Bounty Proposal: Adding an /r/Kusama Reddit Moderator & Creating a Sub-bounty Compensation Infrastructure
At the beginning of June it came to my attention that the people of /r/Kusama on Reddit desire more moderation. As such, some individuals from W3F and I have been working on a proposal for establishing a sub-bounty infrastructure to compensate moderators and to officially install myself as a moderator.
This proposal does not merely aim to add more moderators, rather it is an attempt to incentivize a stronger dedication to moderating the subreddit. This proposal includes high standards that are to be met by all moderators and to be judged by the designated curator, Elodie Dincuff from W3F.
As moderator, I would make myself available 7 days per week to manage the moderator queue making sure it is cleared at least a few times per day. I would dedicate a few hours per week (~5-10 hours) to engaging with the community and marketing the subreddit to bring in more users. Future goals include facilitating AMAs with high-profile crypto influencers, hosting online communal events, and perhaps NFT contests exclusively for Reddit users. My hope is that my dedication to the community will grow it into a more robust hub of Kusama enthusiasts.
This proposal is contingent on the sub-bounties extension being finished and merged.
Full proposal can be found here.
Questions, comments, concerns, and feedback is more than welcome. Thank you!
Comments (5)
As much as I agree with the general sentiment that the community absolutely deserves a more hands-on, human touch in terms of community management and moderation, I'm concerned about this. I believe it's against the Reddit ToS to be compensated for moderation in any way: >You may not perform moderation actions in return for any form of compensation, consideration, gift, or favor from third parties; This text can be found here: https://www.redditinc.com/policies/user-agreement I'm not a Reddit user, and am definitely not an expert in these things, but I have heard about some negative consequences recently due to moderator compensation; I wouldn't want to see a potentially great Kusama community soured by Reddit drama/scandals.
Valka, thank you for bringing this to our attention. I was not aware of this policy on Reddit and it does warrant concern, so I did some research.
If you subscribe to a "letter of the law" interpretation it's pretty clear: the two parties involved in this agreement are Reddit and the user. In this case, the Kusama ecosystem would be acting as a third party making this proposal against Reddit's ToS. If this is the correct interpretation it calls to question the compliance of current moderators. I think all or most of them are employed by Web3 Foundation and if their job description includes managing the subreddit then they would be breaking the ToS.
Then there's the "spirit of the law" interpretation. I found a couple of posts that discuss this rule in detail: here, here, and here. It seems like some people lean toward the "letter of the law" interpretation and think moderators shouldn't be paid by a third party under any circumstances. However, others bring up that the rule is in place to prevent companies from bribing moderators to allow/block certain content. Since this proposal is in line with ethical moderation and clearly does not aim to manipulate the community with propaganda, I think one could argue that this proposal does not break the spirit of the rule. Reddit admins might spare /r/Kusama moderators knowing that they are installed via the on-chain democratically elected Council. I doubt the Council would continue to support this bounty if moderators began manipulating content.
However, Reddit might think that the Council's interest in enriching the Kusama ecosystem might corrupt their motives in installing moderators through this bounty. I personally do not think the Council would ever try to pump out propaganda or manipulate a community but knowing how edgy Redditors can be, I'm sure this criticism might surface and be reported to the admins.
Ultimately it's up to the Council whether they want to take the risk dancing around this rule. To be be safe we could bring this to /r/ModHelp to get opinions on this proposal. We could also try to contact Reddit admins for their opinions too.