Hacker News Reader

Comment by Havoc | Hacker News Reader

Ah the classic beatings will continue until morale improves approach.

Starting to think Reddit leadership is genuinely not all that sharp

There are likely hundreds if not thousands of users who would be willing to become mods of each of the subreddits that are still in private mode. I know I would mod some of the subs I find useful.

How do you tell a willing user with the intention to keep a sub running as is, and a willing user who just wants to burn it all down, turn it into their own fiefdom, or worse?

What's the ratio of the former to the latter, and does Reddit have the manpower to tell to the difference on a time frame that keeps the subs alive?

What's the impact of a bunch of people who know how the sausage is made being essentially coup'ed by Reddit? Are they going to shrug and move on? Swear eternal vengeance?

> How do you tell a willing user with the intention to keep a sub running as is, and a willing user who just wants to burn it all down, turn it into their own fiefdom, or worse?

Same way Reddit admins have always done that; by ignoring all but the most egregious violations.

> a willing user with the intention to keep a sub running as is,

I think it's probably worth splitting this category into two, with one of them being the kind of user who would like to help keep a sub running, but has no idea of what's actually involved or how much time it takes or what a grind it is, and just isn't a good fit for the work involved.

They already are fiefdoms

>How do you tell a willing user with the intention to keep a sub running as is, and a willing user who just wants to burn it all down, turn it into their own fiefdom, or worse?

Reddit has replaced mods before. This isn't a new problem, the only novelty here is its scale.

"Quantity has a quality all its own."

>How do you tell a willing user with the intention to keep a sub running as is, and a willing user who just wants to burn it all down, turn it into their own fiefdom, or worse?

This one is me: I'd love to be a mod in a large community, so I can ban the best contributors randomly and then get them permabanned for questioning me, all so I can destroy the whole thing from within. If Reddit doesn't like the way I moderate, then maybe they should hire employees to be moderators, and set up management staff to oversee them. Of course, that's going to cost a lot of money...

They can sure try. Getting a mod team that gels well and keeps the community functional is non trivial though in my experience especially for tricky subs like politics

Dropping a couple randoms in is at best a roll of the dice

I personally wouldn’t want that roll across a large number of subs if I were ceo but I’m not so maybe we’ll get to see how that plays out

>They can sure try. Getting a mod team that gels well and keeps the community functional is non trivial though in my experience especially for tricky subs like politics

Are the current mods of /r/politics even doing that good of a job?

I don’t frequent it so can’t comment specifically. There is likely significant work going on behind the scenes just to keep it from going all lord of the flies. ie a large part of the “job” isn’t visible so hard to tell from outside how challenging things are

To be clear when I said politics I didn’t mean r/politics but rather any sub that has contentious issues like politics as topic

If creating an echo chamber is what your mean by "gel well" then they are doing a great job.

Little sad that this is how you interpret it. But yeah mod team being on the same team while having diverse views is an even harder thing to pull off and narrow the pool of people suitable even further

Great, then go create the sub and get it to the size of the ones in question. Creating subs takes seconds, if you think mods are so easy to replace, I'm sure you can achieve the same thing they did, no need to wait.

It would probably be a great time to try and hop in, become a mod, and cause some ridiculous drama if you were so inclined.

Not really my style but I’m sure some will try

Ah, but you need to live up to your name.

A community is an organic thing it's not just the people who like to hang out at a place. A substantial chunk wouldn't participate in a community run by someone like yourself manifestly at odds with the community.

You would end up spending the majority of your moderation shutting down dissent not merely against reddit but against yourself. You would end up presiding over a shell with the original name where even the people who stay don't like or respect you.

Have we forgotten freenode?

I think there's a lot of people who like the idea of being a mod but don't actually like it once they actually have to do it. It takes quite some mental fortitude to do effectively.

I can take on /r/videos in a heartbeat.

40 million people and _I_ get to decide what they see.

(For priority access my BTC address is bc1qvpkxvkyg269zf6yjf5mcmttll7gsmxh3t2veuy)

Reddit leadership and the mods are replaceable cogs of a machine. The machine always wins. How many times do we have to repeat the cycle to learn the only choice is - to be part of the machine or not. Beyond a point controlling the mindlessness of the machine is not possible. As these systems get larger chimps with 3 inch brains only have an illusion of control.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com