That's not really partisan though, that's anti-semitic, and as such is worth a warning followed by a banning for continued use.

You're right, and that was a poor example.

I have to agree with kinohead, partisan is a slippery slope and one overzealous mod could cause a shitstorm.

I certainly understand your concerns. I think that in /canada we have some safeguards against a mod going rogue for more than an hour or two. There isn't anything that anyone can do to prevent against that, as to some extent when someone is made a mod, if no other mods are around that are higher on the 'mod tree' than they are, they can run amok until someone more 'senior' comes in.

But in /canada I think that we do have a bit of a proven safety record in terms of moderator actions. None of us are perfect, and we've all made stupid calls on occasion, but they're usually corrected fairly quickly. qgyh2 founded the subreddit, and although he's not really an 'active' mod here, I've worked with him in a number of different subreddits and it's very helpful to have a 'senior' mod to back you up when you need it. I've been the most active mod here almost since it was created, and I'm a huge fan of consensus- with few exceptions, moderators don't act by themselves when it comes to setting policy, bannings, etc. We 'vet' mods before we ask them to join, to make sure that they're on board with the goals of the subreddit, don't have a history of banning out of pique, etc. So far that's worked pretty well, as we provide each other with reality checks, and usually work things out by consensus. As individuals we all do stupid things on occasion, but as a group, /canada's been remarkably stable, to say the least.

That hasn't been the case in some of the subreddits that I've moderated- i was a mod in /iama for one of the first major mod meltdowns (the MMM mess), and we had a mod go rogue in /suicidewatch, which was not only 'dangerous' to the community, but to individuals. I never want to be in that position again, to say the least, which is why we've tried to build the mod team here to act through consensus, and reality checks from each other. We're definitely not perfect, but I think the chances of an overzealous mod doing a lot of damage for more than a few hours is fairly small.

One of the things that I think is going to be useful in terms of moderator accountability to their community is to have a public moderator log. I've got my issues with it (I think that it's going to make spammers more aware of how quickly they're banned, which is going to defeat that whole purpose), and I'm not sure that showing individual moderator actions is actually safe for the moderator, at times. We've certainly all seen reddit witch hunts, and my desire to be accountable to the /canada community is definitely secondary to keeping my family safe.

But I think that when /canada can see what it is that we actually 'do' on a daily basis as moderators, there's going to be a lot less concern and mistrust. Most of my time as a moderator (except for things like this, which happen once or twice a year) is spent just clearing out the spam filter, and checking reported links/comments (I probably spend about an hour a day doing that). Of the two of those, reported links take the most time, because it's usually unclear as to why they are reported. We know that every once in a while someone goes on a tear and just reports everything that they disagree with (which is usually what's on the front page), and it takes time to check all of those and make sure that it's a valid 'report', or not.

That's not always the case- /canada's generally pretty consistent in reporting truly offensive or off-topic posts or comments, and it doesn't take long for each of those. I'd say that less than 10% of what I see in reported or the spam filter are things that really need a judgment call- it's pretty obvious.

When we (as mods) do have to make a judgment call, it's generally done through consensus. In the time that /canada's been around, there have been 31 usernames banned, of which six were duplicates (same username, with a number of letter after them). So, we've really only banned 25 people a year, which isn't a lot for a community this size. There are a few other usernames that we keep an eye on- people who regularly participate in the community, but who go on an asshole run every few months. We can usually pm those people and say "why not take a weekend off, and come back when you've cooled down', and they usually do. If they don't, we temporarily ban them for 2-3 days, and then life goes on. Most of the time those users come back.

As mods I also think that we're fairly responsive to the community- we try to answer mod mail promptly, and deal with reports/spam at least a few times a day. I don't get to participate in /canada threads as much as I'd like to, but we do try to keep an eye on what's going on.

One of the reasons why we're trying to clarify /canada's mandate or focus right now is out of feedback that we've gotten from the community. I think that we can take it as a given that no one likes change, but certainly over the last six months or so we've had increasing complaints (from all sides) about the quality of submissions and content. I think that to a large part that's reddit-wide...hence the attempt at TheRepublicOfReddit, new guidelines in /politics, /pics, /askscience etc. Whenever an online community grows that quickly, and that large, there are growing pains, and many of the larger communities are trying to work that out.

I'm really not a mod that thinks that my 'position' is all about power, and I don't know too many long-term mods who do. Our 'power' is mostly limited to banning people, and that's actually pretty pointless, as it takes about 30 seconds to create a new account. Setting up guidelines or mandates (or tweaking those that already exist) is in my mind part of moderators protecting and enabling themselves and the community, because I think that everyone's happier when there's some clarity. I also think that it's possible that the mod team should be more consistently clear that we welcome help and input and discussion- we don't need a 20 person mod team, but as mods become more or less active there's certainly room for new blood, and if people don't want to moderate there are other ways that they can help.

I can certainly understand your concerns about overzealous mods, but I think that for the most part they'd have a difficult time in /canada doing any lasting damage. I could certainly be proved wrong, but I think that guidelines actually help to guard against that, rather than encouraging it.