> There's a silent majority - "lurkers" - that the mods have completely ignored
What is there for the mods to ignore, when the lurkers are - as you said - silent?
What is there for the mods to ignore, when the lurkers are - as you said - silent?
I think all the people posting stuff like "reddit is DYING" are in for a rude awakening because the overwhelming majority of users do not give a single shit. They wanna see memes that confirm their biases and maybe see what is going on in their city/locality, and they can't do that if all their subs are blacked out.
But I've seen both subs that asked mods, mods that unilaterally decided to blackout, and subs where users pleaded for blackout while power-hungry mods decided not to (presumable coz they were afraid reddit takes their playground from them)
If I were a power tripping mod, I would either just inform the sub about the subreddit taking part in the blackout. From the up and downvotes you can then already gauge the sentiment of the subreddit towards this issue and if the downvotes go south, you can always delete the post and do it anyway.
But then you can't go and ask the sub about continuing the blackout. But as a power tripping mod I can't keep the subreddit private as then I would miss out on my power trip.
So eventually I would open it up again, make a poll about continuing and as the sub will deny that I could keep it open and keep on power tripping while at the same time claiming that I only follow the sub's democratic decision.