/r/StarTrek founder and primary steward from 2008-2021

Currently on the board of directors for StarTrek.website

  • 7 Posts
  • 219 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • As a former mod of a large community I hated that small writers and creators bloggers were lumped in with the spammers. You want to know why Reddit became generic and boring? Why the internet doesn’t feel boundless and weird anymore? Because over time only large established websites were permitted to be linked to without getting immediately IP banned.

    When /r/StarTrek was small and I was trying to grow it, I invited several Trek bloggers I liked to post their writings. These weren’t “blogspam”, they were just people who just loved writing. They would always engage with the community in the comments under their posts. Over time they all were banned and their domains were blocked from being shared by any account on Reddit.

    I agree with you that the system is working “as intended” but the intent sure feels a lot like forcing anyone making OC to be platform-locked to Reddit or risk having their entire domains be labeled as “spam”.













  • Funny how the platform still runs on their unpaid labor, isn’t it?

    Something I learned during the Vaxxhappened protest is just how many moderators are perfectly content to do these “jobs”. I found it honestly very sad how many of these what are ostensibly “community leaders” will happily acquiescence to the demands desires of the company as long as they can continue to do the job.

    Don’t get me wrong I have a lot of sympathy for many of the moderators there who care deeply about their communities and providing a welcoming experience and feel stuck to Reddit, but until more of them grow a spine and idk, move to Lemmy or something like the top r/startrek and r/daystrominstaitute mods did (not me to be clear) then nothing of substance will change there. There is a seeming endless supply of people willing to clean up Reddit for free.


  • The most difficult parts of moderating on Reddit aren’t the trolls or spammers or even the rule-breakers, it’s identifying the accounts who intentionally walk the line of what’s appropriate.

    IMO only a human moderator can recognize when someone is being a complete asshole but “doing it politely”, or trying to push an agenda or generally behaving inauthentically, because human moderators are (in theory) members of the community themselves and have an interest in that community being enjoyable to be a part of.

    Humans are messy, and finding the right balance of mess to keep things interesting without making a place overwhelming to newcomers is a fine balance to strike that I just don’t believe an AI can do on it’s own.