- cross-posted to:
- reddit@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- reddit@lemmy.ml
Copy of text:
#redditmigration #reddit One of my friends is a mod of a very large subreddit that went private for the blackout. Last night she received a message saying that she had been stripped of her moderator rights and the subreddit was taken public again. To be very clear, the subreddit members had specifically voted in favor of going private. It seems like reddit will stoop lower and lower to try and break the blackout. I’m seething.
IMPORTANT: I have talked to this mod one on one, they are in my server. I’ll refer to them as T. What we were told is that T doesn’t know exactly who demodded them, just that the top mods did not agree to the protest (they are inactive power mods, one of them mods 60+ subs), and when T made the sub read-only because the members of the sub voted to go private, they were demodded. Then the sub went private anyway for unknown reasons (speculated it was to quell the drama after mods got caught removing T’s comments). We do not know, nor did anyone or T say that this has something to do with admins.
This is the nature of Reddit. There’s potential conflict from any mod who has seniority over you, as well as the top level admins. When we hear stories of this, we need to be able to definitively qualify whether it was just a higher level mod, or actually a Reddit admin. Two entirely different things.
Might just be me, but I find it baffling that the concept of seniority exists among mods because ??? what’s the point lol aren’t they all there to do the same thing?
The point is that mods are not infallible and can go off the deep end; without an ability to remove them it could lead to any mod being able to single handedly kill a sub. Seniority works simply based on when one was modded, the earliest mod has the most seniority. This means that only the top mod could do great harm unchecked, rather than any of the many mods a sub may have being able to.
Subs will also have differing levels of moderators, where some mods won’t have the ability to remove others.
Any system will have scenarios like this. Requiring a majority of mods could lead to gridlock if enough mods stop being active. User vote would be prone to abuse by brigading or bots.
Seniority is the simplest: you make the sub, it’s yours. The escape hatch is either Admin action or someone else making their own sub with blackjack and hookers.