I’m splitting this into two parts. First identifying the issue. And second my personal idea for a solution. I’m hoping for a lot of discussion so please be clear which part you are responding to.

Part 1: The problem

Reddit as a platform has many flaws. Obviously being a corporation means they’re terrible no matter what. But their platform is also flawed. Even if Reddit was 100% community owned the platform would still be flawed. The number one thing that is ruining Reddit are the tyrannical mods.

Each community on Reddit is a dictatorship. Whoever is arbitrarily in charge of a community has full unrestricted power to do whatever they want. The people who are actually creating the content and sharing it are totally at their whim. I understand that modding is a difficult and thankless job, but toxic mods ruined Reddit and Lemmy will do the same if it’s not addressed.

Lemmy’s answer is to allow people to create their own instances. Don’t like the mods at World? Go make your own Lemmy, with blackjack and hookers. But that’s not sufficient. It takes years to build up a community to have enough people for meaningful discussion to happen, and nearly all communities or instances fail. We absolutely need a way for mods to answer to the users.

Part 2: My solution

My solution is simple. Lemmy is built on the community. Everyone helps run it. Therefore mods are elected by the users who generate the highest upvoted content in a community.

Elections should happen on a schedule and, if a community is particularly upset with a mod, a vote of no confidence can be taken.

I understand that this will be a huge undertaking. But I truly believe that we need to fix this issue for Lemmy to thrive long term. Or else we’ll just end up with another Reddit.

  • TragicNotCute@lemmy.worldMEnglish
    16·
    14 hours ago

    mods are elected by the users who generate the highest upvoted content in a community.

    I don’t think this is a good idea. I’d encourage you to look at my comment history in this community specifically. Every comment I’ve left in my official capacity is a direct result of at least one user report. I prefer a very light touch moderation style, where I address rule breaking content when reported but otherwise let the community manage itself.

    Those comments I left are not terribly popular, and I think that’s the heart of the problem. Running a community effectively and maintaining some sense of order is not generally a very popular activity. Do we really want to make moderation a popularity contest? Beyond that, I don’t post much in fediverse, does that mean I’m ill suited to being a mod here? I don’t think so.

    I agree in general that poor moderation can be a problem, but letting the most popular posters run the community doesn’t seem like the fix.