Moderation of pretty much all traditional forums is done by volunteers, a practice that naturally extended to reddit and Lemmy. Perhaps it’s even more logical in the reddit format, since it’s the users who create and take responsibility for their subreddit, rather than having a centralised “government” deciding how to organise and moderate the place.
Wikipedia’s content is also 99% volunteer-made and volunteer-moderated.
But moderation of centralised social media is usually done by paid workers. Subreddits are not independent forums; Reddit admins interfere all the time, and they’re hosted on Reddit servers so ultimately are at the mercy of Reddit’s decisions.
I don’t think Wikipedia contributions are comparable to subreddit moderation. Moderation is known for being traumatising work (see: lawsuits from global south workers over PTSD from seeing CSAM, snuff, and other traumatising content when doing underpaid moderation work) and I don’t think there are many moderators who do it for fun. They may do it voluntarily because they like a community or think their subreddit/forum is a valuable resource they want to maintain. But not because the labour of moderation itself is fun. Meanwhile I imagine most Wikipedia contributors do so because they are interested in the topic, and it’s far less likely to expose editors to traumatising content.
Yeah. It’s kinda crazy how Reddit has just offloaded their moderation to unpaid volunteers and managed to have very few people complain about this.
Moderation of pretty much all traditional forums is done by volunteers, a practice that naturally extended to reddit and Lemmy. Perhaps it’s even more logical in the reddit format, since it’s the users who create and take responsibility for their subreddit, rather than having a centralised “government” deciding how to organise and moderate the place.
Wikipedia’s content is also 99% volunteer-made and volunteer-moderated.
But moderation of centralised social media is usually done by paid workers. Subreddits are not independent forums; Reddit admins interfere all the time, and they’re hosted on Reddit servers so ultimately are at the mercy of Reddit’s decisions.
I don’t think Wikipedia contributions are comparable to subreddit moderation. Moderation is known for being traumatising work (see: lawsuits from global south workers over PTSD from seeing CSAM, snuff, and other traumatising content when doing underpaid moderation work) and I don’t think there are many moderators who do it for fun. They may do it voluntarily because they like a community or think their subreddit/forum is a valuable resource they want to maintain. But not because the labour of moderation itself is fun. Meanwhile I imagine most Wikipedia contributors do so because they are interested in the topic, and it’s far less likely to expose editors to traumatising content.