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.
Just like a Janitor, or a Security team. If they do their job well most people won’t notice. If they do a terrible job everyone suffers. Kudos to anyone who does a passible job out of the goodness of their heart.
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.
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.
They are an ally (that we sometimes dislike). The web would be too toxic for most without moderation.
Allies.
This isn’t the 90s anymore. Today, unmoderated/poorly moderated online spaces are breeding grounds for the usual toxic assholes who ruin everything.
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’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.
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.
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.
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.
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 that many of them are so obsessed with civil language that they forget that advocacy for monstrous inhumanity can be done using only civil language, while civility in the face of monstrous inhumanity normalizes and encourages it.
I think that moderators who do this often find themselves to be the allies of monsters.
An ally when used to maintain clean spaces, but an adversary when they’re only a mod for the power over other people and not out of any sense of community duty.
It is almost immediately obvious which ones are which.
It’s a mixed bag. Many of them focus too much on policing the rules as strictly as possible and lose sight of the spirit of the community. They are a necessary evil in my opinion, but they shouldn’t be appointed with zero accountability as they currently are. Elections and community votes to remove mods that abuse their power should be more common.
I think that the whole world doesn’t need to be divided up into little “with us or against us” wars like this; there’s nuance to be had, like in every other situation.
Some mods are good and only want what’s best for their community, and some mods are bad and are power hungry control freaks.
Mods are people, same as the rest of us. Often they’re valued members of the community before they’re given the position.
Do I think that the job needs to exist? Absolutely. Good, bad, or otherwise, they do a lot of work to protect us from the tidal wave of crap that comes in, whether it’s bots, scammers, trolls, hate advocats, etc., and I’m thankful that it’s not me who needs to deal with all of that.
TL;DR: Mods do important work, but they’re also people, and not everything has to be an “us VS. them” situation.
