@taylorfausak has entrusted the Haskell Foundation with the task of reopening the Haskell subreddit. This involves recruiting a new moderator team. In the meantime, @emilypi, @tomjaguarpaw, and @chris will be serving as moderators. You can read more about the transition plan in the first post on the re-opened subreddit.
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What’s the process for selecting the new moderators?
It’s described in the post on Reddit. There’s a brief application form, and we’ll look at posting history, motivation, and time zone coverage to make a decision.
What if the Haskell Foundation instead kept some oversight over the subreddit?
If you simply pick new moderators, but keep the system as it is, there is nothing to stop this situation from happening again. A subreddit is an essentially authoritarian system by default, and we have just been shown that authoritarian systems are essentially unstable. Now is a unique moment to install a reliable system of governance instead.
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I also thought about this, but it’s possible it might hurt the HFs reputation, which has excelled so far by supporting the community and mediating in cases of conflict.
It could take something away from this position of trust.
I think that it’s unlikely that people, who feel strongly about reddit managements course, will volunteer for the mod positions anyway. Is there another possible scenario that might cause an “outage” of r/haskell in the future? Possibly. But that may be resolved as well. I don’t think fear should guide us in how we run our community.
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It can’t be that unstable: the authoritarian/s in Reddit-the-management seem to still be there…
…as the proverbial “honest broker” in future disputes involving organisations with authoritarian tendencies: a valid point - thank you, @hasufell.
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Brilliant, thanks for re-opening and best of luck to the future team!
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I don’t think handing control over to the Haskell foundation ultimately resolves the situation on whether the system is authoritarian or not.
I have no major issues with the Haskell Foundation but organizationally it isn’t a democracy.
I believe the Haskell Foundation board picks who fills its own open seats, just as a subreddit’s mod team picks who is a mod. They’re equally oligarchic.
And funding wise, as a donor funded organization that would open them up to potentially plutocratic incentives.
Still, I don’t think the Haskell Foundation is a purely self-serving organization as it is but I don’t think the past subreddit moderators were self-serving in this situation either.
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They’re equally oligarchic.
One of the major functions of the Haskell Foundation is that it steps in when volunteer efforts and processes begin to fail for whatever reason, and provides structure and support to migrate them to a sustainable process. Insofar as something like the subreddit, it is a community resource, but was never led as a democratic function. I wouldn’t expect that to change unless the original moderation team wants it to, or if there’s a significant problem with the subreddit’s management.
If you want it to change, make a case for it!
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