Bougie_Birdie@piefed.blahaj.zone 3 days ago
Mods are volunteers, and therefore will moderate however they feel like. The needs of the community might influence what that looks like, but at the end of the day it’s whatever they want.
Reacting in a timely manner but also requiring a majority are both things that we want to see, but they’re also conflicting ideals. Depending on the size of the community it may be an impossible ask.
If a moderator oversteps, the rest of the mod team could take action. If you can’t trust a single moderator to moderate, then maybe they shouldn’t be a moderator.
It’s not a perfect system, but things rarely rare.
Patnou@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Not trying to get in a fight, it just seems like it is rigged against the user and was built on that concept. Is there anyway we can change that? Without a lone mod risking his or her mod rights by speaking up?
rosahaj@piefed.blahaj.zone 3 days ago
Also, if you are concerned with ‘risking your rights’ by promoting a productive discussion, you probably lack the trust inherent to working as part of a healthy team. This may not be your fault, as in many cases abuse is rampant. The key to online communities is they are rarely required in the course of someones life, and you have the option to disengage from them when they are not healthy.
Patnou@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Well it is usually my fault. I came from Reddit. And if I take care of something I usually send a private message to the user providing why I thought the way I did. That way it won’t seem like report abuse. Thing on Reddit was it was always that automod crap and nothing behind it. And if you tried to complain about it, it would be 3 or 4 days by the time an actual mod would get back to you. And by that time everyone just skipped over whatever it was so it was useless.
rosahaj@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 days ago
Federated communities currently have the benefit of very little automated moderator activity, and being much smaller than communities on reddit. What you describe is just an unfortunate reality of communities that have grown too big for their moderation capacity. Another possibility is too little moderation, and both have their downsides. It really is a shame, though. If it helps at all, I believe you’ll be mostly free from those concerns here at the present, in my experience :)
rosahaj@piefed.blahaj.zone 3 days ago
To my understanding, a completely flat power structure is definitionally anarchy, and is a good way of levelling imbalances in spaces people cannot avoid, but groups such as online communities are often projects made with an intent, and moderation teams are the tool by which that intent is maintained. In practise, moderators should be more like gardeners taking care of a flower bush than police or councillors.