I think it’s a weird way to look at moderation as if it was democratic. Voting bad mods out is one thing, but I don’t think you can just vote new good mods in. Moderation is a lot of unpaid work. Even if a large part of a community is unhappy with a mod decision, removing the mods doesn’t mean there will be people with that much time on their hands to step up, and even if there are, it’s not easy to choose the good ones among them by a simple popular vote…
Some of the subs I was on had some elaborate setups with mod tools and bots and the mods were still quite busy. Replacing them with randoms who then also don’t have access to the tools would be entirely pointless.
On the other hand, it’s a terrible system to have mods as unassailable tyrants.
As an example, I was banned from a popular sub for corrective someone about a minor detail of a shooting. I correctly cited the appropriate state law in question, and I was banned for being a right-wing extremist. I am a leftist, and linked numerous comments I had made in the past that reflected as such. The mods made a vague excuse about how my comment would just cause unnecessary confusion and muted me. People like that should not be allowed authority over anything, let alone a forum for public discourse.
On the other hand, it’s a terrible system to have mods as unassailable tyrants.
Absolutely.
Unfortunately, I think the best system requires trusting site Admin to oversee and enforce things like code of conduct and standards. Setting up an external appeal mechanism of some sort. In Reddit’s case, it would be a massive job and the company can’t afford the staff to do that themselves, isn’t trying, and has just tossed hands up and walked away from the problem entirely. They’re not really to be trusted and the userbase knows that, so that’s IMO why the site has never come up with a good solution to the issue.
Most other mechanisms have or create bigger problems than they directly solve, and no solution will prevent 100% of wrongful bans or abuses of power.
Open elections leave communities - especially small ones - open to being overwhelmed and hijacked, while even if that can be avoided tend to result in mods being unwilling to make any tough decision that might risk their popularity, while also pandering to populist interests within the community.
Closed elections (ie: community participation thresholds) can be gamed with a little more effort, but tend to have the opposite problem from above - you create a clique that runs the community, very similar to the existing problem with moderator teams who’ll have each others’ back no matter how shitty the others are.
Oversight boards are a moderately better solution, in that they remove the direct populism and much of the risk of community hijack, but there then runs the risk that the board(s) themselves get either hijacked, or rule on cases according to their own biases, putting slant on whole-site culture.
I think it’s a weird way to look at moderation as if it was democratic. Voting bad mods out is one thing, but I don’t think you can just vote new good mods in. Moderation is a lot of unpaid work. Even if a large part of a community is unhappy with a mod decision, removing the mods doesn’t mean there will be people with that much time on their hands to step up, and even if there are, it’s not easy to choose the good ones among them by a simple popular vote…
Some of the subs I was on had some elaborate setups with mod tools and bots and the mods were still quite busy. Replacing them with randoms who then also don’t have access to the tools would be entirely pointless.
On the other hand, it’s a terrible system to have mods as unassailable tyrants.
As an example, I was banned from a popular sub for corrective someone about a minor detail of a shooting. I correctly cited the appropriate state law in question, and I was banned for being a right-wing extremist. I am a leftist, and linked numerous comments I had made in the past that reflected as such. The mods made a vague excuse about how my comment would just cause unnecessary confusion and muted me. People like that should not be allowed authority over anything, let alone a forum for public discourse.
Absolutely.
Unfortunately, I think the best system requires trusting site Admin to oversee and enforce things like code of conduct and standards. Setting up an external appeal mechanism of some sort. In Reddit’s case, it would be a massive job and the company can’t afford the staff to do that themselves, isn’t trying, and has just tossed hands up and walked away from the problem entirely. They’re not really to be trusted and the userbase knows that, so that’s IMO why the site has never come up with a good solution to the issue.
Most other mechanisms have or create bigger problems than they directly solve, and no solution will prevent 100% of wrongful bans or abuses of power.
Open elections leave communities - especially small ones - open to being overwhelmed and hijacked, while even if that can be avoided tend to result in mods being unwilling to make any tough decision that might risk their popularity, while also pandering to populist interests within the community.
Closed elections (ie: community participation thresholds) can be gamed with a little more effort, but tend to have the opposite problem from above - you create a clique that runs the community, very similar to the existing problem with moderator teams who’ll have each others’ back no matter how shitty the others are.
Oversight boards are a moderately better solution, in that they remove the direct populism and much of the risk of community hijack, but there then runs the risk that the board(s) themselves get either hijacked, or rule on cases according to their own biases, putting slant on whole-site culture.