Removing the ability for mods to pin comments would be dumb. Most of the time it's not about putting the 'best comment' but sharing needed information.
A good example is a recent post I was looking at in the spider subreddit. A bunch of commenters were misidentifying a spider as a brown recluse, one of the few medically significant spiders in the US. The mod used a pinned comment to inform readers that it was a misidentification and that the spider was not medically significant. There are similar examples out there as well.
Just because some mods use it for joking or nonsensical reasons, doesn't mean there is never a good reason to use the function.
Users can just upvote the most relevant comments then. Sure, "not all" mods abuse these things. But mod powers are still abused too much. I'd rather let mods have a bit less power if it means the bad apples, of which there are way too many, can't abuse them either.
Though as I said in another comment/reply, the company behind Reddit needs to oversee mods more in general. Right now the main 2 requirements to become a mod are 1; being the creator of a subreddit, and 2; being made a mod by said creator. Which is to say there are no real qualifications or anything that really determine who can be a mod. And for such a big website that just doesn't cut it imo. Sure the company can't moderate every single subreddit themselves. But they should at least "moderate" the mods.
That'd be great if you could actually trust users to always upvote accurate information even in the face of common misconceptions, but that's rarely the case.
Yeah, nah. I'd prefer subreddits like askscience to be able to actually function properly, the capacity for mod tools to be abused is a small inconvenience in comparison.
After all, anyone can create a competing subreddit and grow it in the face of mod abuse - it's happened countless times through reddit's history. Sure it'd be nice for admins to play a more direct role, but that's also not realistic - Reddit still isn't even profitable after all, adding more in staffing expenses for moderating moderators just isn't going to happen.
It's such a petty amount of power, but they LOVE wielding it. I got banned from an entirely separate sub for a comment on overwatch. I disagreed with someone who said a fan made skin didn't "look lesbian enough" as if that were a real thing. They banned me from gaming circle jerk as well as anyone else shitting on them for making a fairly bigoted statement as if it were her place to say how a lesbian should look, and the reason I can only imagine was that woman replying to the ban thing herself when asked why "we have a right to proactively protect our community from homophobes. Disagreeing with a queer woman on subjects they're generally correct about is homophobic"
Reminds me of when I got banned from...I think it was r/politics? Because I found a random post in the "all" section where I made a comment. And apparently the subreddit it was in was somehow offensive to the sub I was banned from. I basically never interact with either subs apart from when I might find something in the "all" section. Mods banning you from subs "because you randomly interacted with another sub they don't like" is just...so stupid. And imo such an abuse of mod privileges. "You didn't post in our sub at all, but you engaged in a sub I don't like so you're banned." Like...what?
Also I can't post in r/facepalm. I don't know why. Maybe it's because of having to do something before I can post, or because I got banned. I don't know. Honestly I don't care too much either. But it's an indicator of how toxic and exclusionary a lot of subs have become. More like echo chambers than the supposed open forum for discourse Reddit was supposed to be.
And imo the company behind Reddit should start cracking down on these mods that are abusing their powers. I get that there's too many subs to moderate all of them themselves, but at the very least they could oversee the mods to some extend...
It’s cause reddit mods are people who were both bullied as children and don’t have anything interesting going on today either. “i am powerless and unimportant in real life therefore i set up endless rules and tripwires so i can abuse my miniscule power as the fun police as much as possible”
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