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?
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.
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.
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?