28 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
View submission: Testing a new concept with select subreddit partners
As a mod, I do not ever want to be put in a position where I have to tell a user who asks why we don't have a feature, a feature that other subreddits have, that we would need more people (i.e., them) to pay a subscription fee for the subreddit. If that becomes part of the (unpaid) job, that's bad enough that I will quit.
I also don't want the chaos of gaining and losing features that we have to understand and manage depending on people's paid subscriptions waxing and waning. I understand that there is a grace period, but that does not eliminate this waxing and waning except insofar as the grace period applies even more pressure to users (and mods) to buy more subscriptions so as not to lose features.
And I don't want other mods feeling like it's part of their job to pay reddit so that their subreddits will have more access to these features. And many mods *will*, especially of smaller subreddits, as they see an opportunity to set their subreddit apart and help to grow it. This is one of the things that Discord banks on with their program, and it feels really gross and exploitative (the fact that it's largely aimed at optimistic younger people with dreams of starting a big community makes it even worse). These people are already doing free labor for you, managing the communities that are the entire draw for your platform.
And the fact that we can (at least for now) opt our communities out of this does not help. Mods should not be put into a position where they have to explain to users that we don't have a feature they'd like to use, a feature other subreddits have, because we didn't want to make *them*, the users, feel like they had to buy it for the subreddit.
As a user, I don't want to see any of that either. I don't want to see subreddits splintered into haves and have nots.
This is easily the single most distasteful change I've ever seen to reddit and I sincerely hope you guys will reconsider. I've spent hundreds and hundreds of hours modding over several years, and if this happens, I'm out. I'm probably out as a user too - this would be enough to drive me away for good.
I also remember a pretty unambiguous "Reddit is ProCSS". Nothing ever came of that, but it feels even worse when you are not only going to be selling features we were able to implement with CSS, but turning mods into de facto salesmen (and purchasers themselves) for them. We didn't sign up for that.
Edit: I've let the other mods of r/rpg know that I will quit and vote to set the sub to private if we are put in this position. I understand that you are looking for revenue streams, especially to subsidize features that require expensive hosting, but this is a terrible idea.
Comment by [deleted] at 29/08/2020 at 11:01 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
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