I used to be a mod at /r/soccer, and it was a great way for you to lose faith in humanity.
We saw it all, racism, death threats, insults, even an instance where one user found a mod’s place of work and stalked them. We also had one guy that was obsessed with a footballer spam the sub with bots for several days, because he wasn’t allowed to post whatever he liked. It took the admin’s three days to fix…
More often than not, it was people that didn’t read the rules, and got upset that all subs didn’t run on the idea that “if people upvote it, it’s allowed”.
Yeah that sounds about right. I used to moderate trans and lesbian subreddits. It was …not good for my mental health. Leniency in rules allowed for people to post bigoted shit that sat right on the border or sounded like it might. Strict wording in rules meant that people would toe the line. Us having to explain why we removed things (it was an experiment one sub I moderated tried for like a year) resulted in an absolute shit show because there are more people who want to be assholes than mods and the more stressful moderating is the higher the turnover. I distinctly remember one night being out at a bar with my now ex and her friends and trying to write up my reasonings for someone who was obviously breaking a rule because she disagreed with the rule but she was challenging every decision and we had to give so many chances and allow appeals and she was ruining my night, and I was acutely aware that she could just hop to a new account when she was done. Also we had mod drama.
The “legal eagles” are best ignored. Just ignore them. Most of the time they’ll just stop if you ignore them, because they want you to argue with them.
Absolutely but my attitude eventually shifted to “this is a small Internet forum, you want to be a jackass do so elsewhere.” I always tried to find a form of balance because I did care about the users. But the balance did rely on gut feelings, perception, and how willing to put up with your shit I was. I spent most of my 20s doing this shit and yeah it feels wrong to say “if you’re a rude asshole in response to a mod decision you don’t like you’re less likely to get a favorable response” but also yeah the time it took to read an essay berating me was time I could spend on literally anything other than helping the person who wrote it and I did the thing of giving even those people the benefit of the doubt every time and turns out it was a waste of time because further investigation tended to reveal that the person was either a troll, an asshole who had a net negative impact on the community and a tenuous grasp on the rules, or someone unstable enough that they didn’t need a forum, they needed a support group with professional oversight.
But yeah when someone messaged me that one of the mods had been saying things that were inappropriate for a moderator of that community to say I spent months helping oust them and she and I are now actual friends.
I’ll also add that good moderation was a challenge because in my experience there’s four kinds of people who moderate: people who recognize it as a volunteer hobby and maintain an external life, people on a crusade, people who do their best but aren’t doing good mentally and probably need to be making major life changes, and bright eyed idealists. The first are what you want and the rarest, the second are a problem that you have to weed out because they become petty tyrants, the third can be ok or can be petty tyrants, and the fourth are the most common and they burn out in a month to three or rarely become one of the others. It’s hard to tell who will be which.
I’ve moderated many online forums going waaaay back (farther than I’d like to admit actually). I agree with you, and I want to explain decisions to the users too, so I’ll generally try to talk them as well. And sometimes we get a connection, and sometimes I realize I made a mistake. But in my experience, when they start playing lawyer, you’re not going to please them.
I never thought about the four categories of mods before, but what you wrote feels pretty accurate. I think I’m in that first group, and I try to avoid issues by moderating as lightly as possible.
When I’m in other groups or communities, sometimes I think, “If someone did that in my group, they’d get one warning, then I’d just ban them the second time it happened. Boom. End of discussion.” But I know that’s likely not how it would go in reality. LOL
My old modmail sure seems to indicate people thought that way
I used to be a mod at /r/soccer, and it was a great way for you to lose faith in humanity.
We saw it all, racism, death threats, insults, even an instance where one user found a mod’s place of work and stalked them. We also had one guy that was obsessed with a footballer spam the sub with bots for several days, because he wasn’t allowed to post whatever he liked. It took the admin’s three days to fix…
More often than not, it was people that didn’t read the rules, and got upset that all subs didn’t run on the idea that “if people upvote it, it’s allowed”.
Yeah that sounds about right. I used to moderate trans and lesbian subreddits. It was …not good for my mental health. Leniency in rules allowed for people to post bigoted shit that sat right on the border or sounded like it might. Strict wording in rules meant that people would toe the line. Us having to explain why we removed things (it was an experiment one sub I moderated tried for like a year) resulted in an absolute shit show because there are more people who want to be assholes than mods and the more stressful moderating is the higher the turnover. I distinctly remember one night being out at a bar with my now ex and her friends and trying to write up my reasonings for someone who was obviously breaking a rule because she disagreed with the rule but she was challenging every decision and we had to give so many chances and allow appeals and she was ruining my night, and I was acutely aware that she could just hop to a new account when she was done. Also we had mod drama.
The “legal eagles” are best ignored. Just ignore them. Most of the time they’ll just stop if you ignore them, because they want you to argue with them.
Absolutely but my attitude eventually shifted to “this is a small Internet forum, you want to be a jackass do so elsewhere.” I always tried to find a form of balance because I did care about the users. But the balance did rely on gut feelings, perception, and how willing to put up with your shit I was. I spent most of my 20s doing this shit and yeah it feels wrong to say “if you’re a rude asshole in response to a mod decision you don’t like you’re less likely to get a favorable response” but also yeah the time it took to read an essay berating me was time I could spend on literally anything other than helping the person who wrote it and I did the thing of giving even those people the benefit of the doubt every time and turns out it was a waste of time because further investigation tended to reveal that the person was either a troll, an asshole who had a net negative impact on the community and a tenuous grasp on the rules, or someone unstable enough that they didn’t need a forum, they needed a support group with professional oversight.
But yeah when someone messaged me that one of the mods had been saying things that were inappropriate for a moderator of that community to say I spent months helping oust them and she and I are now actual friends.
I’ll also add that good moderation was a challenge because in my experience there’s four kinds of people who moderate: people who recognize it as a volunteer hobby and maintain an external life, people on a crusade, people who do their best but aren’t doing good mentally and probably need to be making major life changes, and bright eyed idealists. The first are what you want and the rarest, the second are a problem that you have to weed out because they become petty tyrants, the third can be ok or can be petty tyrants, and the fourth are the most common and they burn out in a month to three or rarely become one of the others. It’s hard to tell who will be which.
I’ve moderated many online forums going waaaay back (farther than I’d like to admit actually). I agree with you, and I want to explain decisions to the users too, so I’ll generally try to talk them as well. And sometimes we get a connection, and sometimes I realize I made a mistake. But in my experience, when they start playing lawyer, you’re not going to please them.
I never thought about the four categories of mods before, but what you wrote feels pretty accurate. I think I’m in that first group, and I try to avoid issues by moderating as lightly as possible.
When I’m in other groups or communities, sometimes I think, “If someone did that in my group, they’d get one warning, then I’d just ban them the second time it happened. Boom. End of discussion.” But I know that’s likely not how it would go in reality. LOL
I would have suggested just ignoring it for 12-36 hours. She could have waited, or another mod could have handled it.
RIP Inbox :P