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Comment by ardit33 | Hacker News Reader

Sorry... but this was handled very poorly by reddit and its CEO.

Should have just disabled the 'go private' option. A subreddit, is not 'owned' or property of a moderator.

Eg, https://www.reddit.com/r/Brooklyn/, should not be own by one person that decides what to do. The questions and answers are made by common people that want to see their content that they posted into the subreddit. They are not property of some anonymous mod/editor but belong to the community.

As a user of reddit, my relationship is with reddit and not some primadona mod who decides to deprive the community out of vital information. I have contributed to many subreddit, and the mods never asked for permission form the contributors if they actually wanted to go dark. They don't own the content, and reddit needs to act.

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I see just one primadona in this story and it's not (one of) the mods.

Unless you only use Reddit in a Google-result-and-bounce fashion, your reddit experience is directly shaped by the mods (unpaid) work, especially on the larger subs.

The mods grow and nurture the community. Reddit just provides the infrastructure, and a poor one at that, which is the reason for so many apps (including mod tools) are needed.

> A subreddit, is not 'owned' or property of a moderator.

That is exactly how reddit works. Reddit does not compensate the mods.. this is a minor compensation that they get to maintain their fiefdom. Don't like it, create a new sub.

That's just not true. This is not how reddit works. There are other rules in place that make it clear that mods don't own the subreddits that they mod. They are stewards of that community, but when they try to sabotage that community they can and should be removed.

Historically speaking, it has been incredibly rare for subs to be taken over like that. Subs have run with rules about banning members with at least 1 comment in subs they don't like (usually the_donald, mra, conservative, etc) [banning over non-sub behavior is a big no no for a long time with the admins], there are subs that aggressively automod, there are subs that ban over constructive criticism, there are subs where active mods are pushed out at any moment by a top mod, etc. Heck, there are a few subs that require photo evidence of your race or gender to participate.

Unless it highly embarrassed the company or it is an ongoing violation of their content policy, mostly those communities still remain as they are.

This seems like a canned retort intended for usual cases of randos complaining about how a subreddit is run. But it doesn't work in the context of this discussion; if Reddit admins don't like how a subreddit is run they don't have to "make their own sub", they can just take control of the sub they already own. Make no mistake, moderators do not own these subs, reddit owns all of them. There is no compensation deal between reddit and the moderators, the moderators have no rights from the perspective of Reddit's owners.

It's a reasonable policy if we're talking about a very niche hobby. If it's /r/news or /r/nfl where the name serves as a natural Schelling point, then it will attract power-hungry people who are able to indulge their drive to control others with a large natural constituency that continues to flow into to their subs without any awareness of its governance.

If the mods couldn't make the subreddits private, the protest would then have meant they stop moderating but the subreddits remain open. I'm not sure that would have looked pretty, and it would have taken time for Reddit to go through each sub and appoint new mods.

Would have been less boring though.

Buddy those primamadonna mods were the ones who made browsing r/brooklyn possible for you.

And in most subs where I've seen polls done, a hearty majority of the users are happy to support their moderators (on this issue at least).

> They are not property of some anonymous mod/editor but belong to the community.

The community called for this, and in most cases the majority are supporting it. Make up your mind if you're on the communities side, or Huffman's. Those are the options.

Calls mods primadonas while also feeling entitled to “vital information” and ownership by the community that Reddit says they own. It’s out of touch all the way down to Steve.

mods are not the ones creating the information. It is community driven. I have contributed a lot of info, in various subreddit, and I don't want to see it go dark.

Mods never asked for permission form the actual redditors on their decisions and they are acting as mini dictators. Time for Reddit to act.

In that case reddit should pay for a moderating team vs volunteers.

true... or just get new moderators in that are ok with keeping the site without turning it into private/blocking access to everyone else. No one likes personal fiefdoms, and the mods are acting like local warlords.

This is just bad management from reddit.

Well thats the crux of the issue, reddit mods find third party apps improve their ability to perform their free labor. Theres no expectation that new mods would find the core reddit experience better.

Current mods can protest even after their removal by mass reporting posts on their former subs, causing the new mods to engage with the poor moderation experience on the core app.

It's not that simple, like to get the content you want so that it's just Q&A in a congenial fashion that takes moderation, like there's extensive rules here and elsewhere rather than it just being some unmoderated free-for-all. Moderators keep things on topic and civil, like certainly you want Reddit moderators to remove comments that are insulting others, threadjacking, etc?

Well, it's not public utility. A founder created the subreddit and a team of mods manage it to make it usable for you. Brooklyn and all other subs you use would be radically different with a different team of mods

Yeah that’s exactly right. The reddit mods are the worst type of drama queens. They should have no special power to control the user experience or site traffic.

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