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?
Sorry but they signed up for it. Reddit never claims that by moderation you gain ownership. He didn’t host the community, he moderated it.
The only reason someone should be allowed to kill a community is of they are the ones hosting it (in which case they should be allowed to decide what they want to host) or if the community is harmful.
It would be like someone who decided to go everyday to the park and clean the benches, would one day decide that he is done cleaning them, so he just tajes them home. They are not his benches, they are not on his property. His contributions are great but they do not entitle him any ownership.
I see qhat you’re saying but I don’t agree. First, a park exists in a place. You can’t go to a park and just add to it like you do a digital space. And deleting the digital space you created returns things to how they were before you made changes.
Saying it belongs to the host is not a great argument either. When you make an account on Facebook or any other social media site you don’t lose control of your photos and words. Those are yours. And to continue on that path, a community created in Facebook can be deleted by the person who made it, because that community is theirs.
Every provider has it’s rules, these are reddits.
And I highly disagree about deleting a community returns it to how things were. The nods are just a important but small part of a community, especially one with a 200000 user base. These users also put energy and effort, they made content and formed connections. Erasing that because one person decided to is unfair, unjust and unproductive.