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Why is moderator ownership of subreddits a good thing? (self.TheoryOfReddit)

submitted ago by ixid

Moderators can moderate without needing to own something. It would seem better that communities were under the democratic control of their subreddit communities, with at least some power to vote people in or out.

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[–]Raerth 11 points12 points ago

You keep using systems of government as an analogy for moderation processes. I don't think this is suitable.

Unlike Nations, no one is born into a subreddit. No one is forced to be a part of a subreddit. No one is unwillingly beholden to a subreddit's rules.

Reddit is a private website, with sections that anyone can create. Other people are then free to choose whether they want to read or participate in these user-created subreddits.

You think reddit would be better served by having users able to vote people in or out. I strongly disagree for the following reason; /r/Atheism has 450,000 members vs /r/Christianity 's 22,000. It would be possible under your system for trolls to invade the smaller subreddit and vote-out the moderator, installing a puppet regime of their own. Subreddits like /r/circlejerk and /r/shitredditsays would have a field day with this ability.

It's much better, in my view, to have the current system. Anyone can create a community, and anyone is free to leave or join whatever community they want.

[–]redblender 9 points10 points ago

This TheoryOfReddit always makes me think of the age old questions over systems of governance.

Right now, the default system of governance for every subreddit is despotism. It's like the senior mod can do a Louis XIV and declare, "I am the State Subreddit."

Everyone hopes their favorite subreddits will be run by a benevolent dictator. But there's no guarantee this will happen. And if it is happening, there's no guarantee it will stay that way. When the populace of a subreddit becomes dissatisfied, it can't even overthrow the mods with violent revolution. Their only recourse is emigration to another subreddit. This rarely happens: /r/Trees, any others?

The current despotic system is understandable. It's the simplest form. The 'constitution' of a subreddit is ultimately written in code. Making a decent democratic form of Reddit governance would require work on many necessary but mundane details: voter registration, candidate nomination, voting, handling the inevitable voting irregularities, etc.

As an example, take a look at Republic of Reddit. They will ultimately need a good bot to make their 'republican' from of reddit governance manageable.

Bottom line, yeah you're right. It would be better. But until someone puts some serious development work into the backend of Reddit.com, it ain't gonna happen.

At Reddit, despots rule.

[–]buzzkillpop 7 points8 points ago

This rarely happens: /r/Trees, any others?

It happens all the time. It just rarely happens in large subreddits. How about the fact it just recently happened with /r/LGBT and /r/ainbows?

it ain't gonna happen.

And with good reason. I don't moderate any subreddits, but if down the road I wanted to create one, and there was even a slight chance it could be wrangled from me if it got popular, I wouldn't even bother creating one in the first place.

And that's exactly why the admins won't do it. They want to encourage people to create subreddits, not discourage.

[–]redblender 6 points7 points ago

What if the senior mod could pick which 'constitution' to use? Most would go for despotism, and no one could fault them for it. In fact, it should be encouraged for the very reasons you point out.

However, if a subreddit ever became orphaned without an active mod. Or if the founding mod just got tired of it, or if a subreddit wanted to have default status, these would be good time click a radio button and switch the subreddit over to the 'democratic' constitution.

Another possible objection: unfair mod witchhunts. Most good systems of governance allow a leader some slack and protect him from the crowd to a degree. You can't impeach an official or hold a recall election in a day. These are usually set up to take some time and allow tempers to cool, allow leaders time to state their case, and people time to think things over before a leader is removed. I think a well designed Reddit democracy system would do the same.

[–]syuk 2 points3 points ago

That is an interesting thing to consider.

I have been a visitor, and later a poster here for a while and have the impression most of the mods of the mainstream subs are mature and reasonable people, able to make their own decisions and get community involvement.

Is the republicofreddit doing things along similar lines as you suggest?

I personally think the system as it exists is ok though.

[–]blackstar9000 4 points5 points ago

Their only recourse is emigration to another subreddit. This rarely happens

It does happen, but the current system doesn't make it terribly obvious that you can or even ought to do so. If there were a stronger system for subreddit discover, I suspect that user subscription would conform more closely with the free market model, rather than benevolent despotism.

And interesting example of the "market economy" of Reddit is the range of moderation options afforded by the overlap between a handful of default reddits, the Republic network which offers heavily moderated alternatives, and the AnythingGoes network which offers something more akin to anarchism. But it's unlikely that the reddits in those network will ever grow at anything like the rate of the defaults, simply because access to the defaults is so much more privileged by the system.

As an example, take a look at Republic of Reddit. They will ultimately need a good bot to make their 'republican' from of reddit governance manageable.

Maybe. But the admins have also been moving toward the implementation of some native tools that will help a lot. The moderation log, for example, helps replicate many of the functions of /r/RepublicOfModeration, and with a few more features (the option to make the log public, the option to add more specific labels) it will altogether negate the need for a RoMod.

[–]davidreiss666 0 points1 point ago

This rarely happens

Have you considered that there may be a reason it rarely happens? That reason being that the majority of the user-base of the subreddit in question doesn't actually believe things are being mismanaged? That a silent majority may be perfectly content with whatever the evil moderators are doing?

If I get 10-20 of my Reddit-friends together and we descend on a mid-sized to large subreddit, we could make the place appear to an uneducated outsider that nearly the entire community hates the mods. All we need to do is each submit images and self-posts about the mean-ol-mods. 20 users with three submissions each and that would be 60 submissions about the bad-mods. Well, 20 out of 50,000 users wouldn't actually mean the subreddit was mismanaged. It would just mean 20 people were not happy.

Assuming that because the userbase upvoted a few of the "evil mod" threads to mean that the userbase agreed that the mods were all evil is.... well, unwarranted. The old adage about "Assume" making an Ass out of You and Me applies here. Besides, people like to read threads where a person is having a conniption sometimes. Not because they agree, but because it's entertaining to them when others have mental break downs. People don't watch Youtube videos of guys having mental breakdowns in a Walmart parking lot because they want to have a mental breakdown in a Walmart parking lot. They watch them because they want to laugh at the idiot.

[–]cojoco 12 points13 points ago

It would seem better that communities were under the democratic control of their subreddit communities, with at least some power to vote people in or out.

I disagree.

Communities can easily be overtaken and subverted by special interest groups, especially when they misrepresent their true agenda until it is too late.

It is better to have some poor-quality subreddits than to have a situation where every reddit can be overtaken by any group sufficiently motivated to do so, especially if they use automated tools to do so.

[–]ixid[S] 1 point2 points ago

What's to stop the community taking it back from the special interest group?

[–]cojoco 2 points3 points ago

What's to stop the community taking it back from the special interest group?

Because it requires a lot of organisation, numbers, and bastardry.

[–]blackstar9000 1 point2 points ago

Based on my experience with the American political system, I'd say: apathy, lack of organization, and the popularity of misinformation.

[–]buzzkillpop 5 points6 points ago

What's to stop the special interest group from taking it back again? What's to stop a different special interest group from doing the same thing 3 months down the road?

[–]RichardDorkins 2 points3 points ago

The short answer is: because the reddit founders are libertarians and probably see the subreddit system as a free market metaphor.

More seriously, I'm not sure how democratic control of subreddits could work in practice, and how it could be implemented so that it's safe from attacks. Do you have any ideas?

[–]violentacrez 2 points3 points ago

I prefer to look at creating and building successful reddits like opening a business. Any business is 100% dependent on their customers; without the customers, the business would be nothing. Yet no one ever suggests that when a business becomes successful, the customers should have some ownership of that business.

[–]relic2279 5 points6 points ago

Might be a valid criticism of some of the original defaults (that were the original subreddits) but look at it from a mods point of view.

You create /r/awesomesubreddit. It has 1 subscriber, you. Over time, you spend hours and hours, perhaps weeks/months/years submitting content and building up the community. 2 years from now, all your hard work pays off. You now have 50k subscribers to /r/awesomesubreddit.

Just because your subreddit is popular, does that mean all the hard work you originally put in is gone since it's now 'the communities' subreddit? That's not a very big incentive to create a subreddit. Always living in fear that your hard work may be for naught.

It's like building a house from scratch so you can throw an awesome party. Once the house is built and the party gets going, should the party-goers have the right to throw the home owner/builder out and take over? I would hope not.

[–]cuteman 0 points1 point ago

"Creating a subreddit"?

Should we have patents and copyrights too?

[–]ixid[S] -1 points0 points ago

Your analogies do not hold. A subreddit is not a physical thing, it has no use without the community and broadly speaking it is the community. A better analogy in my view is a nation. You may found one on some ideals and people may come to join you because they like the place and the ideals but things turn sour if you're a dictator and the ideals and place inevitably grow beyond you until they're no longer yours, they're the nations'. If the people leave what is the nation but a piece of land?

If you put all the hard work in to build a subreddit, which in reality is built by the community in the vast, vast majority of cases, then you get the pay off of being able to post to and discuss with a community who is interested in that thing. Why should you get to override the wishes of that community? You are just one among many who happened, in most cases, to be the first to subreddit an obvious topic or hobby.

[–]relic2279 5 points6 points ago

I think you're under the assumption that a subreddit is democratic in nature - or at least presenting that as reality. The admins have already stated that this is not the case. Mods are essentially benevolent dictators of subreddits.

The benefit of this type of system is that anyone is free to create a subreddit. If a mod runs his kingdom into the ground, the community is free to create another and/or set up shop elsewhere (e.g, /r/trees).

You are just one among many who happened, in most cases, to be the first to subreddit an obvious topic or hobby.

This is true in some cases. But again, if a person thinks that the creator who got there first is running a crappy subreddit, they can always create an alternative, competing subreddit. It's happened many times before, and quite successfully I might add.

By the way, I say this as someone who was recently a victim of a troll-rogue mod.

I was added to /r/astrophysics a couple years ago by a mod who did nothing at all to help grow the subreddit. I spent a lot of time helping build it and submit content. Last week, the mod got hacked or turned out to be a troll and removed me, removed the other mods and added his troll buddies. All my work, gone.

Do I wish I could have the subreddit back? Sure. Do I think I should be able to forcibly remove him? No. Instead, we created an alternative subreddit /r/astrophys

I think any democratic system where users could remove mods would be much more prone to gaming. And not just by regular users, but by organizations, businesses, SEO/social media companies etc... I think the current system, despite it's flaws, far outweigh any alternatives.

[–]cuteman 4 points5 points ago

So like trees, should a few hundred thousand people have to leave and go elsewhere or a democratic vote of no confidence in the mod?

And FYI, regarding your CEO analogy, once a company is public, the board can vote the founder OUT.

[–]relic2279 2 points3 points ago

regarding your CEO analogy, once a company is public, the board can vote the founder OUT.

I didn't use a CEO analogy (at least I don't think I did?)

So like trees, should a few hundred thousand people have to leave and go elsewhere

And why is that so bad?

Consider the negative aspects of the alternatives. If certain interests with enough resources were so inclined, they could set up an army of bots to vote moderators of their choosing in. If a community ever found out, well... They had the resources to do it in the first place, they certainly can do it again to keep the mods, or just put in different sockpuppet mods.

They're already doing it with submissions and content, what makes you think they wouldn't do it to get a subreddit?

[–]ixid[S] 1 point2 points ago

I think you're under the assumption that a subreddit is democratic in nature

I am suggesting that it should be, I know it's not, that's rather the point.

I spent a lot of time helping build it and submit content. Last week, the mod got hacked or turned out to be a troll and removed me, removed the other mods and added his troll buddies. All my work, gone.

Wouldn't that have worked out better with more community control? The trolls could be removed and the community would know what you've put into the subreddit that they haven't.

No. Instead, we created an alternative subreddit /r/astrophys

That is throwing away your hard work.

[–]relic2279 1 point2 points ago

Wouldn't that have worked out better with more community control?

For me personally, sure. But I think the negatives of such a system would be much worse as a whole. While I lost a subreddit, to me, it's still better than the alternatives.

As a mod of some large subreddits, I can assure you that there is already much 'gaming of the system' going on/being attempted. I can't even begin to imagine what would happen if moderators were solely selected via community voting or some other democratic system.

[–]ItsSoBeautiful 2 points3 points ago

/r/reddit.com

It was unmoderated and only operated via the spam filter. I think most people can attest to the idea that /r/reddit.com was a crap hole.

Ownership of a subreddit cultivates a vested interest in maintaining it and assisting in making something worth your time.

You probably don't care if your rental apartment has crappy kitchen linoleum. You probably do care if the house you own has a crappy kitchen and will take steps to make it better.

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