This is a cool article and all but there is no reason, to me, to believe in a mechanism that would make those new mods somehow worse on average than the old mods. Mods order was just seniority mixed with interpersonal drama with whoever was there before them, up to the guy who happened to be there in 2009.
Moderation was a sad fiefdom that was never good, these few in the article maybe just happened to have been good ones
Mod order is still just seniority mixed with interpersonal drama, in a fiefdom structure. That doesn’t change, even if the “senior” in question was recruited 5min ago.
What does change however is: emotional attachment to the platform, the subreddit, and the topic; personal and inherited (from older mods) experience; willingness to moderate a small community and make it grow.
It’s also worth noting that a lot of those powermods who are eager to create interpersonal drama and abuse seniority are still there. The APIcalypse only gave them more room for expansion. Cue to Bardfinn defending Spez and trying to gaslight users with “ackshyually, spez defeated a fusker scheme”.
This is a cool article and all but there is no reason, to me, to believe in a mechanism that would make those new mods somehow worse on average than the old mods. Mods order was just seniority mixed with interpersonal drama with whoever was there before them, up to the guy who happened to be there in 2009.
Moderation was a sad fiefdom that was never good, these few in the article maybe just happened to have been good ones
Mod order is still just seniority mixed with interpersonal drama, in a fiefdom structure. That doesn’t change, even if the “senior” in question was recruited 5min ago.
What does change however is: emotional attachment to the platform, the subreddit, and the topic; personal and inherited (from older mods) experience; willingness to moderate a small community and make it grow.
It’s also worth noting that a lot of those powermods who are eager to create interpersonal drama and abuse seniority are still there. The APIcalypse only gave them more room for expansion. Cue to Bardfinn defending Spez and trying to gaslight users with “ackshyually, spez defeated a fusker scheme”.