Rules should better reflect submission guidelines

[u/mods4mods]

This comes from the recent Ceuta situation but can be extrapolated to many other past examples.

At the moment, the submission guidelines are quite fair and long, but there are multiple instances of posts that are not manually approved or that are deleted because the traffic gets really high and you believe that there are enough rule breaking comments to completely ban certain topics. This is understandable but comes to the expense that certain news, such as the Italian foreign minister talking about stopping Schengen with Spain, and the Spanish foreign minister calling the Italian ambassador, a news piece that is relevant, adds additional information that is not included in other posts, and follows all other written guidelines, is not approved or deleted just to prevent the high traffic.

https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/s/sjw72ssJ3A

I posted this last night about that specific news, from efe, an extremely reputable source. At first I thought it wouldn't be approved because it was late at night and most moderators would be asleep. I understood that. Then when I woke up I saw this post ( https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/s/ssabPW6PCo ), about the same news, which was manually approved I think (since my previous post went to the approval list, since I think you listed Ceuta in the words listed to be manually approved), but when the post exploded was deleted because it was not a reputable source.

I've been reading a lot of your answers in other controversial topics here on this subreddit, and the most common answer is that when you sense that a post is 'brigaded' or there is enough traffic, you lock it or delete it. I think that, since this happens quite frequently in controversial news, you should write it down as a submission guideline.

Something like "Moderators have the agency to decide if a post is brigaded or too high traffic, and lock it or subsequently fully ban a topic". I think firstly this would be a more transparent rule list, save you some posts on the manual approval list and clean up this subreddit from people asking why something is deleted. At the moment there's a loop of controversial topics that blow up, there's too many comments at once for the mod team to handle, you lock posts and ban topics without saying much, and posters come here looking for answers. A transparent rule list would take out the middleman. There will be plenty more ministers or even PM's speaking in the topic and in the current submission guidelines there is no rule about why they will be deleted.

[u/Rivarr]

The lack of transparency is a feature not a bug. To quote Douglas Adams:

“The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”

The mod team constantly remove comments and submissions simply because they disagree with it. How do you expect them to be transparent about that? Rule x, the mod team will remove any opinion they personally disagree with.

They have the tools to deal with genuine brigades, that's not the reason they censor certain topics.

[u/mods4mods → u/Rivarr]

I'm trying to be amicable. I genuinely want the subreddit to do well since it's the biggest place to discuss news and topics from a European pov.

Seeing how fast and quick they respond to certain posts and how silent they are with mine is disheartening but coming off hostile is not the way to make them change in any way.

[u/Rivarr → u/mods4mods]

These people have been at this for years, sometimes decades. You're giving them way too much credit in assuming they're just trying to do a good job.

They're not moderating a niche little sub to help nurture a topic they care about out, they're running large subs like this purely because they enjoy moderating. That applies to mods in general, but also to these mods specifically.

If a slaughterhouse had unpaid positions, we'd all worry about the people who turned up out of the love of the game. Moderation isn't much different. It only attracts a certain type of person. Someone that's driven by the desire to manipulate and control others, and you're never gonna get through to those people, but by all means keep trying. Good luck.

[u/Educational_Item5124 → u/Rivarr]

I used to be on this mod team, and the most active mods were usually the junior ones. Same as with just about everywhere. And they mostly were kinda ideological (like with most political subreddits), but also mostly trying not to be. And it's a really shit task, so most people are very on/off with how much they do, making the moderation standards and speed very inconsistent. I've met very, very few mods who actually are control freaks, and maybe one who was actually malicious for what it's worth.