I legitimately did it because I had been a member of the community for years and really felt passionate about keeping its standards and making sure it remained safe for the community.
Would you do it for a community you didn’t care about?
Do you think that doing something because you “really felt passionate about it” is “selfless”?
I’m not sure if you responded before I added my last paragraph. I did it quickly but there was probably a 90s gap. Have you read it?
I think you’re also projecting this idea that all mods claim this is some holy selfless totally altruistic and pure act. No one talks about it like that.
My “axe to grind” is not against mods. My “axe to grind” is against Small Fedi. I can elaborate more later if you want, but now I need to get back to work…
I think ultimately you’re arguing against something I’m not really arguing for. Again, any mod who thinks that this is some 100% purely altruistic endeavor is sniffing their own farts and is definitely an incredibly thin sliver of the modding population.
If you want to keep boiling things down then you can ultimately reduce any act of charity or good deed to some degree of selfishness and say that there is no truly altruistic action. So in the end your final conclusion is “mods are ultimately selfish and putting up altruistic window dressing,” which as long as you can say “it’s never 100% selfless” means you can’t ever be wrong rhetorically. That’s a philosophy discussion, not a practical discussion of what motivates people to become moderators.
I think there is a spectrum between what you did (you were mod until you no longer thought that the pain of dealing with Reddit was worth it or morally justified) and someone who sticks around as a mod of 50+ subreddits because they see as an instrument of control, or someone that keeps running a big Mastodon instance despite financial struggles; and my point is to understand where most people lie.
I think you kinda answered your own question. Somewhere in between. You won’t get a better answer than that without some sort of rigorous study.
For instance, most of the mods I worked with or knew generally operated the way I did. But obviously there are all sorts of factors to consider about why I would see that potentially more than others would, so I can’t really assert with any confidence that my experience was representative
Would you do it for a community you didn’t care about?
Do you think that doing something because you “really felt passionate about it” is “selfless”?
I’m not sure if you responded before I added my last paragraph. I did it quickly but there was probably a 90s gap. Have you read it?
I think you’re also projecting this idea that all mods claim this is some holy selfless totally altruistic and pure act. No one talks about it like that.
No, I missed it before.
My “axe to grind” is not against mods. My “axe to grind” is against Small Fedi. I can elaborate more later if you want, but now I need to get back to work…
I think ultimately you’re arguing against something I’m not really arguing for. Again, any mod who thinks that this is some 100% purely altruistic endeavor is sniffing their own farts and is definitely an incredibly thin sliver of the modding population.
If you want to keep boiling things down then you can ultimately reduce any act of charity or good deed to some degree of selfishness and say that there is no truly altruistic action. So in the end your final conclusion is “mods are ultimately selfish and putting up altruistic window dressing,” which as long as you can say “it’s never 100% selfless” means you can’t ever be wrong rhetorically. That’s a philosophy discussion, not a practical discussion of what motivates people to become moderators.
I think there is a spectrum between what you did (you were mod until you no longer thought that the pain of dealing with Reddit was worth it or morally justified) and someone who sticks around as a mod of 50+ subreddits because they see as an instrument of control, or someone that keeps running a big Mastodon instance despite financial struggles; and my point is to understand where most people lie.
I think you kinda answered your own question. Somewhere in between. You won’t get a better answer than that without some sort of rigorous study.
For instance, most of the mods I worked with or knew generally operated the way I did. But obviously there are all sorts of factors to consider about why I would see that potentially more than others would, so I can’t really assert with any confidence that my experience was representative