this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2025
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Let’s please not forget that some people donate time and money because it gives them personal satisfaction to help out with something that is meaningful to them.
What about the cases where "what is meaningful to them" conflicts with "what is meaningful to the others"?
I said on a sibling comment but it bears repeating: I am not talking about someone who enjoys a hobby and goes on to create/mod a community about it. I am thinking about the cases where someone finds themselves as part of a large community and realizes that the majority of the members keep pushing you to things you either don't want to or disagree with.
It is a broader issue, namely: there is no such thing as doing a "thankless" job for purely altrustic reasons. This is not an issue on a small scale, but once it reaches it some critical mass we should wonder what motivates those who keep a position of authority.
(And before I get another barrage of people saying "I do it because I care about it/ I want to help / someone needs to do it"... yeah, sure, but if you are cultivating something because you happen to like the thing at hand , then you are doing for your own personal interest and it is not entirely altruistic. And that is totally fine.)
Would you do it for a community you didn't care about?
Do you think that doing something because you "really felt passionate about it" is "selfless"?
No, I missed it before.
My "axe to grind" is not against mods. My "axe to grind" is against Small Fedi. I can elaborate more later if you want, but now I need to get back to work...
I think there is a spectrum between what you did (you were mod until you no longer thought that the pain of dealing with Reddit was worth it or morally justified) and someone who sticks around as a mod of 50+ subreddits because they see as an instrument of control, or someone that keeps running a big Mastodon instance despite financial struggles; and my point is to understand where most people lie.