I used to mod /c/Risa so I will back it up: this is exactly correct. There’s a disconnect at the very heart of their approach to moderation they refuse to acknowledge. On the one hand, they want their written rules to be simple and common sense: be civil, don’t be a bigot, don’t spam, etc. etc. But at the same time, many of them have strong and specific opinions about moderation and/or Star Trek and they moderate to that effect. If you ask them about a removal which has tripped one of these hidden rules, at best they’ll tell you it was covered under one of the generic rules like “no spam” or “stay on topic” and at worst they’ll just start insulting you.
For example, one of the mods there is a huge Discovery fan and so if you say anything bad about Discovery without taking the praise sandwich approach to delivering it, it’s gonna get removed and you might be banned. Anyone who tried to be critical of Discovery back on /r/StarTrek is likely familiar with this de facto policy. And of course, the mod who took over for me in /c/Risa is apparently not a fan of AI art or tabloid gossip and has banned these kinds of content, without changing my very simple declaration for the community: there are no real rules.
This exact kind of user revolt happened to them back on Reddit but between the fact that they were sitting on /r/startrek, the obvious place to have a Star Trek sub, and the fact that the most successful attempt at splintering was taken over by conservative dipshits almost immediately, /r/startrek continued to be the big main community on Reddit.
I’d love to see them develop an understanding of why hidden rules are bad for communities, but I don’t see it happening any time soon. Looks like it’s ales for everyone.
Thank you for explaining, I was unaware of the situation. Having previously been an administrator for a large message board I know that the job can be difficult, but I have little regard for people who are unable to make an attempt at fair adjudication. Perhaps I should begin searching for a new home instance too.
For anyone who cares, this account gets repeated often, but is completely false. I was founder and top mod of r/StarTrek for a decade and we absolutely had no “hidden rules” under my tenure nor did they as far as I know after I quit (for unrelated reasons in protest of Reddit policies).
What was often complained about is some of our intentionally broader rules like “criticism must be constructive” and “be civil” that were crafted in an effort to discourage low-effort whining (often about Discovery in particular because any mildly-positive post was getting swarmed to death by “just my opinion” bros) and A Certain Type of Person really didn’t like feeling restricted by that, but we were always fully transparent about the reasoning behind our decisions and fully understood that our vision for what we wanted in a community meant we wouldn’t appeal to everyone.
I used to mod /c/Risa so I will back it up: this is exactly correct. There’s a disconnect at the very heart of their approach to moderation they refuse to acknowledge. On the one hand, they want their written rules to be simple and common sense: be civil, don’t be a bigot, don’t spam, etc. etc. But at the same time, many of them have strong and specific opinions about moderation and/or Star Trek and they moderate to that effect. If you ask them about a removal which has tripped one of these hidden rules, at best they’ll tell you it was covered under one of the generic rules like “no spam” or “stay on topic” and at worst they’ll just start insulting you.
For example, one of the mods there is a huge Discovery fan and so if you say anything bad about Discovery without taking the praise sandwich approach to delivering it, it’s gonna get removed and you might be banned. Anyone who tried to be critical of Discovery back on /r/StarTrek is likely familiar with this de facto policy. And of course, the mod who took over for me in /c/Risa is apparently not a fan of AI art or tabloid gossip and has banned these kinds of content, without changing my very simple declaration for the community: there are no real rules.
This exact kind of user revolt happened to them back on Reddit but between the fact that they were sitting on /r/startrek, the obvious place to have a Star Trek sub, and the fact that the most successful attempt at splintering was taken over by conservative dipshits almost immediately, /r/startrek continued to be the big main community on Reddit.
I’d love to see them develop an understanding of why hidden rules are bad for communities, but I don’t see it happening any time soon. Looks like it’s ales for everyone.
Thank you for explaining, I was unaware of the situation. Having previously been an administrator for a large message board I know that the job can be difficult, but I have little regard for people who are unable to make an attempt at fair adjudication. Perhaps I should begin searching for a new home instance too.
For anyone who cares, this account gets repeated often, but is completely false. I was founder and top mod of r/StarTrek for a decade and we absolutely had no “hidden rules” under my tenure nor did they as far as I know after I quit (for unrelated reasons in protest of Reddit policies).
What was often complained about is some of our intentionally broader rules like “criticism must be constructive” and “be civil” that were crafted in an effort to discourage low-effort whining (often about Discovery in particular because any mildly-positive post was getting swarmed to death by “just my opinion” bros) and A Certain Type of Person really didn’t like feeling restricted by that, but we were always fully transparent about the reasoning behind our decisions and fully understood that our vision for what we wanted in a community meant we wouldn’t appeal to everyone.
Thanks for all the insights, I was not aware how far back this goes.