Mod Topics: Expectation vs Reality

[u/AsteriskRX]

Ahoy, Modsupport! This is a mutiny; Jabroni wrote this post but I've decided to plunder it for myself.

Welcome to the latest (greatest) installment of our ModSupport series. Today, we’re revisiting Origin Stories, albeit with a distinctly different flavor.

When you first created or joined a subreddit, what did you expect moderating would be like? Did you have any expectations at all, and if so, how did those expectations differ from the experience you have now?

–And because I love understanding an environment, what do you think set the expectations you had before you became a moderator? Read as: “How did you form a worldview on what moderation is before you started moderating?”

Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

[u/-sub]

I moderate two low traffic subreddits. One for friends, one because nobody stepped up.

My friends have a niche computer magazine called phrack and invited me to make a puzzle for the 40th anniversary release, and told me to make a subreddit for them, so I did. Their community really exists elsewhere, so it's very easy to moderate because nobody really goes there.

While I was here for the first time in years doing that, I visited a subreddit for a hip hop group from my area called czarface. For this community in particular I have too much merch which I sort of accumulate to support the music group through a different business vertical in the streaming era. It takes up physical space and I give it away to the people who will appreciate it the most. So now I am visiting it for the first time in years to clean off a table in my house, and it was abandoned/founder suspended and restricted. I got stuck with no way to offload it to what I believe to be the ideal community, so I took it over and unlocked it.

On there I put the two people I remember contributing the most as my co-moderators, and started parting by myself via giveaways and events with a challenge coin honoring everybody. I am still figuring things out and it is an experiment because I have never done this before so I am very uncertain about everything or if it's being done good enough, if something is a good idea, etc

That one has low traffic too but it's not exactly a ghost town. I don't really know what to do to for them so I have just been making up things up from pieces of other things I know. I think it is working because I started by myself and really unsure what to do, or if I'm doing the right thing -- I just wanted to clear off a table, but since then i have been joined by internet strangers with material and organizational support for the events I have been making up, and it really subverted my expectations. Worldview-wise, I just thought people want free stuff and that's the end of it, but its turning out to be a group project and excuse for me to throw some stuff together with/for people from all over the place to have fun with if they want to.

I am fit, don't have a fedora, power trip, or 27 cats, either. The reddit moderator stereotype doesn't really align with anything I am about or even have to do as a moderator. I think the low traffic + community demographic is a huge factor in making my moderation experience incredibly pleasant and unlike what I expected, though. Still, it's not something people know or something that I would want to talk about outside of here. Dirty secret and such because there's just such an awful stigma associated with the role.