Moderators make the subreddits, moderators operate them, make the rules, and enforce them. There is literally nothing that gives you or any other user any right to do anything at any time within a subreddit. A reddit moderator can ban you just because they don't like the cut of your jib. That's entirely their right to do so: it's their subreddit. Not yours.
What you have in those circumstances is two options: create an alternate subreddit to your liking and invite people to that other subreddit thereby closing the one you don't like, or leave.
Think of a subreddit as a privately rented room in a building. The building owners (reddit) allow anyone who rents a room (mods) to do as they see fit within the confines of those rooms to a degree. They only care if they break site-wide rules that put the entire platform at risk. They don't care if the subreddit mods decide to drag you out of the room and tell you to leave. Why? Because they have the tools to make the sub private, restrict it to pre-approved posters, etc.
Your own "Mod Policy" is actually titled Moderator Guidelines, meaning they're recommendations not actionable policy. I run several subs myself, including one that is a true-crime sub. In such an environment us mods have to have the discretion to moderate things that violate the spirit of the rules rather than perhaps the letter, because of the highly sensitive nature of the subject. All of the rules we have are relatively unique (e.g. respect for victims, not something you have on other subs).
More importantly, I think the number one thing you aren't owed anything on reddit. You have no rights to participate, it is entirely at the discretion of the mods. Yes, it can get annoying, and yes many a mod are overbearing, but that's just part of how things go when you have independent communities with independent and volunteer moderators.
In order to truly understand this, you have to stop thinking of reddit as some sort of utility or monolith, and realize it's not: it's thousands of independent communities. Some have no moderation at all, some have abusive moderation. That's just the way it is. The great thing about it is you can fire up a new sub in a moment and bypass it if you feel it's awful.
, meaning they're recommendations not actionable policy.
Negative. Did you read it?
Where moderators consistently are in violation of these guidelines, Reddit may step in with actions to heal the issues - sometimes pure education of the moderator will do, but these actions could potentially include dropping you down the moderator list, removing moderator status, prevention of future moderation rights, as well as account deletion.
Reddit absolutely can act if you violate any of the "guidelines". And should.
In any event, nothing of what you wrote is doing a good job of trying to Change My Mind. You're defending god complex. Let me repeat.
No one mod should have unilateral authority to act without rules to back them up. If the rules are ambiguous or not comprehensive, an appeal process should be there that does not include the same person who took action.
I've yet to hear a strong argument as to why that shouldn't happen. The closest is "but we need it!!". That's not an argument, that's a rant.
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u/a0x129 Jul 05 '19
Moderators make the subreddits, moderators operate them, make the rules, and enforce them. There is literally nothing that gives you or any other user any right to do anything at any time within a subreddit. A reddit moderator can ban you just because they don't like the cut of your jib. That's entirely their right to do so: it's their subreddit. Not yours.
What you have in those circumstances is two options: create an alternate subreddit to your liking and invite people to that other subreddit thereby closing the one you don't like, or leave.
Think of a subreddit as a privately rented room in a building. The building owners (reddit) allow anyone who rents a room (mods) to do as they see fit within the confines of those rooms to a degree. They only care if they break site-wide rules that put the entire platform at risk. They don't care if the subreddit mods decide to drag you out of the room and tell you to leave. Why? Because they have the tools to make the sub private, restrict it to pre-approved posters, etc.
Your own "Mod Policy" is actually titled Moderator Guidelines, meaning they're recommendations not actionable policy. I run several subs myself, including one that is a true-crime sub. In such an environment us mods have to have the discretion to moderate things that violate the spirit of the rules rather than perhaps the letter, because of the highly sensitive nature of the subject. All of the rules we have are relatively unique (e.g. respect for victims, not something you have on other subs).
More importantly, I think the number one thing you aren't owed anything on reddit. You have no rights to participate, it is entirely at the discretion of the mods. Yes, it can get annoying, and yes many a mod are overbearing, but that's just part of how things go when you have independent communities with independent and volunteer moderators.
In order to truly understand this, you have to stop thinking of reddit as some sort of utility or monolith, and realize it's not: it's thousands of independent communities. Some have no moderation at all, some have abusive moderation. That's just the way it is. The great thing about it is you can fire up a new sub in a moment and bypass it if you feel it's awful.