Allies.
This isn’t the 90s anymore. Today, unmoderated/poorly moderated online spaces are breeding grounds for the usual toxic assholes who ruin everything.
Ally, without them spaces like this here would be unusable and full of spam.
That’s a really broad question: Depends on the mod.
Some of them are decent human beings doing a shitty unpaid job because they care about the community, and some are power tripping assholes that shouldn’t be mods.
I think they spend a lot of their time holding back a wall of crap from falling on all of us. Unmoderated forums are so bad.
I’m biased because I mod some large subs, but I’d say 95% of the time I see them as an ally.
Having seen behind the curtains, I’m glad they clean things up to keep the stage nice for me. You’d be shocked by the shit we see before it gets removed.
That said, that 5%-20% of mods that suck really suck.
Exactly. I’m a mod in a few subreddits, the biggest of which is /r/Showerthoughts. People don’t notice our existence unless we interact with them directly, and you rarely interact with users unless to ban them or to remove their content. So it is expected to be hated.
They’re just random people. Sometimes they take their power a little too seriously and overstep their bounds. It’s all up to the individual mod.
I’ve never had any interaction good or bad with them in my 11 years on Reddit. I consider that a good thing. They’re in the background doing what needs to be done and I appreciate that.
There’s no single uniform answer because they’re people and unique. I’ve dealt with some powertripping gross mods who only use their positions to further the benefits to them and their friends. I’ve also had selfless, kind mods who take hits in order to further their communities. Most are somewhere in between. When I’ve been a mod, I’ve not been a saint, but I’ve also not tried to actively create harm.
They are an ally (that we sometimes dislike). The web would be too toxic for most without moderation.
None of these online communities would exist without them. They do a lot of work for free so that we can enjoy them.
It’s easy as a user to say they are being heavy handed or whatever but without them it would be nothing but spam and ads. If they have to do things that seem unreasonable to make their jobs easier I don’t have a problem with it.
That said they are obviously just humans and some of them suck. This usually sorts itself out by either a community dieing or them being kicked off.
It depends how vague or precise the rules are. If the rules are clearly defined, and the mods are applying those rules evenly then they’re an ally as they keep the community to a sane level for everyone else.
It’s when they start applying the rules unevenly or as if the rules don’t apply to them that they become an adversary.
It’s not always easy though, because they’ll something encounter participants that are acting in bad faith but withing the rules. Those can be frustrating for a moderator, but then it’s a good way to see if they’re following the rules or their emotions.
In most of the places I exist, I think of them like janitors. Doing appreciated, but not-very-fun work, to keep communities moving.
Honestly, if I was in a place with moderators that felt like adversaries, I might not stick around very long.
And, like janitors, they usually go unrecognized for the help they give and heavily criticized for anything that’s not perfect.
Somebody has to do it. I’m just thankful that it is not me. I really don’t understand how you can’t appreciate the work of the mods.
I think of them as people with a job to do. Some do it well, others do it less well. This is normal.
Yeah, it’s like asking “what does everyone think about bosses?” There are good ones and bad ones.
And then there’s the antiwork philosophy.
The “anti-work” philosophy isn’t against bosses or hierarchical structure. It’s about empowering the worker through systemic reforms like creating unions or workplace democracy - literally voting for your boss. Nobody is so naive that they want to get rid of administrative work. Workers want their just due and they can’t be faulted for that with our current systems and relationship to work.
They can be both. Unfortunately human beings tend to be very tribal and subjective. Therefore my opinion is that they can be some mixture of both depending on the subject matter and how impassioned the moderator chooses to be.
