You’re ascribing a negative motive by establishing one could exist. Surely there are petty tyrants on Reddit. But the much simpler, most generous, and most likely explanation is they enjoy a hobby and enjoy fostering a healthy community around their hobby, and that this itself is a hobby of theirs. The word moderator wasn’t invented for social media, and the role is crucial in any healthy intellectual community. Because your creative expression may very well be disruptive to everyone else’s, and while you’re free to be creative in your expressions in general, others are free to exclude you from their community. The moderator gets the unpleasant job of being the executor of that will.
I think the most important thing is most moderators I know hate the function of moderator. But the community is important enough they do it anyways.
So, I guess I take it back. It’s more like producing a video game or editing science fiction. It’s work we do to be sure everyone can enjoy a hobby we love.
> You’re ascribing a negative motive by establishing one could exist. Surely there are petty tyrants on Reddit. But the much simpler, most generous, and most likely explanation is they enjoy a hobby and enjoy fostering a healthy community around their hobby, and that this itself is a hobby of theirs
That seems to be near exclusive to smaller communities. I definitely seen it, I also seen ones that mostly self-moderated with mod hammer only being used in more excessive cases (basically members telling other members "dude, that's not okay because of x, we dont do that here" and mods only needing to intervene in more severe cases.
But near-every bigger one seems to devolve into a clique that pushes their personal playground in direction they want, despise what their users think, but the social forum is big enough and not bad enough yet for most people to leave because of that.
> Because your creative expression may very well be disruptive to everyone else’s, and while you’re free to be creative in your expressions in general, others are free to exclude you from their community. The moderator gets the unpleasant job of being the executor of that will.
Well, if you get good moderators, sure, that works. But for already mentioned reasons it often gets to be executor of only their own clique's will, despise what the actual users of the forum think
> So, I guess I take it back. It’s more like producing a video game or editing science fiction. It’s work we do to be sure everyone can enjoy a hobby we love.
Nope, it's creating zero value of its own. Janitor or garbage man would be better comparison, unnoticeable when doing the job well, but the place would quickly fill with garbage if not
> You’re ascribing a negative motive by establishing one could exist. Surely there are petty tyrants on Reddit. But the much simpler, most generous, and most likely explanation is they enjoy a hobby and enjoy fostering a healthy community around their hobby, and that this itself is a hobby of theirs
That seems to be near exclusive to smaller communities
> Because your creative expression may very well be disruptive to everyone else’s, and while you’re free to be creative in your expressions in general, others are free to exclude you from their community. The moderator gets the unpleasant job of being the executor of that will.
Well, if you get good moderators, sure, that works.
> So, I guess I take it back. It’s more like producing a video game or editing science fiction. It’s work we do to be sure everyone can enjoy a hobby we love.
Nope, it's creating zero value of its own. Janitor or gargabe man would be better comparison
I think the most important thing is most moderators I know hate the function of moderator. But the community is important enough they do it anyways.
So, I guess I take it back. It’s more like producing a video game or editing science fiction. It’s work we do to be sure everyone can enjoy a hobby we love.