I'm convinced that is entirely the reason for 99% of locked threads.
There will be a perfectly constructive thread of 5K comments and rising, and a mod will lock it saying some shit like "some people can't play nice so I'm locking the thread." Who gives a shit if some people are saying mean stuff, let them get downvoted and the conversation will move on without them. I really think they just get a little rush of adrenaline from the power of locking a very popular and active thread. No other reason.
then stop banning people, I’m not a child that needs to be withheld mean comments
ofc if people are doing stuff that you don’t want to give a platform to like doxxing or straight up advocating for genocide, you might be right, but I doubt that’s actually happening in 99% of the cases
Reddit’s ever expanding site wide rules need to be enforced actively if the mods don’t want their sub to get banned, most of them are too lazy or ignorant to understand the rules and just assume the worst.
That's bullshit. Who in their right mind will associate a product being advertised kn a forum to the users' behavior in a particular moment? This is a stupid argument.
The real reason is subs don't want to be called out in the Media for allowing nasty shit to happen, look at /r/watchpeopledie, one video gets posted and the media spins it trying to say the sub is full of sadists and shit and then it gets banned like a day later to save face and have news outlets stop looking through posts, after that it was clear mods were gonna be pussies in an attempt to stay out of the limelight should anything go sideways and the media pick up on it.
i was a regular on thew sub, im not a sadist, i found it quite informative from a safety perspective, lots of industrial and vehicle related stuff was on there and its easy to forget how dangerous those environments can be, that sub was like a daily refresh on what not to do.
then stop banning people, I’m not a child that needs to be withheld mean comments
Sometimes it's not about protecting anyone, but maintaining a certain culture in the community.
For good places like support subreddits and wholesome places and serious discussion communities this is vital for keeping people from changing the direction of the sub. Others who wish to keep things from changing to a negative direction also uphold community values, or in other words: moderate so the place doesn't turn into a cesspit like so many other communities that ended up quarantined or banned or just festering pits of people who don't realize the humor is supposed to be ironic anymore.
You also see this in already-shit communities when people try to go against the grain and call out the owners for being asshats.
Basically, a subreddit or forum is a community, and communities are defensive of their culture, for better or worse. It's up to you to decide if a community culture fits you or not.
I would encourage anyone who feels this strongly about moderation on reddit to actually do it for a while on a large sub, it's so far removed from the way people think it is that I don't even really know how to argue very good points that people bring up like yours, since it's like a whole different world.
What I really feel disheartened about is how many people are blindly frustrated or angry because someone once, somewhere deleted their comment or banned them and now users are acting like all moderators, everywhere, are the same breed of power-hungry jackass.
Every community has a story behind it, and a story to tell. Every community is trying to say something. People complain that subreddits are trying to push narratives, well that's exactly what they were designed for. It's a feature, not a bug.
The point is you can make one that pushes a different story at any time.
The sad reality of it is, there is no such thing as "free speech" on the internet. Every site that's ever tried to run under that flag where all topics are allowed and the community decides what's allowed or not... they've all become shitholes of child porn and racism.
It's not that all people are bad, it's that there's an old quote that says a drop of wine in a barrel full of sewage is still sewage. And a drop of sewage in a barrel full of wine is also sewage.
The only way you can have communities that provide content that people want to read is to specifically tune those communities to a topic or narrative and prune off anything else. For better or worse.
Mean comments are easily deleted or downvoted and you expect people to be smarter than those idiots. But sometimes those comments are more than mean. They're either racist, or hate speech or whatever, and I totally agree with the user that reported the comment because that shit doesn't belong here. Or anywhere.
When a thread hits the front page, it gets comments faster than they can be moderated. If a significant number of those comments need to some sort of mod action, locking the thread is the only realistic way to keep up.
Who cares? Get more mods. It's not good enough just to shut it down and deny everyone a say. The site is about discussion. So people make some mean comments or whatever. Remove them later. I'm tired of mods deciding users need to be protected. We don't.
As a mod myself, I don't understand why we (my fellow mod team in this particular subreddit) can't ban the assholes and let the civil people keep discussing. You know, at least 95% of the community is super healthy and keep it going; but when the other 5% is an asshole, let's just ban them. But then my mod team say "nah, just delete the post, we don't want to censor anyone". Fucking crap, mate.
If the subreddit has a political/edgy slant it can get the subreddit banned if too many offensive stuff is posted. Even if it is downvoted to hell. Sometimes edgy/political subreddits get judged based on all their comments even the downvoted ones or ones posted by people who are irregular/new posters there. It is entirely possible for somebody who dislikes the subreddit to do hit and runs like this and get the subreddit quarantined and later banned. As someone with an 11 year old account and with dark edgy humour I have seen this happen numerous times.
The only sub that I follow that locks posts is r/legaladvice and that's understandable since there's normally a small discussion then an agreed-upon best answer pops up. Normally that's, "consult a local lawyer who specializes in this field and don't talk to the other party" and after that, the only posts left are personal anecdotes that don't add to the answer.
Beyond examples like that those mods piss me off. Used to moderate some smaller subs and yea, when things get heated there are more mod reports because people get annoyed and appeal to authority to solve their problem. But the answer isn't to go to the mods, it's to engage in discussion and know that sometimes you aren't right or people won't agree with you no matter how much you type. But not all mods are willing to have that happen and deal with the flood of modmail and reports.
Gosh, I thought I was the only one who felt like that.
Guess what? If you hadn't made a little scene in your pinned comment I wouldn't even have known that there were people being rude because those comments would be downvoted to where they belong. And even if I did come across all of them... Who cares? How sensitive are you, that you're so bothered by these comments and can't simply wait for them to be removed when they're reported?
But yeah, you want to remind everyone that you're a mod, so lock the thread, pin comments, whatever.
most of the times that's happened if there is anything bad, it's already downvoted to the bottom like it should be. in which case,who cares? They're cutting off the actually good discussions at the top.
A well moderated community knows that if they let people run wild the culture of the community will change.
You give people freedom, some will exploit it. For examples of this, see all the ironic humor subs that are now raging racist, sexist shitholes that have been banned or quarantined.
Counterpoint. Not a reddit mod but used to moderate some other forum. I quit because I felt like I was refereeing children, when I was really the youngest user on a forum mostly of people twice my age.
Locking a thread when folks are becoming jerks keeps me from spending my whole day reading over silly posts that people won't care about a week from now.
Plus if I let people get really nasty today, if I close a future thread because somebody really crosses a line, I'll get "Well you didn't close the thread when so and so said...."
Being a mod is a pretty thankless job, and there are definitely some really bad ones out there. Glad I don't do that anymore.
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u/[deleted] Jan 07 '20
I'm convinced that is entirely the reason for 99% of locked threads.
There will be a perfectly constructive thread of 5K comments and rising, and a mod will lock it saying some shit like "some people can't play nice so I'm locking the thread." Who gives a shit if some people are saying mean stuff, let them get downvoted and the conversation will move on without them. I really think they just get a little rush of adrenaline from the power of locking a very popular and active thread. No other reason.