Reddit CEO Pushes Back Against Blackout—Will Consider Letting Users Vote Out Moderators
Reddit CEO Pushes Back Against Blackout—Will Consider Letting Users Vote Out Moderators
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman is looking to put an end to the site’s blackout.
You're viewing a single thread.
I feel like having people vote on moderators would be an improvement but how can you complain about the lack of democracy when you are literally Reddit.
I really disagree, moderators need to make unpopular decisions sometimes to keep communities intact. Online polls are notoriously easy to game as well.
If the users want to kill their own community with bad decisions, that is their right. A mod shouldn't get to stop it.
On /r/moderatepolitics, our usual practice is a proposal combined with a request for comment thread. We then try to shape the final policy change more or less around what the community wants. But that doesn't always exactly happen. Sometimes there's no clear consensus or even just simple majority. Other times, we go against the prevailing opinion because it causes a severe problem. We then convene as a mod team and take a vote.
In another context, detached from Reddit burning, I feel like this could be an improvement; but only if done right. Here odds are that they'd do it wrong, rushed, and it would make the subreddits worse instead of better.
The main problem that I see is how to define who's part of the community, and who isn't, in a form that:
- prioritises content creators over lurkers
- prioritises lurkers over people who don't engage the community, not even passively
- avoids bots flinging decisions back and forth
- avoids raiding/brigading skewing up the votes
There's also the issue with conflicts of interest between 2+ legit chunks of the community. Specially on the scope of a community, if "wide" (shallow content, but more approachable for everyone) or "deep" (well-developed content, but less approachable for most people). If done wrong you'd have only "wide" communities, and people who want deeper discussions would be effectively deplatformed.
Those things are not unsolvable matters, mind you. But I don't think that Reddit is able to solve them before crashing.
Actually... Reddit has been experimenting with this for a few years in r/cryptocurrency where people earn "moons" depending on a series of rules based on their engagement, submissions, number of upvotes, community participation, and so on.
It's mostly led to people gambling the system to earn money.
I definitely don't think the current system is ready to be deployed on a site wide scale, but it would be interesting to see them try 🍿🍿
That's interesting. I wonder how much of the gambling was intrinsic to the idea, and how much it was caused by how and where (like, you're dropping a new crypto in a comm where people try to make money from crypto. Of course you'll get some abuse)
Another scenario that could ruin this idea would be well-organised infiltration - like a half dozen posters coordinating to game the system together, so they have more power than they should, until they can force the community to become something else.
but it would be interesting to see them try 🍿🍿
Yes! Specially pre-IPO. Investors really do not like things changing suddenly, as they increase the associated risk.