I'm involved in another community and, except for my own, little, personal community that I'm required to moderate (think of it merely as a Facebook wall, but it's called a journal), I haven't any interest in being a mod. (I'm a writer - not a moderator.) But considering a very small bit of drama I recently had on reddit after ignoring it for many years, I'm considering writing an article about the appropriate standards to use for moderation. What guidelines should moderators provide? How strictly should rules be enforced? Under what conditions do you allow posts that don't strictly meet the rules (e.g., because the community loves a post)? What characteristics make a good or bad mod? Who should make (and how do you make) decisions to hire/fire mods? That sort of thing. I'm curious if any of you have ideas - how you would answer some of these questions?
That entire article (minus the parts from Dead Poets' Society) are about how you've never moderated on Reddit, don't want to moderate on Reddit, and have no understanding of how moderation works on Reddit. So why would you write an article on moderating on Reddit, exactly?
why do people care about reddit this much kb and if they do, why can't they just keep it there Like hell, I love being meta as much as the next person that subscribes to a ton of subreddits about reddit like r/tldr and r/depthhub and r/metareddit and Sure! I eat the popcorn over at r/SRS and r/subredditdrama and Sure! I've tried to puzzle my way through the wormhole that is Game of Trolls and Sure! I've wondered sometimes if Reddit is really just a giant game that people play and all of this stuff is just designed to keep you entertained after you realize the original stuff that brought you there, the beginning front page, is actually seriously shitty and Sure! Then I've shaken my head and said "That's just crazy talk _refugee_ that's just not sane" EVEN THOUGH I subscribe to r/hailcorporate and so on. Like trust me I've been there I get the whole "Reddit is awesome" and then "Even when Reddit's not awesome it's enthralling" and then the "Oh so...every entertaining thread in r/relationshipadvice is a troll testing out an audience" and I STILL READ THOSE THREADS. But at least I keep the popcorn-eating circle-jerking contained within my reddit. I don't even tweet my frustrations about Reddit. I tweet frustrations about Hubski. But fuck if I'm going to blog about either. Is it just link karma? "If I talk about Reddit on another site then I can submit the link to Reddit and then Redditors will give me points for it"? Also, from the article: Author doesn't know what they are talking about. Those two sentences form a direct contradiction.I became a redditor many years ago when the site was young. I was part of the exodus of Digg users when their model and rules changed.
Sure, I myself moderate around 50,000 people on Reddit myself, I'll give it a shot. Guidelines: They should be strict enough to not allow users to do whatever the fuck they want, but light enough the subreddit can still remain relevant. Conditions: It varies from sub to sub. On one with say just pictures unless it absolutely terrible I think it could pass but on one with news/etc anything against the rules should not be present. Characteristics: One that lays down the law and lets others know what he wants, but does it according to the rules and is fair with it, flexible. Decisions: It should, in my opinion, be the person who made the sub or took it over from the creator (exceptions are valid in crazy circumstances). Just my take on things
I think it was a bad decision, and here's why. IMHO, a community isn't a library that requires strict categorization. And even in a library, you have books that focus on a subject but also discuss ancillary topics. A community is about sharing and growing and learning and having fun and being responsible and, overall, just acting as the social human beings we are. When you build a particular product, you don’t want anything impure in it as it will reduce the strength, effectiveness, longevity, etc. of the item. But a community isn’t a product. The community was getting value from the story. That was obvious by many factors. Following such strict rules only reduces the value and cohesiveness of the community (especially as those who gained value are alienated and, thus, leave).