The following is a comment that was moderated out of existence by reddit moderators. I’m posting it here where reddit moderators have no power.
I’ll say it whenever there is an opportunity. The moderators are the worst part of reddit. They become randomly in charge of vast communities and have dictator-like power that they abuse heavily and often.
They ruin very popular communities with absurd arbitrary rules. Example: r/askreddit where they ban ever question they don’t like or simply enforce arbitrary formatting rules based on the whim of one unsocialized moderator.
In other reddits they frequently shut down popular conversations because they are ‘getting too popular to be under control’. They shut down communication more often than they help it because that is the only power they wield and they have no check on it. In r/askscience often times more than half the posts have been deleted because a moderator has simply decided they don’t like them. It’s like this across the board.
All communication is good communication and everyone has the right to be heard especially when it stirs up more conversation. That helps sort out problems and defuses anger that otherwise festers and can come out violently in society.
If they existed only to fight spam that would be one thing could be largely handled by robots, but that is not what they have come to embody. They now are arbitrary rulers who found themselves reigning over kingdoms sometimes out of simple chance by owning a word or popular phrase.
They have complete, total and unlimited power in their domains. They are unappointed censorship bodies decide who can talk and who can’t talk in some of the most important forums on the internet.
Get rid of the moderators. Replace them with spam fighting bots and make reddit and the world a better place.
