This is also why I say people who want the Fediverse to be fully unmoderated should basically only live on single user servers. When your server federates with another and caches what’s on that server, you begin to bear some onus for the stuff that’s on that server, including if that other server is acting in a WILDLY illegal and unethical way. If you want to moderate out child porn yourself, be my guest, but also realize that not everyone took up the mantel of being a moderator on any of our older forums for a reason. It’s exhausting. It takes a mental toll on you that makes it hard for you to enjoy the community that you’re curating (most likely out of love).
I read somewhere that most mods who do it out of love only last about a year or two at the most. I modded a small sub of 20k almost on my own for a year and then helped out for another year… and yeah I can’t stand Reddit anymore so I’m stepping down as mod. You really are exposed to the WORST excesses present in a community - even if it’s like 97% friendly, the tiny minority that are not will do everything possible to suck out your very soul.:-( It’s made me so defensive and cagey now even irl and I don’t want to be acting that way with my work colleagues.
IMPORTANT CAVEAT: that was Reddit, and the bar was significantly lower there - I hope people will accept mod positions here b/c these communities look just about like 100% different than there.
Totally!! I modded a few different “place” sub-reddits for really small places. We didn’t have anywhere near 20K in subs but I had a few death threats in DM’s over the years. It was like, “Bro, is it really that bad that your completely unrelated post (to this sub) got removed??!” Some of the users would track me down and basically stalk my account every time I made a post on a different sub just to harass me. It was funny in a really dark, weird, why take the time, way.
This is also why I say people who want the Fediverse to be fully unmoderated should basically only live on single user servers. When your server federates with another and caches what’s on that server, you begin to bear some onus for the stuff that’s on that server, including if that other server is acting in a WILDLY illegal and unethical way. If you want to moderate out child porn yourself, be my guest, but also realize that not everyone took up the mantel of being a moderator on any of our older forums for a reason. It’s exhausting. It takes a mental toll on you that makes it hard for you to enjoy the community that you’re curating (most likely out of love).
I don’t think I could ever be a moderator. It sounds stressful. If a mod is reading this thank you for what you do
I read somewhere that most mods who do it out of love only last about a year or two at the most. I modded a small sub of 20k almost on my own for a year and then helped out for another year… and yeah I can’t stand Reddit anymore so I’m stepping down as mod. You really are exposed to the WORST excesses present in a community - even if it’s like 97% friendly, the tiny minority that are not will do everything possible to suck out your very soul.:-( It’s made me so defensive and cagey now even irl and I don’t want to be acting that way with my work colleagues.
IMPORTANT CAVEAT: that was Reddit, and the bar was significantly lower there - I hope people will accept mod positions here b/c these communities look just about like 100% different than there.
Totally!! I modded a few different “place” sub-reddits for really small places. We didn’t have anywhere near 20K in subs but I had a few death threats in DM’s over the years. It was like, “Bro, is it really that bad that your completely unrelated post (to this sub) got removed??!” Some of the users would track me down and basically stalk my account every time I made a post on a different sub just to harass me. It was funny in a really dark, weird, why take the time, way.