I am a freshman moderator of /r/portland.
I had thought working as a moderator would be a great way to help grow the subreddit's base. Offer more useful real world interaction points and basically have a big impact on Portland.
Instead what I've found is that 99% of the time the moderators are dealing with bad actors and that has to be the primary focus to keep the sub from falling apart.
It isn't just dealing with trolls or stepping into stopping out of control discussions.
It is actively performing anti-ban-evasion against people who are targeting the sub for disruption and then going after moderators that get in the way of these attempts.
There is at least one active case number with the Portland Police Department of a person that has both attempted to doxx our moderators and has gone to the home of a moderator and vandalized property repeatedly.
In this example, the person will not stop and creates new accounts every day.
While there are things Reddit can be doing to help, (such as improving tools to counter ban-evasion,) I think this problem is bigger than Reddit and focuses on lack of enforcement for digital actions that would qualify as genuine crimes of harassment if translated into the physical realm.
I had thought working as a moderator would be a great way to help grow the subreddit's base. Offer more useful real world interaction points and basically have a big impact on Portland.
Instead what I've found is that 99% of the time the moderators are dealing with bad actors and that has to be the primary focus to keep the sub from falling apart.
It isn't just dealing with trolls or stepping into stopping out of control discussions.
It is actively performing anti-ban-evasion against people who are targeting the sub for disruption and then going after moderators that get in the way of these attempts.
There is at least one active case number with the Portland Police Department of a person that has both attempted to doxx our moderators and has gone to the home of a moderator and vandalized property repeatedly.
In this example, the person will not stop and creates new accounts every day.
While there are things Reddit can be doing to help, (such as improving tools to counter ban-evasion,) I think this problem is bigger than Reddit and focuses on lack of enforcement for digital actions that would qualify as genuine crimes of harassment if translated into the physical realm.