522 upvotes, 11 direct replies (showing 11)
View submission: The history of the /r/xkcd kerfuffle.
Not sure that the owner of the IP should get a say in the moderators of a subreddit (or any other media) that covers it - that's a really good way to stifle criticism or discussion of competing alternatives.
But certainly, if a subreddit gets hijacked it does seem like there should be a way for the community to regain control of it. Hard to know how to do that though, I suspect any vote based system would be hugely open to rigging, not to mention probably ineffective due to lack of participation.
Comment by ryecurious at 08/02/2014 at 23:26 UTC
98 upvotes, 2 direct replies
I 100% agree with your point that IP owners should not automatically get a say in the moderators of related subs. Imagine if people at Mojang (hypothetically, i'm sure they would never actually do this) demanded exclusive moderation rights to r/minecraft, and began censoring any negative feedback or related games. There is too much potential for abuse in a system like this.
Unfortunately I can't see any good system for dealing with problems like the one that has arisen here. As you say, voting is open to rigging, and if it had to take place in the subreddit, there would very likely be backlash by the moderators on anyone who participated in it. If it had to take part outside of the subreddit, it would be massively under-represented by the people who should have the say in the matter (the actual subscribers). Perhaps a petition system run by the admins that causes an un-deletable (by the mods anyway) thread to be posted in the subreddit and possibly stickied. After this the community would need to discuss and vote on the proposed moderation changes, but there is still the risk of commenters being banned by the mods from the rest of the subreddit.
Comment by Adjal at 09/02/2014 at 12:50 UTC
26 upvotes, 2 direct replies
I'd say if someone starts a sub it should be theirs, but that a modrequested site gets a bad mod, subscribers to that sub (and any banned during said moddership) should be able to oust.
Comment by [deleted] at 09/02/2014 at 02:21 UTC
22 upvotes, 1 direct replies
This was actually an issue in /r/pebble, that Pebble staff members were deleting negative posts, or posts leaking information about new Pebble hardware.
Comment by cos at 09/02/2014 at 16:42 UTC
23 upvotes, 1 direct replies
It would be nice if there were a mechanism for the community of /r/politics to regain control of that hijacked subreddit.
Bad moderators are pretty much the biggest problem with reddit in the past couple of years, but really the problem is that the admins allow anyone who happened to have gained control of a reddit to do anything they want, regardless of whether the community wants it, whether that reddit has an established history, whether the people twisting it into something different are the ones who created it or not. There's no protection for any community here, no matter how larger or long-lasting or well-established, from the random arbitrary whims of future moderators.
Comment by Wyboth at 08/02/2014 at 23:10 UTC
70 upvotes, 6 direct replies
I see what you mean; if, say, the CEO of Old Spice is granted modship of /r/oldspice and he started censoring links to /r/irishspring, that would be bad. But I think that's less likely to happen from an official person than a random internet user. Besides, I don't know of many subreddits made for corporations that people would subscribe to.
Comment by [deleted] at 09/02/2014 at 04:20 UTC
7 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Kind of similar thing happened to /r/Catholic. It was taken over by trolls and /r/Catholicism had to be created.
Comment by Little_Kitty at 09/02/2014 at 16:45 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
That might sound like a nice idea, but you'd be fighting against copyright and trademark law, as well as opening up to libel issues. Any company or individual with the will to do so could take control of their subreddit, otherwise legal bills would quickly sink Reddit. The balance to this is that if they turned an active community into a mouthpiece for propaganda, they'd destroy all the value the community generated for their products. Subreddits can exist quite happily and support a product - for an example of this check out http://www.reddit.com/r/cocacola[1] which Coke would be foolish to pursue as it's praising them.
1: http://www.reddit.com/r/cocacola
Comment by MinkOWar at 09/02/2014 at 16:52 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Agreed, the idea the IP owner or whomever else should have any say, other than their own voice posting normally like everyone else, in a community sub on an independent site is ludicrous and I personally would be **extremely opposed** to interference like thay. I would be surprised if Randall would think that was in any way a good idea too.
Xkcd has its own forum. Reddit is independent, the issue here is the community being hijacked, if the IP owner could take control at will it would be just as hijacked from the community as this random squatter mod.
Comment by lolwutermelon at 09/02/2014 at 18:46 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
In fact, the rules are that someone who is in control of something *cannot be a moderator in a subreddit about it*. This is why Notch couldn't moderate the Minecraft subreddit.
Comment by blaghart at 28/02/2014 at 19:13 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Perhaps alter it so that they can be allowed moderator status in such a way that they can moderate but not remove moderators? That way sure they could theoretically go all iron fisted, but then other mods would just put it all back.
Comment by [deleted] at 09/02/2014 at 16:14 UTC*
1 upvotes, 1 direct replies