112 upvotes, 2 direct replies (showing 2)
View submission: The web redesign, CSS, and mod tools
Since you're the guy who is still answer*ing*, /u/powerlanguage, please understand that I say this as respectfully as possible as someone who is generally "on reddit's side"; I still tell people how helpful admins are when I have a specific issue, and I'm still *here* doing moderatory things.
On the surface this seems like one more instance of having interviews with moderators and taking the wrong understanding from the discussions. I cannot imagine that there are a lot of subreddits that said, "Please limit what we can do with CSS"; I think that it's more likely that moderators expressed a desire to have some other things *in addition* to CSS.
I think that there are a lot of benefits to taking the approach that you seem to want to take here, and I'm all for making things more accessible for moderators who don't know how to create a subreddit theme and don't know CSS, but taking away one of the only things that some moderators actually like seems like a pretty wrong-headed step. All the benefits seem to be for the administrators, with maybe a few for new users who will have a slightly more normalized experience across reddit.
This is another step in a direction that is unpalatable for many moderators, and the bottom line is that *your website is successful because of moderators*. The addendum to that is *you don't treat moderators very well*. And the last bit of that is *it's a bold move, Cotton, let's see if it pays off*. I guess a lot of us have enough Stockholm Syndrome built up that maybe it's going to work out fine, and I think that I'm okay with that, but it would be nice if the next announcement was something more like:
Here is a cool tool that you've actually asked for that will actually help moderators do moderation.
That's what we really want. Some ideas:
I could go on; I think there are a lot of recurring themes on /r/ideasfortheadmins that never seem to get any answers or any acknowledgement. Actually, there's something to add to the list:
The last several months have kind of felt like a kick in the pants for reddit moderators, specifically around /r/CommunityDialogue - going through interviews that we thought were expressing "what we want to see" only to find out we would be told "how you must act or you'll get removed" was a big turnoff - so I think that it's possible that many of us are looking at this announcement more from the point of view of "here's another thing that the admins are *doing* to us" instead of "here's a way that mods are tryingt o help us".
This was long and rambly, and I know that you guys are trying hard, but it is becoming increasingly frustrating to be the free labour force that makes reddit acceptable and to feel generally unsupported.
Comment by V2Blast at 22/04/2017 at 04:03 UTC
11 upvotes, 1 direct replies
The last several months have kind of felt like a kick in the pants for reddit moderators, specifically around /r/Community_Dialogue
It's /r/CommunityDialogue. No underscore. The one with the underscore is a copycat created to confuse users by the same guy who made the /r/leagueoflegends copycat subreddit.
Other than that, I agree with everything else you said.
Comment by huck_ at 23/04/2017 at 02:45 UTC
2 upvotes, 1 direct replies
On the surface this seems like one more instance of having interviews with moderators and taking the wrong understanding from the discussions. I cannot imagine that there are a lot of subreddits that said, "Please limit what we can do with CSS"; I think that it's more likely that moderators expressed a desire to have some other things in addition to CSS.
This decision clearly IMO has nothing to do with moderation. It's just making the subreddits more consistent. Which I am in favor of.
And if you only see yourself as a free labor force then you should quit. Reddit provides a service of letting people host a community. If you feel like you're getting less out of Reddit than what you're putting in then you should quit, and maybe start a community some place else.