Why do reddit moderators work for free while insiders profit?

[Greenman]

More rules means more problems. It's a copout pointing to a rule book and saying "you can't do that" rather than taking a more nuanced, and thoughtful approach. It's especially true when dealing with something like a forum, where you can arbitrarily enforce rules because that's your right. However, accountability should always be maintained, and there should never be an elite class.

Git it, and completely agree.

 

[Greenman]

you can volunteer for non-profits

reddit is not a non-profit

How does it work with a volunteer fire department? The building and equipment are city owned, and they pay for training as well. The same with churches, a for profit venture that uses a great deal of volunteers.

 

[tynopik]

How does it work with a volunteer fire department? The building and equipment are city owned, and they pay for training as well. The same with churches, a for profit venture that uses a great deal of volunteers.

haha, you so funny

 

[ultimatebob]

Didn't AOL have a similar issue back in the 90's, where their chat room moderators sued for never getting paid for their work and won?

So, what do the mods make here? 🙂

 

[olds]

I resigned here mostly because Derek and Anand were dicks. Derek didn't know what he was doing and Anand didn't care about the forums. The fact that I was putting in a lot of unpaid time just made my decision easier.

 

[Ns1]

I resigned here mostly because Derek and Anand were dicks. Derek didn't know what he was doing and Anand didn't care about the forums. The fact that I was putting in a lot of unpaid time just made my decision easier.

Mod call out. Ban.

 

[olds]

Mod call out. Ban.

Ban for lying.

 

[manimal]

I resigned here mostly because Derek and Anand were dicks. Derek didn't know what he was doing and Anand didn't care about the forums. The fact that I was putting in a lot of unpaid time just made my decision easier.

appreciate the candor.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Reddit is the kind of site that could easily be run by only a few people as it just really requires lot of server power. It's kinda like The Pirate Bay in a way. A platform that strives on users submitting content. I'm still baffled at how big they are from a corporate view. They have offices and everything. This CEO is typical corporate style person that wants to commercialize everything and always make more profit, and that goes against the nature of Reddit users who are against most of that stuff. Will be interesting to see what happens if this CEO stays and pisses off enough people. Reddit has an upper hand as being very well known and popular already though but I could see people flock over to another site. Problem is I'm sure we'll see all sorts of Reddit clones pop up so which one do you pick.

It's kinda tempting to make one myself but marketing something like that is a lot of work so it could be a lot of coding for nothing.

 

[Ns1]

Wasn't reddit just a clone of digg?

 

[tynopik]

Didn't AOL have a similar issue back in the 90's, where their chat room moderators sued for never getting paid for their work and won?

Yes exactly

Initially they were compensated with free AOL access, but as the value of that access dropped, they thought they should be getting more

 

[lxskllr]

It's kinda tempting to make one myself but marketing something like that is a lot of work so it could be a lot of coding for nothing.

It's libre software, so all the coding's been done for you. All that's left is building a community. That should be easy. I'm looking forward to hanging out at squirrelit this time next year.

 

[Red Squirrel]

It's libre software, so all the coding's been done for you. All that's left is building a community. That should be easy. I'm looking forward to hanging out at squirrelit this time next year.

Hmm interesting did not know they actually released it.

I should go ahead and play with it for fun. In fact I'm working on revamping one of my forums - combining 4 seperate forums into 1. Perhaps I should completely change the direction and turn it into a mini Reddit instead. 😛 Call it SquirrelTree(tm). Each subreddit is called a branch. URLs start with /b. I think I'm going places. 😱

 

[disappoint]

dude can you edit that? we are all giving big shits ITT

So that's what that smell was.

The thing I don't get about reddit is it's popularity despite it's, at least what appears to me as, an abysmally bad user interface. Does anyone else think it's UI sucks or is it just me?

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Wasn't reddit just a clone of digg?

Digg -> Reddit -> Voat

 

[uclaLabrat]

So that's what that smell was.

The thing I don't get about reddit is it's popularity despite it's, at least what appears to me as, an abysmally bad user interface. Does anyone else think it's UI sucks or is it just me?

Yup, I can't even go to that site, it's like reading posts in VBA to me.

 

[lucia]

( ﹁ ﹁ ) AskReddit

 

[smackababy]

Why do any volunteers volunteer? Because they, unlike most of you ungrateful shits, prefer to actually work to ensure the community they like doesn't go to shit.

 

[l0cke]

For 95% of reddit moderators it makes sense. They start or join some niche community (like betting on SpaceX) while reddit provides free hosting and software. The alternative would be hosting your own forum or something, which is awful in comparison.

For the other 5% that moderate default subreddits, I have no clue why they do it. You couldn't pay me enough to sit through the moderation queue on something like /r/pics or /r/funny.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

I once moderated the NationStates equivalent (banned member forum) of titty feelie, and it wasn't fun. My only action of moderation was to un-embed an image of some anime chick shooting an energy blast from her vagoo, and everyone jumped on me and called me a fascist. :'( At the time the idea of being a moderator just had this cool factor to it, like I was helping the community in some way and ensuring productive discourse, but my laissez-faire tendencies made the whole thing uncomfortable.