The moderators of major subreddits are extremely authoritarian. There must be a middle ground between free-for-all and thought police.

I imagine that requires a level of effort that volunteer mods just don't have the time or inclination for.

Then why are they mods? They literally volunteered to do that exact thing.

No, they didn't? How stuff is moderated is more or less down to the top mod of the subreddit.

Many of the moderators get paid. Just not by reddit.

Just some racism as long as you don't say the bad words, and light thought policing? It sounds like you want the HN mod policy, which makes sense bc that's where we are. Other sites can have different approaches though.

This isn’t the GP’s point; you’re being unfair to them and not reading their comment in good faith (which ironically is against the HN rules here).

I had a topic about the speed of light on askscience get deleted because the mods weren’t in the right mood that day. There is indeed a middle ground and we aren’t there.

Reddit’s model doesn’t work with what they want to do with the site. And things that worked when it had 1M, 10M users no longer do.

This sounds like mods in any forum, except maybe HN. It's not a reddit problem.

HN has very opinionated mods, it's just that what they're opinionated about is primarily a matter of tone rather than a matter of content. I mean it's their site, I might disagree but it's their site.

They're arguably popular because of the moderation, not in spite of it. You're free to follow whatever subreddit you'd like or create your own, which is the benefit of Reddit as a platform.

I do wish there was much more transparency around "power-moderators" though.

Their current libertarian approach to moderation is exactly the reason why I would label it as insane moderation policies.