Lukewarm take: mods had valid grievances, but were dumb as fuck to unilaterally make a major decision without even consulting the community beforehand, which is definitely worse imo.
It reminds me of so many subreddits where overactive mods decide they know what’s best for their subreddit and impose rules that would never pass a basic yes/no poll, demonstrating they don’t actually care about the community. Mods are supposed to be janitors (not an insult, just statement of fact), but too often act with the presumed arrogance of “leaders”.
Edit to add: this is what the mods should have done:
Make a stickied thread with examples of users being banned or comments being removed unjustly
Ask users if the above justifies moving to a new host, and if so ask which one
…impose rules that would never pass a basic yes/no poll…
I generally agree with your comment, but I wanted to point out that the tyranny of the majority can still be a major issue. For example, there are often times when a majority of people believe the opposite of what a small number of experts agree is the best course of action. You can see this in laws that suppress trans rights receiving wider public support, even when they go against medical best practices.
So? The solution isn’t some oligarchy making dictatorial or unilateral decisions on behalf of the majority. The solution is the minority are free to move to their preferred platform and build a new community…
This is a poor take on how to deal with the tyranny of the majority, in my opinion. I wasn’t saying it necessarily applied here, and was only bringing it up as a caution against absolute democracy. Here’s a longer form example:
Say you have a software project that operates as an absolute democracy. Each and every new software feature that the developers work on is decided by a vote of all users and contributors to the project. For vote after vote, the feature “implement screen-reader support” is passed over for shinier and more exciting new features, after all the vast majority of voters don’t use a screen-reader.
Wouldn’t you say that it is fair if eventually the developers told the community “Nope, we’re going to implement screen-reader support as the next feature”? Or do you believe the blind users should have to fork the project and implement screen-reader support for themselves? After all, they’ve been “free” to do that the whole time.
It reminds me of so many subreddits where overactive mods decide they know what’s best for their subreddit and impose rules that would never pass a basic yes/no poll
I’ve been a moderator of a subreddit and had to deal with people complaining about rules that were, in fact, voted in by a poll stickied for a month.
You’re always going to have someone that doesn’t like a rule, but I’d much rather bitch about a rule that the community voted on that have to deal with the mercurial whims of the mod team.
100% agreed. It just reeks of mods thinking they own and know what’s best for the community, further exacerbated by comments like this one. They think they are the community, or at least are the reason it thrives.
Mods are supposed to be janitors (not an insult, just statement of fact), but too often act with the presumed arrogance of “leaders”.
Yes exactly. I have no stake in the 169 thing, but this applies universally. We don’t need you to remove comments that “don’t contribute to the discussion”. We don’t need to hear whether you think someone is “participating in bad faith” (the fuck does that even mean!?). We need you to remove spam and rule-breaking content, and ban repeat offenders. That’s literally it. We can put up with some bullshit because after all mods are unpaid volunteers who don’t owe anything to anyone, but at some point enough is enough.
Lukewarm take: mods had valid grievances, but were dumb as fuck to unilaterally make a major decision without even consulting the community beforehand, which is definitely worse imo.
It reminds me of so many subreddits where overactive mods decide they know what’s best for their subreddit and impose rules that would never pass a basic yes/no poll, demonstrating they don’t actually care about the community. Mods are supposed to be janitors (not an insult, just statement of fact), but too often act with the presumed arrogance of “leaders”.
Edit to add: this is what the mods should have done:
It’s that simple
I generally agree with your comment, but I wanted to point out that the tyranny of the majority can still be a major issue. For example, there are often times when a majority of people believe the opposite of what a small number of experts agree is the best course of action. You can see this in laws that suppress trans rights receiving wider public support, even when they go against medical best practices.
So? The solution isn’t some oligarchy making dictatorial or unilateral decisions on behalf of the majority. The solution is the minority are free to move to their preferred platform and build a new community…
This is a poor take on how to deal with the tyranny of the majority, in my opinion. I wasn’t saying it necessarily applied here, and was only bringing it up as a caution against absolute democracy. Here’s a longer form example:
Say you have a software project that operates as an absolute democracy. Each and every new software feature that the developers work on is decided by a vote of all users and contributors to the project. For vote after vote, the feature “implement screen-reader support” is passed over for shinier and more exciting new features, after all the vast majority of voters don’t use a screen-reader.
Wouldn’t you say that it is fair if eventually the developers told the community “Nope, we’re going to implement screen-reader support as the next feature”? Or do you believe the blind users should have to fork the project and implement screen-reader support for themselves? After all, they’ve been “free” to do that the whole time.
I’ve been a moderator of a subreddit and had to deal with people complaining about rules that were, in fact, voted in by a poll stickied for a month.
You’re always going to have someone that doesn’t like a rule, but I’d much rather bitch about a rule that the community voted on that have to deal with the mercurial whims of the mod team.
100% agreed. It just reeks of mods thinking they own and know what’s best for the community, further exacerbated by comments like this one. They think they are the community, or at least are the reason it thrives.
Yes exactly. I have no stake in the 169 thing, but this applies universally. We don’t need you to remove comments that “don’t contribute to the discussion”. We don’t need to hear whether you think someone is “participating in bad faith” (the fuck does that even mean!?). We need you to remove spam and rule-breaking content, and ban repeat offenders. That’s literally it. We can put up with some bullshit because after all mods are unpaid volunteers who don’t owe anything to anyone, but at some point enough is enough.