Hi Humble,

So, I volunteered to mod as well. With the precise proposal to actively go through, everyday, and post and comment. Odds are I am screwing that chance over by even posting this, but whatever.

My proposal was met with resistance. At least one of the mods explicitly stated that this was not their idea of what a mod should do, and that this community should be run totally passively by the mods, and if the community wants something, then they should do it.

My counter is that it seems entirely clear to me that the community wants active, engaged mods - not just people who sit back.

My suggestions were (copied and pasted):

• Advertising (or at least networking) the community in actual business publications, such as Entrepreneur, Fast Company, etc. I see no reason why we can't be drawing traffic - and other entrepreneurs - from these communities. Wouldn't that be good for all of us?

• Soliciting folks for a series of AMAs for people in VC, PE, successful entrepreneurs, other qualified individuals. I'd reach out to the folks at AMA for this - but try to pitch it as a co-host from r/Entrepreneur.

• Coordinating actual, real-word meetups - I am trying to help out with organizing the Brooklyn Entrepreneurs meetup here in NYC.

• Crossposting! Why do none of our good threads get cross-posted to other subs?

• Redoing the automoderator settings - I think it is worth having the community vote on this topic and see if any of the subjects should go or be modified. Thank you Thursday in particular seems totally useless. Also, Noob Monday and Wantrepreneur Wednesday are the same thing.

• Encouraging upvotes. So, so much of the conversation here has no upvotes or downvotes. Surely that is frustrating to other people as well. I mean, quite simply, that no karma is accumulated at this place.

• Redoing the sidebar to prioritize the Reddiquette, Wiki, and related subreddits, in that order (i.e., order of priority).

• Taking a close look at the wiki. I'm sure it could stand with a healthy re-organization.

I was told, basically, if I wanted to do this, I should go ahead and do it, and that the reason these things aren't done is because the moderators are busy running their businesses.

Well, I too am a busy person, and my point is basically that being the moderator of this place is an extraordinary privilege, and should go to someone who is willing to make the time to treat it as an active part of their daily responsibility to engage with the community, and potentially spearhead the above projects. Call me crazy, while I am actually coordinating an Entrepreneurs Meetup here in brooklyn and will, in fact, be contributing to the wiki in the near future, I think it is misguided to expect a mere member of this community to initiate these projects without some official connection, e.g., a moderatorship.

I mean, in doing business, as a business person, would you take someone seriously who said they were doing something on behalf of an internet forum, and wanted to arrange a business transaction with you, but they had no official connection other than voluntary membership?

I've already acknowledged I am probably spiking my chances of ever being a mod at this point. That's fine. I still enjoy posting here - which I do, literally every day - and I am dedicated to making real world connections based on this sub - introducing entrepreneurs to colleagues who are qualified business lawyers, accountants, service vendors, software developers, etc. - but I am still disappointed with the overall direction of this sub. This is a place of opportunity for a mod - perhaps not a multiple success entrepreneur, but someone with experience in social media, or who has a great rolodex of networking connections in the business world, or is just a business blogging machine, whatever - to be given a broad mandate to experiment and really try to initiate interesting projects that could be run by and for the community. How many people here have ever seen an LLC operating agreement? Wouldn't it be interesting to try and form a multi-owner LLC that simply exists to raise funds for the sole purpose of funding /r/entrepeneur meetups at fancy places? Wouldn't that be a grand experiment? Isn't it also clearly unreasonable to expect a community member to do this without any official mandate?

Note, please, for the record, yes, this account is very young. I created it to be a part of my online persona - I have other accounts, which shall remain unnamed, the oldest of which is verified and 7 years old. I've been a long time contributor to this sub under these other names, and will continue to do so.

However, I would really, really love to see a new mod done by someone who is dedicated to being an active, daily participant, which I think is frankly far more important than having a proven track record as an active entrepreneur. We need a networker, a host, a referee and a crossing guard rolled into one. The mentors on this place are its members - what we need is an administrator who is an active participant. And I think, frankly, we are just not getting that right now. No offense to FITGuard - he seems like a very qualified and impressive young business person who is doing an excellent job at leading a very interesting startup. He is a valuable community member. I also like his idea about monthly AMAs. However, he has been a mod for two weeks, and this is his first post since.

Importantly, however, I fundamentally take issue with this statement:

It is not a moderates place to decide for the community what should and should not be there if it is not clearly breaking a rule.

We need to determine what the rules are. There seems to be some disagreement and there are no rules in the sidebar. I think we can all agree, for instance, that encouraging illegal advice should be disallowed. I also think the community might be interested in limiting days on which you can post about box subscriptions and how to monetize blogs. Or just relegating them to automoderator posts altogether. The point is, I believe it is the place of a mod to help guide the community to consensus based rules. Of which there are not any currently.

Penultimately, this mod search has taken about two months. In that time, nothing has happened. The CSS on this sub remains really bad - it simply doesn't work well with RES. The wiki remains disorganized. There are no community initiatives. What is going on here? If we are a community of entrepreneurs, shouldn't the motto be to experiment and fail fast? Many similarly sized subs have way bigger moderation teams.

Finally, I will continue to be here - every day - trying to contribute to this community. However, quite honestly, this place feels like a mod-desert most days. It is discouraging. I have very high hopes for FITGuard's initiatives. I really hope to see him here, commenting, bringing his expertise to bear. I would be very encouraged by that - he certainly appears qualified.

Tl;dr I think this community has made it pretty clear that they want active, engaged moderators, and not just passive overseers who don't comment. I'm interested to hear what the community thinks.