Should we establish a maximum of subs per moderators?
Someone here already has 12 subs on his own. We would be inspired to avoid the era of the power mods. Moding should involve an interest, not just collecting rings of infinity like it's a gold rush. How can it be a good practice in the long term?
I think a larger issue is what amounts to domain squatting.
People either recreating popular subs or creating magazines of the type of content they would like to read and then not providing any themselves.
People who come across a made yet empty mag can understandable be discouraged from contributing just for somebody else (who hasn't shown commitment to the community) to be able to control it.
Effectively it's absentee landlordism to stake claim to names and wait for posts to come.
Perhaps a better approach would be to delete magazines with no posts so that names would always be available to people who would use them.
@FfaerieOxide I'm definitely guilty of this, but I think of it this way: if I were some user who wanted to post some content related to some magazine that didn't exist yet, I might be discouraged for that reason. If a magazine for it doesn't exist, maybe that means nobody else cares about it? I think if a magazine exists for some topic, that signals to other people interested in that topic that at the very least a place for their interests exists and there are other people who care about it too, even if that place has little content. Maybe this is wrong but that's just my thoughts.
Yup, if I want to post some Magic news, I'll look for a Magic magazine to post it in. If that doesn't exist, I have to create it (and become responsible for moderating it).
Most people lurk. Some vote. Fewer post. And very very few want to moderate. Having power mods doing the heavy lifting right now will make things more usable for everyone. It's the part that comes after that requires more thought.
Although, if you are being a powermod, you should probably completely hand over control of the magazine to someone else if a community does develop around the topic. Having a couple of mods who are there just because they snatched all the topics at the start is a bad idea, as seen on Reddit. It's a recipe for disaster when the highest mod with complete authority is some random person who doesn't genuinely care about the community.
and isn't even easier than reddit to create new communities/mags. On Lemmy I've seen communities with the exact same name, hosted at different instances.
I made several magazines when I joined because I had heard horror stories of greedy and power hungry people claiming subreddit names and then sitting on them forever. That’s why MLB is baseball and Mets is NewYorkMets. I’m sure there’s countless other examples of the kind of megalomaniacal person we should avoid hoarding things like that.
But maybe it’s someone like me who is trying to make sure it’s gonna be ok. I would be cynical too, though.
It’s true. I am a musician. I wanna talk about music. So I made an account for my band and a magazine for them. Though right now no one cares, I still want it there
And then I wanted people to be able to talk about Radiohead and tame Impala. And I saw they weren’t there so I made them so people could fine them and someone bad couldn’t do it.
But yeah I really do care about the discussion and creating a community of people who care for each other and support one another like I’ve seen before. So I wanna make sure it’s there. I hope most of the folks migrating are operating with the same good intentions or altruism or what have you :)
I absolutely believe "if you built it they will come". I feel building to be an integral part of that.
Making a magazine and not starting things off with so much as a single thread feels less like building and more like buying a plot and leaving it fallow in the hopes a railroad comes through and buys it.
As @bathrobe brings up below us, sometimes "someone bad" will squat a name. As you can't get a read for what kind of person someone who doesn't post is, I personally find myself wary of contributing to empty mags (lest I contribute to building up the domain of a jerk).
I am of the belief if one considers a topic interesting enough to warrant a creating a mag for it, it should be near impossible not to already have at least one idea for content to post to it before before you have finished typing out the rules.
i couldn't agree more. that's why I tried to make a welcome post and then a video post at least for the couple of places I started. Starting it just to let it sit there could be a bad indicator (though one of the 4 magazines I started are empty for now, cause it's niche and I need to make a more tailored message I haven't had time for.
I spent time picking the right icon for my sub, writing reasonable rules that everyone would agree to. I posted some original content to "prime the pump" (You like the expression? I came up with it a couple of days ago and I thought it was good).
And when I see all the "interestingasfuck" or alike subs with zero post/comment, no icon, 3 lines of rules...you know that it's someone waiting to fish a big one. And there are more than 500 subscribed people in /m/interestingasfuck, all waiting for a single coolkid to post something funny. I buy the narrative of opening a spot so it's easier to post for someone else, but in the cases I mentioned it's just rush-registration. "FIRST!" should be their first comment. They are the peanut gallery, we brought them with us when we moved.
Ironically, /m/Creativity is still sitting at zero post and comment. The mod is welcoming new posts.
Anyway, I think we spend too much time in kbinMeta and not enough time creating content.
The problem with supermods is not how much communities/magazines they moderate. The problem is that they see themselves as omnipotent gods with lots of influence, at least on Reddit. One example was awkwardtheturtle, but there are more.
I think supermods are a two sided medal. They can be very disruptive to a community but they are in a way a superhighway for content and a small but growing community with greater ambitions needs nothing more than content. Maybe some of the problems can be avoided with a good culture of communication between mods, admins and community but I think that's very hard to achieve for a content platform that also has to have to some degree keep an eye on rentability.
I think the bigger problem was a lack of recourse.
Some of the big mega mods were fine, or were even net-positive stabilizing impacts on communities. Just that some real loud outliers were a massive problem and there were no mechanisms to get that behavior addressed effectively if they weren't doing anything that was going to also get them banned from the entire site.
I think there is a simple way to deal with bans, make sure that no ban is ever permanent. I mean people go to prison too in real life, but almost no one goes forever, but on these social media platforms they seem to ban people forever which is nuts. Make it so the max ban is 1 year, and the more that a sub abuses its banhammer, the shorter the sentence is. A rule like this would make toxic subs implode all on their own.
The other point to make is that bans only act on one instance. Someone who's banned on this instance could join another, receive the same content, say the same things, etc; and be untouchable to the mods on the original instance. If they obfuscate via new usernames and new emails, it becomes even easier.
I've seen some inner workings due to being a power user. Running a lot of subs isn't a problem - Many see it as just a side job rather than something to lord over
The issue are egoists getting control over a big sub/mag. They could run many or one, it doesn't matter. What should be wanted are ways to remove an abusive mod
I'd support a limit, the so called "supermods" were a detriment to Reddit overall. Not to mention, as others have stated" they end up being egoistical petty kings of their fiefs. If I see gallowboob on here I'll be right upset.
While I agree in a sense, especially of the gallowboob type, I moderate(d) 14 subs on Reddit, totalling about 2 million users. The majority of my subs had 2 primarily active mods. None of my subs were in any way "collecting" as some other comments have stated, but rather rescued from being banned due to lack of moderation, or handed to me for doing such a good job in helping out after the head mod decided to take leave and trusted me in continuing on running them. I turned each and every one of them around and moderated them with passion and fairly. Sticking to the subreddit rules that we had in place, either from before taking over abandoned subs, or tweaked as we went in order to keep said subs fair to the users, as well as deter bad players.
While I agree some kind of a limit should be in place, if one is running 20 or more small subs and is well within their capabilities I don't see that to be an issue, and while others here suggested "moderating the mods", that itself is turning into a power play, so who's going to hold the "moderators of mods" accountable for not abusing their power? I believe a line has to be drawn somewhere as well as being fair to all.
Forgot to add, in the infancy of Kbin it could be possible that people are creating magazines and as such are defaulted to being the mod, hopefully they would cede control as more users come on board?
I think this is mostly what's happening. In my case, I've created a few magazines as replacements for subreddits that I've frequented, and I am by default the moderator (gotta have at least one, right?). I would be happy to bring on additional moderators as needs require.
First, it would also be possible to implement something like that later if it becomes a problem. Like, it doesn't need to be done now; moderator privileges could be removed later.
Second, something as simple as a per-account cap won't address the problem, because a party dedicated to controlling moderator privileges on many subs could just create sockpuppet accounts and split control of the subs up across those.
What about moderator activity as a way to “mod the mods”, if you will (if that could even be done)? Some subreddits had a laundry list of mods that did nothing, even ignoring calls for new, active mods.
Like complete x% of mod activity to remain a mod for that sub, possibly have that % vary by sub size and/or number of mods for that sub.
Edit: what’s the appropriate shorthand nomenclature for magazines? Mags? ‘Zines? Will get out of the “subreddit” habit eventually!
The thing that bothers me isn't so much "moderators are taking on too much work". I mean, I don't think that having a relatively-inactive moderator is a problem, as long as more can be added. Rather, I'd be concerned about someone trying to seize control of a lot of forums to use them for promoting their own products or agenda.
And if that's the concern -- someone who is actually a bad actor trying to acquire influence on many forums -- I think that there are probably a lot of ways to game that metric.
One other point that makes me not super-concerned: this is a problem that every forum system that has moderated forums from volunteer members ran into when growing, and while Reddit and other sites have hit moderator drama, generally, they seem to have overcome those problems; the service as a whole continued to work reasonably well. That is, the issues here are issues that aren't new or specific to kbin's structure.
Like complete x% of mod activity to remain a mod for that sub, possibly have that % vary by sub size and/or number of mods for that sub.
As long as that percentage stays low and unlimited (but indicated) break periods are allowed, I'm down. No need to make volunteer work feel like more work.
i'm probably biased, but no... i'm currently migrating my favorite subs here. i don't plan on moderating them. i'll let people take over. i just want to move them here since no one else has.
I think that something like this opens way too many avenues for abuse in and of itself should it be automated, and if it requires intervention from the instance owner / administration, what's the difference from the community just voicing their opinion in a thread?
There's certainly no way to enforce this fediverse-wide, of course.
As a matter for this specific instance, I'd say "maybe." Ideally the reason for such a limitation would be foremost - we don't want to have absentee mods or power-tripping tinpot dictators because of the bad results they give. So maybe an instance could have a policy against that sort of thing, and if a mod breaks them then they get ousted. Reddit's approach has generally been "mods are gods, don't bother admins about them. They rule their kingdoms and we don't care if it sucks." It doesn't have to be that way.
On another site, I'm an admin on dozens of groups, and a large part of this is because I see having too many admins/mods as less of a problem then not having any. What I actually do is watch to see if the various groups have active mods, and recruit more if needed. There have been several times that it's come down to me being the only active admin, and I recruited several others, and I've been in groups where there were no active admins at all before.
Being an admin or mod for multiple groups doesn't necessarily make you power hungry, and having more groups not have mods and be havens for trolls and spammers rather then less strikes me as a bad idea...
(kbin decided I was no longer logged in when I previously tried to comment on this thread, so hopefully a second post doesn't show up...)
I don't think this is a problem right now. I'm in favour of deferring any decision.
Right now, getting more magazines opened is more important than who mods them. Without content, there's no users, and without users, there's no content. If someone wants to create a dozen magazines and get the conversations kick-started, that's a good thing.
If moderation on a new magazine is shit, people will move to a new one. The same thing happened at Reddit. r/gaming was too memy, so people made r/games. You had two large subs in r/relationships and r/relationship_advice.
The only issue in my mind has to do with continuity planning. What do we do in a few months when a hundred magazines have AWOL moderation? Who decides?
Check my other example, 8 subs open, zero content created. Those subs have not been open by someone with an interest on the subject, otherwise there would be content by now.
Not necessarily. The r/GlobalOffensive mods opened an "official" Counter-Strike Kbin magazine called m/cs, but last I checked there was only the announcement post and a couple of user-made posts. I trust them well enough because I've been subbed to r/GlobalOffensive for a while prior to reddit deciding to ruin the platform. Not everyone generates post-worthy content, some prefer to just discuss.
Like many I don't inherently see the amount as an issue, although granted with such variety as shown in in the OP I do have my doubts as well, but these kinds of cases are most likely the exception and can be handled on a case-by-case basis.
Also this whole thing is really, really new, and I know personally that I might start something but can't really get to it until few weeks later. Maybe have a time limit during which the sub/magazine has to be at least set up or it gets removed?
I think Reddit's /u/awkwardtheturtle is a prime example of why that is a good idea. It's a toxic sexist supermod that made it in the news a few times already and never got punished for any of their comments towards other users & groups. These type of supermods also can act abusive across several communities. If they don't like you, they can basically ban you in a lot of places.
There is a problem with a lack of content right now, and I'm in favor of people trying to develop lots of magazines right now if they put the effort. If they're just sitting on them, and doing nothing, then that's not good, but I personally am trying to develop six different magazines right now, and will gladly share the effort if anyone is willing to help. New users will not just come here if there is no content. We need to push for content first.
I’m all for more accountability and providing some guard rails but a per account limit will not solve much. It is trivial to have and to use multiple accounts to bypass any limits.
It is a tricky topic - power mods in and of themselves are not inherently a problem. If fact, I’d argue that people who take it upon themselves to moderate many communities (successfully) contribute more to the health of a site than the majority of users.
I suppose it is worth diving into the specifics of why a single user moderating multiple communities can be problematic. Then what can be done to address these issues.
Perhaps a tribunal system that allows the mods of other federated servers (who moderated the “same” type of content) to intervene in a conflict. I’d be worried about abuse with any automatic system, but at the very least a way to petition a site owner to step in would be helpful. A way to say “the collective federated mods believe that [@]Spez[@]kbin.social is problematic [due to exibit A, B, etc.] and it is agreed upon than they should be removed as a moderator of m/RedditMigration“
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