> at the same time tons of subreddits go way beyond just moderating out the bad stuff and act like full blown newspaper editors who delete 75%+ of organically upvoted submitted content
While hyper active moderation and power mods pushing their agendas on Reddit is a major issue, a fair amount of moderation is key to maintaining the quality of content. r/MurderedByWords is an example when the mods bend a bit too backwards in allowing content, it delved from legitimate smackdowns to childish name calling on Twitter. The sub's a disgrace lately.
Striking that balance is important, forcing your own views of what the sub should be will antogonize people but at the same time maintaining a bare minimum is also important. Even more so for subs that regularly hit r/all and r/popular. A lot of niche subs hit r/all with a thread or two causing a massive influx of users and the rules are relaxed to accommodate the lowest common denominator. The end result of doing that is usually the older regular content creators lose interest and leave the community.
While hyper active moderation and power mods pushing their agendas on Reddit is a major issue, a fair amount of moderation is key to maintaining the quality of content. r/MurderedByWords is an example when the mods bend a bit too backwards in allowing content, it delved from legitimate smackdowns to childish name calling on Twitter. The sub's a disgrace lately.
Striking that balance is important, forcing your own views of what the sub should be will antogonize people but at the same time maintaining a bare minimum is also important. Even more so for subs that regularly hit r/all and r/popular. A lot of niche subs hit r/all with a thread or two causing a massive influx of users and the rules are relaxed to accommodate the lowest common denominator. The end result of doing that is usually the older regular content creators lose interest and leave the community.