I retired from moderating here more than a year ago now, after a four year stint. I have since had regular conversations with the mods I left behind, and I learned another one has just stepped down due to stress, leaving a skeleton of a team in place (most of those names you see are inactive).

On their behalf, I want to let you all know a few things about how moderating works, so you can tune your criticism and feedback appropriately:

Moderating is an unpaid volunteer position: Angry people used to accuse me of gaining all kinds of things from moderating, most especially some kind of high from feeling powerful. I can assure you that regularly being called a dictator by racists and homophobes did not make me feel powerful. It made me feel triggered and stressed. After four years of moderating, I made a few friends, gained some vague sense that I did something good, probably grew into a more mature person than I otherwise would've been, and I made exactly zero dollars. That's all that's in it for a moderator of a space like this.

Moderators are not responsible for what gets posted here: Content moderation on the internet is a three-step process:

  1. Assholes post
  2. Witnesses report
  3. Moderators clean

Don't make the mistake of blaming moderators for what happens in Step 1. This is a public community, and there is a never-ending string of randos waltzing in and saying whatever they want. Any specific comment you see is not any indication of what the mod team approves of, condones, or allows. It's just a turd someone left for all to see that has yet to be removed. The mod team is far too small to read every comment that comes through (and no, you could not have a big enough team to read everything. Not for free, anyway), so until you report it, that comment is going to stay up.

The goal of moderating is a safe-ish space, not a safe space: Because of the above reason, moderators can not and will never achieve creating a "safe" space. Safe spaces are small and private. Big, public online spaces are about as safe as a crowded city street. That's not the fault of the mod team; that's just the nature of a quarter million people using the same subreddit. Post and read here with that in mind.

When you attack the mod team, you attack this community: As a moderator here, you spend a lot of your time reading a lot of terrible stuff. You put yourself in the middle of fights, deal with people who are wildly triggered and out of control, and you confront a lot of really awful people who are just here to cause trouble. It's a very stressful job and if they didn't do it, this community would be shut down. I mean that literally; Reddit shuts down unmoderated communities. So be mindful when talking to them, giving feedback, or if you really have to, giving criticism. Don't put your issues on them, don't treat them like "others", and don't use them as an opportunity to vent your frustration with authority. Remember: They are volunteers with CPTSD just trying to do a good job. For free.

That's all, I guess. Incidentally they are now short-staffed, so if you feel like taking on this difficult, thankless job, shoot them a message in mod mail. I'm sure they'd appreciate it, and the community will be better for it.

Thanks.