Interview: /r/shanghai moderators kinggimped and Mob_King, Part 1

Introducing Mob_King and kinggimped: two souls fighting the daily battle to keep things civil over at the Shanghai subreddit.

Without revealing anything too personal, where do you come from and why are you here?

kinggimped: I’m from the UK. Came to Shanghai because I was getting pretty bored and disillusioned with life over there and wanted something different. Also I was totally chasing after a cool girl who lived over here. Things went better than expected.

Mob_King: Wellington, New Zealand. I’m a China-nerd from way back and this stint was supposed to be 6 months for the 2010 Shanghai World Expo. Things went better than expected.

What do you do for money?

KG: I work at a tech company that makes English learning software for Chinese kids. I do a little bit of quite a lot, including curriculum design, QA, testing, voiceover work, and writing and producing music.

MK: I work for a company that buys Chinese video games and co-publishes with the developers. I’m a localization manager but it’s really project management: coordinating remote resources, UI/UX improvements, translation, QA. Every day is different and that’s badass.

How do you view Reddit’s role in shaping online discussion as well as in society at large?

KG: Uh, kind of a difficult question to answer straight off the bat. I discovered Reddit about 6 or 7 years ago when I was working in Search Engine Optimisation in the UK, back when Digg was king of the social bookmarking sites. I hopped over pretty quickly after realising it was essentially the same content but Reddit had far better comments. Since then it has changed hugely (for better or worse), and has a much wider audience and scope.

The massive increase in popularity of AMAs as a marketing engine for actors/authors pushing their new movies/books is a good example… but generally Reddit has become a far more recognisable brand for the average member of the public, kind of like how Twitter had existed for a while before it became such a well-known thing. Now it’s pretty hard to escape and massively popular, which is why I don’t understand why a lot of redditors seem to think that they’re part of some kind of secret, elite club.

As a sidenote, I just think it’s frigging awesome that Arnold fucking Schwarzenegger hangs out in /r/fitness and posts fitness advice to other redditors. I love Reddit for stuff like that, it’s totally surreal.

MK: Reddit is great and I think there’s a somewhat naive part inside all of us that views it as The Great Leveling Platform - more democratic than whatever bullshit government, school or organization pretends to represent our interests. What really motivates me to support Reddit communities is how targeted they are; if you’re into Zentai and live in Shanghai and can’t find anyone else to rub latex with, why not create /r/ShanghaiZentai? Where else can like-minded groups of individuals find such opportunity for communication, self-defined fulfillment and community-building?

What is the role of a moderator? Why serve as a moderator?

KG: When I first moved to Shanghai I didn’t know much about the city or many people who lived here. I wanted to find somewhere to talk about the city with people who had made a similar leap, share experiences, and meet new people here. I hung out in /r/china for a while but was amazed at the general negativity and caustic environment there, as well as the way the expats who had been here for longer took great pleasure in sniping the newer arrivals. It just seemed like some kind of 中国通 dick measuring contest, and quite honestly being new to China I was a bit scared to join in. I got the same feeling from lurking on the Shanghai Expat messageboards: both places seemed to be primarily jaded expats who were basically using them as places to vent their frustrations with living in China. I’m glad to say I still don’t feel that way after ~4 years here, but at least I know where I can go when I reach that point.

/r/shanghai had 4 subscribers and was dead at this time, banned by Reddit’s spam filter, so on a whim I messaged the creator and volunteered to help get the community off the ground. He made me a moderator, I messaged the Reddit admins to get the subreddit unbanned, and basically just went from there. After a year and a half or so I added Mob_King as a moderator since the subreddit had grown pretty quickly, since in the short time he had been there he had proven himself to be both hugely knowledgeable and genuinely helpful to other members. It also helped that we were friends outside of Reddit, but it seemed like a no-brainer either way.

Honestly, despite what a single rather odd and strangely obsessive troll/conspiratard believes, we are basically glorified spam filters. Reddit mods don’t really hold that much power - our votes are weighted the same as anybody else’s, and banning a user doesn’t prevent them from registering a new account and just coming back.

Having said that, it is enough power that a nefariously-minded individual could potentially abuse it. This has happened in other subreddits in the past: the famous “Saydrah saga” for example, where a moderator of several big subreddits who also worked in social media was using her mod powers and popularity to push her clients’ products onto the subreddits’ front pages. Or censure, the infamous /r/trees moderator who put referral links in a sidebar ad banner and combined it with ‘donations’ to a fake non-profit organisation to steal money from redditors. But those kinds of things, though well-known, are the outliers and it seems everybody gets caught eventually as Reddit improves its moderation tools and things become more transparent. It’s nice that if we are ever accused of skewing submissions or altering anything we can just post the moderation log for the subreddit since that shows everything.

Most moderators - especially for smaller subreddits like /r/shanghai - just filter the spam out of the communities they run, maintain the sidebar and subreddit CSS, and generally just try to keep the community alive. As the subreddit grows so does the spam. We’re very laissez-faire about moderation and have nothing to hide; we’ve never removed posts or banned users based on any agenda (only obvious spam and trolling). I prefer the community to decide the content since that’s the total point of Reddit. In the rare cases where we’ve banned questionable spammers we’ve let the community decide their fate.

I think people confuse 'moderator’ and 'admin’ and think that we wield some kind of power. I just happened to make the first move to get the subreddit running again. Personally, I check the spam queue and add little flags next to usernames when people request it… but most of my time on /r/shanghai is spent reading and posting.

MK: KG was stuck out of town and just needed someone to help run things here. I was identified as someone who knew a bit about Shanghai+China and also happened to be a personal friend so I came in temporarily to help manage things … and just stuck around, like the furniture. I’m a huge China-nerd and take it upon myself to try and bridge east-west gaps whenever I can, it’s a passion of mine. Particularly NZ and China.

Moderating really isn’t all it’s cracked up to be; yes, we can ban users and delete content but that’s very rarely. Really all we do is clear out a spam-filter and tags threads to classify content. There’s also a wiki we sporadically work on. We have an informal agreement where KG does anything 'IT’ and I’ll do anything 'China’. We then have a target of 5 minutes for spamming every goddamned new thread with long-winded, highly-technical info.

What’s the most rewarding part of your role as moderator?

KG: The first dozen or so /r/shanghai meetups were great, especially the first one. When I organised that first /r/shanghai meetup, we had about 20 subscribers. Somehow, far more than 20 people turned up over the course of the night. Since then we decided to make it a monthly thing, though lately we’ve turned to the community to organise their own rather than have a monthly meet organised by the moderators.

I’ve met a lot of fantastic people and forged some genuinely rewarding friendships. Even though all I’d actually done was post a time and place and invited people to show up, it was awesome that so many people had been brave enough to come along and mingle with strangers, having had nothing in common except the fact they happened to use the same website. It was a cool feeling to be a part of that, especially when somebody would thank me for helping them out with something on the subreddit, or for info we posted to the FAQ.

Otherwise, I always enjoy discovering new things about Shanghai from the subreddit, as well as helping out whenever I can. It’s just cool to get involved.

MK: A couple of times, people have approached me at a meet-up and said “Oh damn, you’re that King-guy. Thanks for helping me with XYZ. ” Hearing that is the best. It’s also really rewarding to see posts, PMs and data, letting you know the community has your back and respects the work you put in - especially when some troll or idiot threatens harmony.

Your honest thoughts on the /r/shanghai community:

KG: It’s a bunch of people who live in Shanghai, really. Same as any other community based pretty much solely on region. I guess we’re a little different in that Shanghai is a pretty transient city and a lot of the westerners (and therefore redditors - Reddit is basically not used by Chinese netizens) who come here tend to stay for a short time, maybe 6 months to 2 years, before moving on. So the community is constantly changing. We have almost 3,000 subscribers right now, but maybe 100-150 or so are active at any given time, if that many. Mostly Americans, Canadians, Brits, Australians, Kiwis, and the occasional French for good measure.

Besides the mods and a handful of others, there aren’t too many people who were /r/shanghai regulars a couple of years ago that are still posting there today. Generally speaking though, at any point it’s a pretty good mix of FOB foreigners who want to know more about the city and more experienced expats who have been here a while. And a shitload of lurkers.

MK: 30% English teachers, 20% “OMG China!! In town, what do? LOL”, 15% expat package / wealthy (incl. 太太), 25% students, 10% other.

There’s a really diverse group of people here and lots of good content produced and knowledge shared. You’ll see lurkers come out the woodwork and deliver a textbook answer when a request for help goes out regarding their particular area of expertise in Shanghai. That’s the beauty of being a smaller set of people - especially one that’s defined by geographic area. I’ve made a few very good friends either online or at a meet-up and while I can’t speak for other I genuinely do feel a sense of community when I think of the site.

There’s quite a few people involved in music and also working in tech. I dunno, Reddit isn’t this secret club or anything but I’d like to think that the Reddit population selection was always generally skewed slightly more towards the tech-minded half of the internet spectrum.

Part 2 coming soon!~