removing the offending content with just a literal click of a button.
Seriously... it's a George Jetson level of "work." With collective effort, a slight bit of transparency, and an ounce of accountability... it really shouldn't be an issue to find enough competent mods. The problem is the mods taking cheap and easy actions when it's really not necessary.
The only paid mods should be looking for reported content that hasn't been removed. The report queue could prioritize certain types of reports and focus first on the largest subs. If it false reports are being made they should deprioritize or remove the reporting ability for that user/IP address. So a main sub's direct mods would still like respond to reports first -- but if they didn't get around to reviewing and the content remained up... then it would remain in the "reported queue" queue for the higher-level system-wide mods to review. And those system-wide mods should only remove very egregious content based upon strict criteria. The automod could also be tuned to help out better.
Look, I'm not saying this latter aspect wouldn't need any thought, or any budge, or any work, but... it really shouldn't require a huge staff. And, again... enthusiastically committed mods in each various sub could easily handle most of the "work" if they were given the opportunity and allowed to handle it.
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u/RedditConsciousness 19d ago
Similarly, another things large subs will do is "lock the thread" just as discussion is growing.
Yep. There is something infuriating about finding an interesting topic only after the thread has been locked. And that seems to happen repeatedly on some subs. I'd even go so far as to say I had something to add to some of those conversations that hadn't been said yet.
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u/Grimke42 20d ago
AI and troll farms are killing all social media
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u/GiganticCrow 19d ago
And hidden post histories killed whatever good faith discourse that remained.
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u/RedditConsciousness 19d ago
I'm in favor of hidden post histories. There are a number of reasons why.
For one, I would argue that people looking at post histories becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you don't like a commenter's position you will always find something in their post history to dismiss them. I say this as a political moderate with some complicated views on things. I have been called "MAGA" many times on reddit. I voted for Kamala and have voted straight Democrat in general for decades.
Secondly, it derails conversations. Instead of debating the issue from the thread that you are in, you end up re-litigating some other debate from long ago, with reduced context.
Thirdly, we should attack the argument not the person. So in that sense, it doesn't matter who the person is, it only matters if their position is a good one. In fact, I would call it a sort of intellectual laziness to be concerned with who the speaker is. In the worst cases of this laziness there are redditors who see a position they are unfamiliar with and instead of evaluating it they go "Well let me see which side they are on to decide whether I agree with them or not".
Finally, at times it has also been used as a means of cyberbullying. If there is a dissenter in a thread where the majority of people are hostile to their position, redditors will pull things out of that dissenter's comment history so that the group could dogpile and attack the dissenter collectively. This only increases tribalism and can actually harm people.
On a site where we (rightly) don't tolerate encouraging violence to advance political agendas, there are few qualms about harming people psychologically. I think someday we will look back at these times and shake our heads saying "How could we have allowed that to go on?" We already know that social media's rise has correlated strongly with depression rates in young people. We really need to be more aware of how we are harming others.
So instead, I recommend this: Assume the innocence. That is good to do in real life and should be done online as well. Unless there is immediate and incontrovertible evidence of bad faith action, carry forward with the assumption that the party you are talking to is speaking in good faith.
I want you to know that I do hear you when you say you want to keep discourse from being destroyed by bad actors, especially bots and AI. However, if we don't assume the innocence, bad actors have already won by insulating us from any discourse that challenges us.
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u/Custom_Kas 19d ago edited 18d ago
Reddit has become an echochamber of antisocials enforcing victorian etiquette. All humor has left it, all creativity, all fun. Most subs have automods that will delete a comment for using the word suck or something equally trivial. All the bigger subs have mods that REEK of basement god complex. It has become a playground of weirdly socially enforced autists with little sense of reality and enjoyment.
There is no ownership from Reddit itself. All subs are completely free to moderate and ban as they please and there is NO WAY to appeal any of it, or involve the platform itself to enforce some decency and fairness. Which probably also the reason Reddit Mods have become such memes. The way this platform completely fails to police itself and de-facto refuses to evolve with the times apart from monetisation is just a slap in the face of the millions of users that made it, literally with THEIR content, to what it is now.
On top of this the app itself SUCKS and has been getting worse for years. Uploading anything more that a single photo fails 40% of the time. Stuff gets resized or autoflagged wrongly. Even typing and editing posts has become worse for some utterly baffling reason.
People brigade and use the like button as a voting system to enforce whatever agenda they think they have. Most of the hobby subs have just become ask-and-tell for people that are completely lost on the concept of critical thought and 'just googling stuff'. Have any original thought, or disgree with a mod, or post something vaguely tangential but fun and related; some neckbeard with his army of automods will have no problem autobanning or energy-vampire you with mansplainy snark.
This is my 18th year using Reddit. In the beginning this was the most open, fun, raw, honest and absurdist corner of the internet and I LOVED it. Now it has become this weirdly sanitised corporate shell of itself that pretends to still be the same safehaven for the worlds nerds, but fails spectacularly to be either of those.
I had a half million karma account before this one which I deleted out of frustration. Now I have everything on private and ONLY post to promote and share my projects. For casual browsing and fun YT-shorts and Insta (god forbid, imagine that) have completely replaced it.
If I need to read one more basementdweller's "well ackshually" comment there is a good chance I'll delete this one too.
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u/hepazepie 20d ago
Anarcho-Tyranny
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u/SoullessGamesDev 20d ago
I would rather perfer the Arachno Communism. Give everything to the spiders! They would create a better new World Wide Web.
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u/fuuuuuckendoobs 20d ago
I replied to an AI generated post in a sub for my industry with the comment "You posted this verbatim yesterday and it was removed. Please stop" and copped a 3 day ban for "unprofessional behaviour".
The motivation for being a moderator is power.
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u/FunkyChickenKong 20d ago edited 20d ago
After a while, it gets more and more limited. Almost unusable, but not as bad as Facebook or Twitter. I never bother with others much.
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u/Fauropitotto 20d ago
The first and the most obvious sign of a slopmod is punishing the people because the mod is too lazy to do his job. A person creates a post that is not against the rules. Some people make comments that are against the rules. And then mod closes the post, not because it was violating anything, but... because there is too much comments breaking the rules.
Did you go through moderator training? This course of action is exactly what the Moderator training material instructs them to do.
And then don't answer to modmail.
Modmail is broken on so many different levels. That's assuming they even get the notification.
How do you expect for your users to improve and correct the part that breaks the rules
Eh, it depends. First, not all "rules" need to be written. Why? Because some "rules" are based on community culture, community sentiment, and context.
It's the reason we have rules that are broad, covering "offensive language", knowing full well the nature of offense is purely subjective and may be based on the context. A "Get Fucked Cunt" shirt may be offensive at an amusement park, but won't be offensive at a punk music performance.
If you need a "rule" to have the sense to know what's offensive in a given community, then you do not belong in that community.
A community is a gathering of people with shared values, shared culture, and shared interests. Not a board meeting of neuroatypicals that require some kind of written list of rules like roberts rules or order for fundamental social engagement. If a person can't participate appropriately in that community after observing the community itself, then they should be excluded from that community.
So no. Moderators should not be in a position where they have to incessantly write a myriad of rules, or be forgiving and accommodating for those that go against community sentiment or culture. They don't have to explain the reason for removing a post, they don't have to explain a reason for temp bans, or permanent bans. They do not owe the community an explanation. They do not owe an individual an "opportunity to improve and correct".
That's not their job, no matter how intensely you believe that it should be.
I'll add this too. The reddit user experience is driven by the user. There's only a tiny tiny tiny fraction of user engagement that ever gets the attention or interaction with moderators. Therefore those that have an "awful" user experiences are those that have created one for themselves (by not appropriately integrating into the sub's community or being generally a nasty person), or those that have intentionally brought themselves to the awareness of moderators for breaking the intended community decorum.
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u/SoullessGamesDev 20d ago
This course of action is exactly what the Moderator training material instructs them to do.
If you follow instructions of the soulless corporate machine to the letter, you will never create an interesting community. Everything will be censored. Everyone will agree, because disagreement will lead to exclusion. Is that what you want to participate at?
Modmail is broken on so many different levels. That's assuming they even get the notification.
I guess it is the coincidence that mostly mods who remove things without stating reasons are the ones not answering. Or, that when you try to ask questions in post after getting ignored in modmail, post is getting deleted. Again, without reasons to.
If you need a "rule" to have the sense to know what's offensive in a given community, then you do not belong in that community.
I guess that the autistic people do not belong in any community then? Because most of us can't understand things that are not defined.
Also, the mod position can not reflect community position at all. Funny that you given example of punks, and how a slur should be accepted at the punk music performance. Because the mods of punk sub have the opposite opinion, so slurs are forbidden. And they also claim to be a non-discriminative, but do not allow to post certain bands they don't like, don't allow people to post memes or their own photos, they don't like posts from other subs (jelaous or what?), not allowing music made by ai, they don't like nazis but somehow like skinheads, and they don't want discussion of illegal activity... in a subculture about resisting the system and the rules forced by the system upon the people. They created the most anti-punk place you could think of, full of discrimination and conforming to the system, and probably all real punks left that place long time ago.
Also, just a side note: none of my examples were about offencives. So not sure why you brought that up.
They do not owe the community an explanation. They do not owe an individual an "opportunity to improve and correct".
And that is because in their nature, they are tyrants who don't care for antyhing else expect their own amusement.
The reddit user experience is driven by the user.
No. And that's the point. The Reddit has became the worst of the echo chambers for a reason, and the reason is that everything that is not perfectly alinging with desires of mods are silenced or made against the rules. So naturally, people in any minority just quit. And you are getting extremely polarized, boring communities of yes-mans as a result of all that.
If it was truelly user-driven experience, the mods would rarely interfere, letting the voters handle everything except the reposts to the same community.
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u/Fauropitotto 20d ago
Because most of us can't understand things that are not defined.
That sucks.
Also, just a side note: none of my examples were about offencives. So not sure why you brought that up.
I'll explain. They were my examples. Two people are participating here. Conversation is not limited to only things you bring up.
So naturally, people in any minority just quit.
As they should. That's the nature of any community. I'll refer you to the 12th sentence in my previous comment.
No. And that's the point. The Reddit has became the worst of the echo chambers for a reason
No, that's the part you're not connecting with.
Reddit is not monolith. It's not a single echo chamber. It's a collection of disparate communities, each with their own culture, each with their own 'echo'. The right-wing conservative republican subreddits are just as intense as the left-wing progressive democrat ones.
It's such a core part of reddit, that creating a new subreddit happens every time a minority voice "quits" and wants to build a community of their own.
Any user can drive their experience. Any user can become a moderator. Any user can build their own space and create their own community of likeminded individuals where they can chill, shill, or shout to their hearts content.
I've been using this platform daily for nearly 20 years, and while the user base has changed, the platform itself functions relatively the same now as it did 20 years ago. It always has been driven by the users.
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u/SoullessGamesDev 20d ago
The right-wing conservative republican subreddits are just as intense as the left-wing progressive democrat ones.
And both are attempting to radicalize people via echo chambers. There is never a neutral ground where everything is allowed. You have to pick a side. You have to join the hate club. Otherwise you will notice those who are pulling the strings, and that is a no-no.
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u/Fauropitotto 20d ago
And both are attempting to radicalize people via echo chambers. There is never a neutral ground where everything is allowed. You have to pick a side. You have to join the hate club. Otherwise you will notice those who are pulling the strings, and that is a no-no.
Cool story bruh.
Best of luck to you.
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u/horseradishstalker 20d ago
Why are you even here OP? This entire post was a complete utter waste of time.
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u/Outrageous-Lion8021 20d ago
You simply cannot have any expectations of fairness or honesty or a general sense of fair play.
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u/skeptical-speculator 20d ago
Do communities benefit from having a sloppy tyranny?
Mods benefit from having a sloppy tyranny because then they aren't booted when they make "mistakes".
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u/horseradishstalker 20d ago
Don’t you just hate it when you can’t fire volunteers.
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u/NihiloZero 19d ago
Volunteers often get removed from organizations they're doing work for. I believe that the comment you were responding to was about the culture of arbitrary moderation that often bans and restricts preemptively for little reason. It's a matter of the "volunteers" behaving poorly or doing a poor job but then not being removed or supported by more active and competent mods.
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u/mfb- 20d ago
And then mod closes the post, not because it was violating anything, but... because there is too much comments breaking the rules.
If a thread is leading to 95% rule-breaking comments (for whatever reason) then closing the thread is the best response. Expecting mods to sit on F5 to remove every new rule-breaking comment for a day is not reasonable. It's unfortunate for OP and the rare acceptable comment, but they can probably find a better place for the discussion.
You seem to argue both against and for having detailed rules. Not sure what your position is there. In my experience the best approach depends a lot on the subreddit. Broader topics and topics with more conflict potential tend to need more detailed rules than others.
As an example, /r/regex is a very technical sub that only gets seen by people interested in regular expressions. OP asks a question, replies help with the problem. I have never removed a thread for not following the written rules. They are just there to help people write better questions. The only thing that needs to be removed is occasional spam - but writing a "do not spam" rule wouldn't stop spammers anyway.
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u/SoullessGamesDev 19d ago
If a thread is leading to 95% rule-breaking comments
Not once have i saw such thing. It is usually 10-20% at best, perhaps even less, and post already gets closed.
And if there are a situation where 90% of your users are breaking the rule, you should think that perhaps your rule is not adequate for your user base. It's like, democracy, and people vote indirectly.
Not sure what your position is there.
Exactly nuanced approach. Understanding wat the community would want in specific cases. What would give people more freedom of expression and having interesting discussions.
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u/mfb- 19d ago
Not once have i saw such thing.
I have.
And if there are a situation where 90% of your users are breaking the rule, you should think that perhaps your rule is not adequate for your user base.
Or it's just not the right thread for the subreddit. It might be overly political in a subreddit that's otherwise not about politics, for example. Note that I said 95% of the comments, not 95% of the users. It can come from a smaller group of users writing more comments.
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u/SoullessGamesDev 19d ago
There are rarely a situaiton where only minority group decided to speak up, and majority stays silent.
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20d ago
[deleted]
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u/SoullessGamesDev 20d ago
I know a mod on ukrainian sub who threatens to ban people for simply asking questions to him. And then stalking them to another sub where they post screens of convo with him for others to laugh about, and banning for that)
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u/redditzphkngarbage 20d ago
It’s true. They either flip out over nothing or moderate nothing. There is no in between.
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u/bluglass21 18d ago
I posted a question in r/vegetarian that was similar in format to a question asked earlier this week which had not been removed. Mine was removed and I've been muted from r/vegetarian. They told me why, but if that is the case, why did they not remove the similar question from earlier this week that inspired my question? It's not fair. I can't contact the mods for 28 days. It's borderline ridiculous.
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u/DonManuel 20d ago
How many such walls of text by anyone on the web are you used to decipher and understand every day? Then even giving an intelligent answer?
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u/itskdog 20d ago
Is this post really a wall of text? The paragraphs seem reasonably well-structured to help comprehension, they just have a lot to say, and to an extent I agree with parts of it.
It's difficult to have a well-run subreddit, and takes a lot of effort.
But also, if you're not going to spend the time on that to make the experience for the community you're responsible for building, why do it in the first place? What's in it for you if not the satisfaction that you're helping create a positive space for fans of whatever your topic is to come and chat?
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u/horseradishstalker 20d ago
“ It's difficult to have a well-run subreddit, and takes a lot of effort.”
This. It’s like anything else in the world. Some people are just not cut out for what they do - being a moderator, doesn’t make someone something they are not. If they are jerk in real life, they are probably a jerk as a mod. Other mods are simply volunteers who get tired of jerks who refuse to leave mommy‘s basement and scream mindlessly at them and everyone else incessantly. Others don’t have good tools. And not every tool the administration rolls out works as intended.
And the huge one, which wasn’t mentioned, is the site has been completely overrun with bots and sock puppet accounts in the past few years.
2
u/SoullessGamesDev 20d ago
Well i do this for fun. I write a lot. I like to explain things in detail so people will understand exactly what i am talking about. I love when people giving detailed, nuanced answers too.
Could it be too much? Yes. That is why i don't moderate anything now. But there is never an absence of people willing to do it properly.
And if you are like a super lazy, at least ask AI for summary or something.
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u/Sandy_Bananas 20d ago
Reddit has always had a moderation problem, but it’s swung over the years.
2011 -2014 was officious powermod era, then swung back to bandit land for a few years.
Now we’ve got terrible AI automods that freak out about certain keywords, regardless of the content of the comment.
I also think that the system is heavily gamed by nations; that use mod positions to steer a specific narrative.
I’ve personally had 2-3 random AI bans this year, all overturned. Whereas I had 0 bans in 14 years previous.