Re:Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment
by pdonis on Thursday May 21, 2020 @02:22PM
(#23262623)
> Moderators think that moderators are the thin green line protecting the ordinary users from a handful of bad actors, letting them live in blissful ignorance of the awful things that are happening.
As a moderator on another forum (not reddit), I disagree. Many of the moderation actions I take are visible to ordinary users, and that's on purpose. For community norms to be maintained, they have to be visibly enforced: enforcement is not just for the particular bad actor, but also for the ordinary users who genuinely want to respect community norms, so they know what the boundaries are (and therefore know how to respect them), and can see that people who violate those boundaries are dealt with (so they have confidence that the norms are meaningful).
> Ordinary users think the that moderators are power-mad bullies who ban and delete as they see fit, with no accountability.
Again, I disagree. If moderation actions are often visible, as above, ordinary users who genuinely want to respect community norms can see what is actually being enforced, and over time, if the moderators are doing a reasonable job, ordinary users will see that the pattern of enforcement reasonably matches the stated norms that are supposed to be enforced. Most ordinary users are reasonable and don't expect perfection, but they do expect consistency and reasonable judgment.
The biggest problem I see facing good moderation is that moderators can't be everywhere at once. One way to address that is to give ordinary users a way to report problematic posts, to bring them to the attention of the moderators. That also gives ordinary users another way to see how moderation is being done, because they can see what is or is not done in response to their reports.
There will always be some people who are never satisfied, and who will find something to complain about no matter what moderators do. But I don't think most ordinary users fall into that category.
Also, about "no accountability": ultimately, as a moderator, I'm accountable to the owner of the site. Similarly, the HN mods are ultimately accountable to the owners of HN. So the corresponding question for reddit would be, who owns reddit?
As a moderator on another forum (not reddit), I disagree. Many of the moderation actions I take are visible to ordinary users, and that's on purpose. For community norms to be maintained, they have to be visibly enforced: enforcement is not just for the particular bad actor, but also for the ordinary users who genuinely want to respect community norms, so they know what the boundaries are (and therefore know how to respect them), and can see that people who violate those boundaries are dealt with (so they have confidence that the norms are meaningful).
> Ordinary users think the that moderators are power-mad bullies who ban and delete as they see fit, with no accountability.
Again, I disagree. If moderation actions are often visible, as above, ordinary users who genuinely want to respect community norms can see what is actually being enforced, and over time, if the moderators are doing a reasonable job, ordinary users will see that the pattern of enforcement reasonably matches the stated norms that are supposed to be enforced. Most ordinary users are reasonable and don't expect perfection, but they do expect consistency and reasonable judgment.
The biggest problem I see facing good moderation is that moderators can't be everywhere at once. One way to address that is to give ordinary users a way to report problematic posts, to bring them to the attention of the moderators. That also gives ordinary users another way to see how moderation is being done, because they can see what is or is not done in response to their reports.
There will always be some people who are never satisfied, and who will find something to complain about no matter what moderators do. But I don't think most ordinary users fall into that category.
Also, about "no accountability": ultimately, as a moderator, I'm accountable to the owner of the site. Similarly, the HN mods are ultimately accountable to the owners of HN. So the corresponding question for reddit would be, who owns reddit?