this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2024
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Controversial take, I don't think mods need to be paid. You don't have to be a mod, you're actively choosing to be a moderator. If you aren't getting paid for your work and dislike that, then don't do it. There's always going to be someone willing to do it for free, like a hobby.
I agree in principle, but its a really bad thing to encourage people to dedicate free time to a thankless job because the only people who will endure it are those with agendas, power trippers, sociopaths, or anyone else bored. In my own experiences and talking to others, mod fatigue takes over after some time.
Community websites are really bears the bigger they get.
In reality, reddit should have its own moderators on the payroll with its own moderation policy. They did this once before, but the person was of questionable background. Instead of trying to fix the policy, reddit just went back to the unpaid landed gentry.
Mods getting paid for their work does not fix the problems they have being unpaid as-is. That requires strict moderator policies, moderation logs, a proper appeal/arbitration process, and even then its not going to be 100% fair. There's not a whole lot reddit can do at this point even if they went back to paid mods. Which they won't, because they're now in the tail end of the company's lifecycle: Gut everything so the founders can exit, leave the suckers with their shit product.
You realize no one is getting paid on Lemmy right? Yeah maybe someone set up a patreon to cover some of their server costs, but that's probably not even covering the full costs, let alone the time or takes to admin an instance
Mod fatigue because existing mods limit the number of people on the mod team to a size that makes them do too much work?
Eg. If a mod team only wants 5 individuals on the team and the community has 1000000 subscribers, then that's on them.
I'm a believer that the size of a mod team should be proportional to the size of the community; modding should be as casual as submitting a post/comment.
Don't get me wrong, I appreciate people putting in effort to try to make life better for everyone, I just think the fatigue is self inflicted.
I also agree. But for a for-profit company like Reddit, there should be a threshold for certain subreddits that require mods to be paid.
That is, for a major/popular subreddit like pics the mods should be paid by Reddit.
For a minor subreddit like r/hotgirls whowanttohavesexwithgcanuck the mods can be unpaid.
Why are there minors on that subreddit 🧐 (kidding)
I agree with you, and I think it's a controversial take only in the activist spheres of western online intelligentsia, while frankly most of the world doesn't think it's a real problem in the grand scheme of things
Not controversial in my books. They are choosing to be unpaid mods, don't like it? Don't do it.
Nope, disagree. I don't think mods need to be payroll as full time staff, but I think the lack of compensation is what is contributing to reddit being shit.
Much like YouTube involves people who are willing to make content and drop it on YouTube for free, the truth is that most of the really high quality content would not be there if the creators couldn't monetize their work, and that's because their work costs time and money.
Reddit mods should be entitled to remuneration if the sub generates certain amounts of traffic and content, and then they should be entitled to a set percentage of advertising revenue generated from that sub.
Mods will be better, reddit will be better. Not great, because that asshat spez is still there, but better.