Communities are not owned by moderators. They are built by those that participate. The primary fallacy I see is the idea that anyone can start a different community and that size and momentum are meaningless. That is simply not the case.
An authoritarian or very active mod, in any community with public participation is actively abusing those users when they act in opposition to the interests of the community. A visible mod is a bad mod. The job of mod is as a janitor acting in the interests of the community. If you care about authority or steering, you shouldn’t be a mod or admin.
Nothing about being a mod is hard. You don’t need to read every post or comment. All you do is setup the basic guidelines and trust the community to vote and flag bad stuff. The community will always flag the bad stuff. The only part that really matters is that you set yourself aside and really look into any flagged issue while giving the benefit of the doubt in absolutely every possible way one can imagine while never allowing bigotry type abuse. This is how to be a good mod, to be an invisible mod. The job is only to herd bad bots and sort the flags from others.
Moderation plays a big part in shaping the community. Are community guidlines not set by the mods? If there are people participating not following the guidlines they get squelched because they weren’t following the rules agreed to by everyone participating in that community.
Communities are not owned by moderators. They are built by those that participate. The primary fallacy I see is the idea that anyone can start a different community and that size and momentum are meaningless. That is simply not the case.
An authoritarian or very active mod, in any community with public participation is actively abusing those users when they act in opposition to the interests of the community. A visible mod is a bad mod. The job of mod is as a janitor acting in the interests of the community. If you care about authority or steering, you shouldn’t be a mod or admin.
Nothing about being a mod is hard. You don’t need to read every post or comment. All you do is setup the basic guidelines and trust the community to vote and flag bad stuff. The community will always flag the bad stuff. The only part that really matters is that you set yourself aside and really look into any flagged issue while giving the benefit of the doubt in absolutely every possible way one can imagine while never allowing bigotry type abuse. This is how to be a good mod, to be an invisible mod. The job is only to herd bad bots and sort the flags from others.
Would you like to play a game?
https://trustandsafety.fun/
Man, I’m only at the “Company Ethos” question (at the very beginning) and I already don’t like the choices it’s giving me.
No, not really. What is this?
Moderation plays a big part in shaping the community. Are community guidlines not set by the mods? If there are people participating not following the guidlines they get squelched because they weren’t following the rules agreed to by everyone participating in that community.
Guidelines are not rigid. The Hippocrates aphorism “first, do no harm” is key in principal and practice. A visible mod is always a bad mod.
Mods aren’t taking the hippocraric oath.