Honestly your post comes off as pretentious. If it sucks so bad then why take charge of so many subreddits?
> I doubt many of you would actually want the responsibilities it requires to do at minimum a decent job of it.
You'd be wrong. I'm sure there's no shortage of people willing to help moderate, so pretending there's a small pool of people available or brushing them off under your own arbitrary definitions of "less qualified" definitely comes off as condescending.
> a bunch of children and adults acting like children.
Which is exactly what these mods are doing now by banning that user from all the subs, so your point doesn't hold water and further highlights a superiority complex.
>If it sucks so bad then why take charge of so many subreddits?
I mean, having lots of big subs under your control definitely does give you a little feeling of power, which some people like. Personally it doesn't outweigh the responsibilities, which is why my subs are <10k.
>I'm sure there's no shortage of people willing to help moderate
Probably true. But with every new mod you run the risk of getting one who goes rogue or otherwise _seriously_ abuses power. This is simply a self-fulfilling prophecy:
1. conspiracy that a small network of mods have censorship power*
2. mods censor posts because it inevitably leads to a witchhunt
3. goto 1
*mods do have basically unchecked power in subreddits, so it's not really a conspiracy. For a very long time, /r/xkcd was squatted on by white nationalists and admins refused to step in for months.
I think the debate in this thread is the current moderators are abusing their power and furthermore are being paid (suspected - no proof yet I don't think) for their positions thus it's no longer a volunteering gig and now more susceptible to corruption.
I've been a forum admin and forum moderator in the past and yes there's always a risk of people going rogue or power-tripping, but that can happen with literally anyone. If it happens, it also tends to end very rapidly as the other moderators clean-up the actions of the rogue quickly. That's why you vet people based off their history and hope it works out. In my experience it's better to have a larger group of trusted moderators to maintain a balance of power then for a small group to act in an authoritarian manner; the latter of which seems to be the case here.
If there's a perception of a witch hunt then the moderator action of ultimate banishment only fuels that fire, seems counter-intuitive for people supposedly acting in good faith.
I think these five moderators share power with the other moderators on each subreddit and each subreddit's mods can see each other's actions. Does this put this into the former category?
As far as what happened here the moderator for /r/interestingasfuck has been talking about it. He seems pretty open to answer questions. Maybe he could be asked if he gets paid to moderate?
> I doubt many of you would actually want the responsibilities it requires to do at minimum a decent job of it.
You'd be wrong. I'm sure there's no shortage of people willing to help moderate, so pretending there's a small pool of people available or brushing them off under your own arbitrary definitions of "less qualified" definitely comes off as condescending.
> a bunch of children and adults acting like children.
Which is exactly what these mods are doing now by banning that user from all the subs, so your point doesn't hold water and further highlights a superiority complex.