I'm not describing reddit's administration as throwing a tantrum.

You misread my statement. I was speaking about the infantilization of moderators who are frustrated with the lack of effort on the admin side of things. Waving that away as a "tantrum" is rude and counterproductive to discussion.

I'm describing the "semi-professional" moderators, the one who seek moderator positions not because they're interested in promoting strong communities but in grinding ideological axes or simply the prestige of being in charge. The power-trippers.

You were referring to the Blackout, no? Do you mean to imply that AMA is an ideological platform, or that /r/science is full of "power-trippers"? These are the subs who have had the biggest bone to pick because they are the most heavily moderated. We're not talking about awful places like FPH here, although they have ignorantly claimed that this is the same thing as happened to them.

And yes, it would be polite of reddit's administration to give them a heads up on change that will impact what they're doing but I got the impression from this whole affair that the termination came to a head very quickly and there was no opportunity to do so.

I'm sorry but this is a little absurd, and IMO not concrete enough to warrant such a rude reaction. It's not as if reddit fired her and then seconds later everything fell apart. What are reddit admins doing that is so critically important that they cannot stop to PM the moderators about a firing which severely impacts the immediate function of the website, such as AMAs to be held that day, or the exchange between Stephen Hawking to organize an AMA?

Either that or it's one of the things that slipped through the cracks.

I believe that this is far more likely, but it's precisely because it's something which can so easily slip through the cracks which is the problem. Communication between admins and mods is abysmal and it's far, far too easy for massive changes like this to slide by.

Either way, it could have been handled better and it wasn't. I'm not disputing this.

Sorry if I came off as hostile, but by dismissing the Blackout as a "tantrum" it seemed that you were disputing whether their frustration at the way things were handled was valid.

I know who many of these people are and the ones I'm referring to -- not the ones who are genuinely trying to build community but the powermongers -- don't deserve my pity.

Look, I really don't like Karmanut either. He's the sort of influential "power user" that I feel causes tremendous harm to communities like this because of the clout he wields and seeks to wield. On that issue I agree with you. That being said, I believe it's of critical importance to be able to admit someone is right even if you don't like them. No matter how much I may personally dislike Karmanut, or how much I may dislike the FPH people who have bandwagoned onto this Blackout, there are legitimate issues here. Dismissing these issues, especially in such a rude way, because you take issue with who is saying things rather than what they are saying is to embrace the sort of unprincipled toxicity that the "power user" mentality perpetuates. When who matters more than what you are creating an environment where people must become "power users" and gain social/political clout in order to have a voice on a discussion forum.

The fact that it's the "semi-professional mods" who are throwing a tantrum now strikes me as poetic justice

Why is it so common for members of the Snapzu community to dismiss dissatisfaction with reddit's administration as a "tantrum"? This is the third time I've seen this rude infantalization in as many days despite the rather small userbase. I'm starting to think that this community is no better than reddit or voat when it comes to self-serving arrogance, no matter how much it pats itself on the back for being all about an enlightened community.

These people are unpaid volunteers who are vital to reddit's function. They've been denied even basic moderation tools despite the promise of improvement in this area for years. Instead, reddit administration spends all its resources on gimmicks like side-wide cryptocurrency or snoovatars. For Christ's sake, AutoModeratorBot was a user-made hack! Reddit's administration promises transparency and a greater communuty outreach but fires Victoria and doesn't even tell the moderators who are dependent on her.

These mods are people who manage communities of millions with tools developed for a site of 20,000. The least reddit administration can do is give them a heads up when they're going to throw a wrench into the cobbled together patchwork of systems that keeps the site chugging along day-to-day.

How can you be so dismissive of these issues? It comes across as so entitled and ignorant. Do you expect them to work as unpaid full-time volunteers and be as obedient and docile as a well paid worker? It's just inane.

As the saying goes, shit rolls downhill. Why so sneeringly condescending toward volunteers who just want a heads-up when they're about to get shat on?

“I was surprised because that’s the thesis of Superman for me, that you can’t just have superheroes knock around and have there be no consequences,” says Snyder.

If Snyder's intention for Man of Steel was to explore the consequences of Superman's recklessness, it fell short. My impression of modern Superman is that he's Super, not because of his superpowers, but because of his compassion, integrity, sense of justice, and self-sacrificing heroism. Man of Steel sermonizes Superman as a leader, an inspiration, a symbol of hope, and a "guardian angel". Following this theme, we have this line from the movie which was used as the centerpiece in the much-celebrated trailer:

You will give the people of earth an ideal to strive towards. They will race behind you. They will stumble. They will fall. But in time, they will join you in the sun. In time, you will help them accomplish wonders.

Yes, Superman has had many incarnations and he has spanned the entire spectrum of morality, but this seemed to be the interpretation they were embracing as the core theme of the film.

Yet the movie culminates in catastrophe, with Superman and Zod destroying much of the city because of their battle. One can extrapolate that many innocents died. In the final scene of the climax, although Zod is tangled in a headlock by Superman, his heat-vision creeps toward a small crowd of bystanders trapped in a corner. Forced into a decision, Superman snaps Zod's neck to prevent the needless deaths of innocents. It's an ending that has little self-awareness as to the scenes that came just moments ago or to the central theme the film constructs. Furthermore, the circumstances feel contrived toward the sole purpose of giving Superman the moral justification to snap Zod's neck.

In the final scenes of Man of Steel, Martha Kent praises Superman with affirmation that Jonathan Kent "always believed you were meant for greater things, and that when the day came your shoulders would be able to bear the weight." So it's not as if after the climax the film the turned a critical eye on the chaos. It continued down the same thematic trail it had built for itself.

The director says he had always intended for the dead to be counted. Indeed, Batman v Superman addresses these concerns head-on—Superman’s victims serve as Batman’s impetus to take him down.

I take issue with this because nowhere was Man of Steel advertised as the first installment of a serial. Yes, it was clear that there would be sequels and a DC narrative would be built through the sequence of movies, akin to Marvel. But there is a great difference between the Marvel method and the method Snyder has used. Call me old fashioned but if I watch a movie, I think it should stand on its own merits. Marvel does this pretty well, as each independent movie is sound while containing elements that allow for the Avengers crossovers. To suggest that I need to wait three years to watch the sequel to understand what the first movie meant to say is, in a word, shit. Even in a series, it's an unwritten rule that you establish the tone, theme, or mood early on. People need and deserve to know what type of show they are watching.

I think that infantalizing the moderators by labeling their actions a "tantrum" is unnecessary and ignores a lot of the nuance behind the issue. It wasn't an issue of moderators being angry just because their buddy was fired, but rather the last in a long history of issues between mods and admins. Admins are utterly dependent on volunteer moderators, yet the relationship has been poor due to the minuscule effort on behalf of the admins. Despite this the admins push ahead with gimmicks and pet-projects rather than practical solutions to community problems, like expanded moderation tools.

This post here by mrmojorisingi details the issues between moderators and admins, and in it, he explains the lack of support and uses AutoModeratorBot as an example of problems that volunteer moderators have fixed for reddit admins. With this context of abysmal support between admins and moderators in mind, the firing of Victoria (who was integral to the AMA process on reddit) without even alerting the affected subs is a clear sign of the ongiong dysfunctional relationship between Reddit's admins and the userbase.