The problem with volunteer moderation is, the "volunteers" eventually want to be paid in other, corrosive ways.
Obviously people asking LLMs instead is an important factor, as are unverified (often not entirely correct) answers from those using LLMs to gain Internet points.
Que? What was sold - by whom and to who?
StackExchange is still its own company - and owns StackOverflow - doesn’t it?
Fortunately community-moderation works well - for the most-part - on SO/SE; not to say SE is anything like Reddit (e.g. the impotent protests over “Monica” which feels like it happened over a decade ago - and people still reference that episode in their display-names).
If I ever become a moderator on SO it’ll be because I want to bolster my resume (I did get to interview at BlueOrigin on the basis of my SO karma score - so it has value; certainly more than LinkedIn, ew)
They do a different kind of moderation. For example we community moderators can't delete posts unless certain conditions are met (a certain number of downvotes). And we can't send warnings to user when such a warning is warranted.
Also I think they have access to some somewhat sensitive information that you may not want the whole community of high-score users to see without making everyone sign some sort of nda first.
Other users did vote for them. There are actual elections for diamond mods. The fact that you didn't vote for them doesn't mean they don't have legitimacy.
> I generally don't trust anyone who wants that kind of power online for no compensation.
As a community moderator I have a lot of power over certain things (I can unilaterally close Java questions as duplicate, I can edit questions, vote to close, vote to delete...) and I do it because I like the website to stay clean. Why would you doubt their motives just because they can do a bit more than what I can do? Do you distrust forum/subreddit/discord moderators as well?
> Other users did vote for them. There are actual elections for diamond mods.
I don't like the idea that I have to be on board with a website's unvetted volunteer moderators in order to use it.
I agree with SO but I don't agree with its power mods. The power mods are constantly at odds with SO's policies. Therefore it's a power mod issue and not mine.
> Do you distrust forum/subreddit/discord moderators as well?
Absolutely! Why should I trust these people? Some subreddit moderators for specific smaller niche subs can be ok, but a lot of questions should be asked of large subreddit moderators.
Who are these people who spend hours a day working for free for a billion dollar company? Why do they do it? Why are they moderating 100+ subreddits? Why do all of their posts automatically go to the top of the Reddit front page even if they get relatively few comments?
Reddit seems extremely easy to astroturf and it's very clear to see during US election periods like we're in at the moment.