Function follows form.

It's impossible within the means of reddit. But corruption can only exist where there is a lack of transparency.

Transparency is just equal access to information. You give everyone the exact same access to the exact same information and let people sort it out for themselves what happened.

Any argument about the community not being able to handle itself pretty much boils down to holding the opinion that a group of people knows what's better for the community than the community. But you need to give the entire community equal access.

This is impossible under reddit's current structure. The moderator positions cannot be transparent because in a sense a mod can only exist by having special access. You need your special information so you can control the community. Moderation is somewhat synonymous with corruption. You exist to control information.

Function follows form. If you want to eliminate corruption you absolutely must ensure transparency. And the only way to do that is to make sure that it's formed in a transparent way. So that by simply existing it's transparent. Through no special reporting or anything.

What you would need to do is give everyone access to the moderation tools. No single person should have more access than another. This genuinely is impossible with the way we run the internet. This information sits on a server. My client is making a request to that server. That is a massive transparency issue. I really don't know what happens on that server and I can't know or the entire function would be open to exploitation.

It's a limit of imagination though to say it has to be this way. Our current models of data look at it through a client server perspective. Which as I stated is imbalanced and due to function following form it cannot be anything but non transparent and thus corruptible.

Instead of running a community based on this model what if we changed the nature of the client / server relationship? Client and server are the same thing. Instead of having reddit hosted on one computer we host it on all of our computers at the exact same time. Bonkers right? You are just using a protocol to ensure data is transmitted properly right? HTTP. On the server side it packs it up and labels it, ships it off and through the protocol arrives in your computer. Instead use big fancy new algorithms so that there is no single server. When you make a request it goes out to the closest nodes in the network. Each computer on the network holds a portion of the data, it is redundant. No single computer has the entire set of data, instead your request is handled through several hops. Each computer directing your request around the network until you have a full request. Then it gets directed back. At the same time you are routing micro actions of other people. Attaching the bits of data to the request. While all of this is happening the algorithm also takes this time to shift data around. Moving redundant data around so that it's available for everyone.

So if every computer has equal access and no single computer has exclusive access to any of the data then transparency is inherent to the system. You can't corrupt it because any actions taken are logged on unknowable numbers of other computers. It's like wikipedia but on everyone's computer.

I understand why this is difficult to implement. But the point is not that it's difficult but that it's totally possible. Reddit cannot run this way because it is a company. Companies make money by having some manner of property that they can utilize for profit. Open access is the antithesis to private property. So you can't really run a community by the community if it also must turn a profit. It's a big ole stinkin lie to say anything else.

If you want a community run by the community it must be free of corruption. Corruption is simply one party leveraging information over another. Giving equal access to information is thus the only way to actually combat corruption. In order for true transparency to exist it must be inherent to the system. You cannot implement it on the current technologies and structures we use. Companies make money by leveraging their private property. Which requires them to have exclusive access to said property, which is incompatible to inherent transparency