Alright, one point at a time:
It sounds like that you are just not interested in building a new community and rather go back to the ivory tower that is reddit.
If we weren't interested, we wouldn't have founded the community. We're now maintaining two. The Disneyland subreddit links to Kbin in its sidebar. While I'd agree that Reddit is somewhat of an ivory tower, bear in mind that it's a community we've cultivated for years and we have a sense of responsibility for them.
What are you gonna do when Reddit is gonna implement the next thing that would be unbeneficial to the community?
Link here, like we already are. We've never participated in "Reddit drama". The fact that we took a stand as-is was a big step for us. We even committed to "indefinite", not just 48 hours. It wasn't effective, and we caved after 110 hours or so. Lessons learned.
But when (not if) Reddit shoots itself in the foot, we can have a community here ready for them. Right now it's small. To a certain extent, that's positive... the mod tools on Kbin are lacking. But it's not like we're abandoning the community here.
Spez is taking inspiration from Elon. He's going to do more dumb things. He's already talked about the dumb things he wants to do. There'll be other waves of migration, and we want to make sure that anyone who still wants the space they had (but doesn't want to use Reddit) can have a home.
If you know that the possible new mods are asses, why not call reddits bluff?
Do you think Reddit cares about asshole mod teams? Honestly. Remember, the "new mods" already run a major Disney subreddit. If Reddit cared about them being assholes who regularly wind up on SubredditDrama they would have taken action already.
Also bear in mind that I am one person on a team. There are others who work alongside me that have voices which should be heard and respected. To that extent, a lot of them didn't want to even risk it. I don't have the authority (by design) to unilaterally override them.
Sorry to say but most of the community does not give a damn about moderators.
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I thought and still think it would be absolutely ridiculous to invest your time and efforts for a profit making company for absolutely nothing in return.
Absolutely correct. We're the unpaid jannies, the suckers who need to touch grass. That's not sarcasm, btw - I really do think that. It's absolutely ridiculous that we do it at all, especially given the amount of abuse we get from... well, basically everyone.
Spez doesn't care about our users. We know that. Frankly, there are a lot of places on the internet that are run or controlled by those who don't care about others.
So spaces that do care are important. You can call it posturing, but it's the truth. If we didn't care, we would've quit a decade ago.
We care about making our community a welcoming space, a little home on the internet. We care about stopping trolls that see the word "Disney" and want to cause as much damage as possible.
It is absolutely ridiculous to care. Because you're right - the site doesn't care. We are giving them value and expecting nothing. They depend on us to care, and they treat us any way they want because they know we're too goddamn soft to let harm come to the communities we try and protect.
But there are people who need these little rest stops. They need a place to post a picture of their Mickey Mouse balloon, or their engagement photo in front of the castle, or their debate about what on earth the writing on some poster says. It makes them happy and there's a whole blossoming community there, of happy people in a safe space.
What on earth do I even get out of my "posturing" otherwise? A stupid green badge that says "please yell at me?" I don't even get that badge outside of my sub. I'm not a powermod; /r/Disneyland is the only major sub I mod. The only others I run are teeny tiny, maybe 600 users. We're not a Reddit partner community that gets wined and dined.
We're just some stupid, terminally-online folks who need to touch grass. Doing unpaid labor for an abusive place that doesn't care, promoting a different abusive monopoly of a company that doesn't care. All to make some little virtual people on the other side of a box (who also hate us) happy.
We do have a sticky thread that mentions our Kbin community at the very top.
It's also at the top of our sidebar, above the rules.