I run a moderatly successful Subreddit (~200.000 subscribers), but I want to stop. I have no interest in moderating it anymore, but Reddit as a company has totally made it clear that it is viewing subreddits as its own property:
- As far as I know I can’t take a subreddit of this size private anymore
- If I just stop moderating, people still can post and will post problematic content that I don’t want to see online
- If i stop moderating, somebody else can “claim” the sub and will be the new moderator, which I also don’t want
Does anybody here have experience in stopping a subreddit that doesn’t lead to Reddit just placing new people in control? I’ve already removed the option for the sub to be recommended to users and for it to be shown in “high traffic feeds” (which always led to nazi showing up btw), but I also was thinking about a way to restrict who can post or to set extreme high karma requirements for posts. Or are there any other options?
You can’t really. It’s that moment when you realize you never “owned” the subreddit in the first place, all your work belonged to reddit.
And frankly he’s being incredibly selfish to try this. 200,000 people apparently enjoy his sub, but now that he’s bored with it he’d rather see it destroyed than let someone else handle it.
Might not necessarily be as narcissistic as you imply. If this person created the sub, and is still the only mod, then it wouldn’t really exist without them.
I’m not saying they own it, but if you’ve built something from the beginning, even if the work isn’t 100% your own it’s extremely difficult to abandon it. It’s similar to open source software. How would you like it if some corpo, lobbyist, PsyOps operation, or straight dumbass, took the thing you built and co-opted it for personal gain? Just like software, they may feel an obligation to ensure it won’t fall into the wrong hands or be bastardized.
The Reddit corporation doesn’t give a fuck. They are the enemy of the entire user base.
Might not necessarily be as narcissistic as you imply. If this person created the sub, and is still the only mod, then it wouldn’t really exist without them.
No, but maybe it can exist without him. Out of 200,000 subscribers someone could want to step up and take over.
The Reddit corporation doesn’t give a fuck.
200,000 people might give a fuck.
Then 1 of those 200,000 can make a new sub and use their own leg work that OP did.
Then they can make a new sub and pointlessly use their own leg work.
The existing sub is right there. OP wants to walk away from it. There’s absolutely no point to burning it to the ground and forcing someone else to do a bunch of work to recreate it, it’s just petty.
I’ve had to deal with this sort of “if I can’t have it nobody can” mentality in online communities before, helping rebuild the ruins of something that someone pointlessly destroyed on their way out the door, and it massively sucks. OP’s just going to make everyone hate him.
Eh, I believe the creator of something can do whatever they want with their creation.
So if Linus Torvalds were to announce one day “I’m tired of Linux, time to burn it all down” that’d be fine? Someone else can just create a new operating system, after all.
The point here is that OP may have “created” the subreddit in the sense of clicking a few buttons and filling out some text fields, but at this point it’s a community with 200,000 participants. Those participants also share in its ownership. Forcing them to jump through hoops recreating the whole thing just because OP’s decided he wants a Viking funeral is selfish.
‘Flaired users only’ Require mod review for flairs.
And just choke it to death
Kill it by making it suck. Apply rules unfairly and inconsistently, but in a way that affords plausible deniability (ex: over-apply them to controversial posts/comments and let mostly harmless stuff slide if it gets enough upvotes). Slowly trickle in new rules that narrow the focus of the community to exclude content. Lock posts as soon as any arguments start to kill overall discussion. Be a petty tyrant, bait arguments and ban people for arguing back.
Not every strategy may necessarily be applicable to your sub, but I bet a lot could be!
Don’t forget to somehow sprinkle info about the existence of lemmy somehow, if you think that type of average person would be good for lemmy
Eh… do we want people to associate lemmy with an abusive mod?
Nah you do it as an alias. Create an alt which takes up the fight with the abusive mod.
Removed by mod
Start banning the top poster every day.
I would love to read the ban message. "You violated rule #15, don’t be the top poster of the day "
Close the sub for the day when you “don’t have enough mods operating today.” Then open mod applications. Accept no one. Just continue until the subreddit bleeds to nothing in a few weeks, as you’ve broken no rules and redditors are impatient
Edit: and read nothing that you’re sent. Just mark all as read. They will complain loudly. It will spur a reaction that will hinder your plan. Remember your mental health!
Instead of killing it, what about creating an official sister community here, and encouraging people to use it. Being under the same moderation and having the same rules can go a long way towards establishing that trust. While reddit still won’t like it, it would look terrible on them if they tried to stop it.
It’s already here :)
well, they said they had no interest in moderating anymore.
Rebuild it on Lemmy, and once enough people have migrated, ditch reddit
Add a link to a lemmy community in every automod comment, make every user manually approved.
Probably best thing to do would be to plug lemmy a couple times, do it in a couple pinned posts, in the wiki, in the welcome bot message, and create the alternative you’ve always wanted here.
Be as toxic of a mod as you can be lol.
Delete posts and comments at random
Ban users
That would could simply get them replaced, and the subreddit might continue under new management.
deleted by creator
I dislike Reddit too, but why would you want to ruin a subreddit just because you want to stop? What’s the problem with finding new mods? This logic seems similar to Reddit’s by thinking it’s your property, when it should be the community’s
All subreddits have power posters. The same 6 names show up far more than any other names. You need allies to poison this well, and these are your potential allies. See if you can get some of them in a private non-reddit forum (I dont advocate discord but it is likely easier). Step 2 is adding rules that enable enshittification. Cutting out rumour and requiring reputable sites. Recent news only. Text only posts must contain a question in the title only. No top level replies to own threads. Off topic chat not allowed. AI hating not allowed. I’m sure there are some more. Step 3: inconsistent modding. Apply these rules only to the non-six. Step 4: your allies then start declaring this subreddit dead and that other communities exist. Whilst they move to Lemmy too
Doesn’t this seem morally flawed? You moderate a sub, but don’t want to do it anymore and you can’t stand the thought of someone else doing it so you want to just ruin and destroy it? That sounds awful. No, the sub doesn’t belong to you and it doesn’t belong to Reddit either. It belongs to the members because they’re the community. I can’t even comprehend why you feel like it’s something that belongs to you. You moderate as a service to that community, not because you own it. When a pastor retires, they don’t burn down the church they preached in. That church belongs to the people and the pastor was its servant, not its owner.
Agreed it seems rather selfish
Yes and no. First of all, there is nobody who wants to take over. So the option is “abandon it” vs. “kill it”. Reddits actions in regard of their mods do have consequences. And it also doesn’t belong to the community as Reddit is actively claiming ownership. So to take your church analogy: The pastor wants to quit. The bishop claims ownership and control of everything, is actively harming the community, but can’t provide a replacement priest.
And in my opinion it is better to stop projects like this instead of abandoning them as abandoned places & subreddits will get taken over by spammers, crazy people and full on nazis.
How do you know there is nobody who wants to take over? Have you posted on the community about it? Or on one of the moderator communities?
I think it’s kinda like the reason we not only stopped contributing to Reddit, but also deleted all our posts: we don’t want to use and contribute to a platform for capitalists-fascists, even retroactively.
