Pretty much every news story about the Reddit situation that also touches on migration to other services throws out “power user” as distinct from “mods” as though it’s an established term with a clear definition.
As far as I’m concerned, it’s not. And a search on the term shows wildly different definitions, from X amount of karma, to users whose posts are upvoted simply by virtue of their user name, to people who actually post instead of lurking or commenting.
If after a decade on Reddit I don’t understand the term, I can’t imagine what it means to the layperson and thus fail to see the utility of the term in news stories. I can’t fix journalists using the term, but it would be nice to at least learn what others understand it to mean.
The vast majority of content and interaction on places like Reddit comes from an extremely small percentage of users.
That small percentage of users are power users.
Specifically, the distribution tends to be something like 1%-9%-90%
The 90% are lurkers, 9% are occasional commenters and posters, and the 1% post nearly all of the content you see.
The powerusers would be that 1%
A power user is someone who tries to leverage features of systems and/or software to more efficiently or effectively interact with the platform/service they are a user of far moreso than the average user. Because users of third party apps on Reddit are the extreme minority (just look at official app downloads VS TPAs), they’re typically considered power users, as they are willing to go out of their way to make their experience better, even if it’s just downloading and setting up their app.
Power users also tend to be more active users; if you use something more, you’re more likely to want to improve the experience of using it. Someone who pays for extra features to leverage more power is probably someone who uses the platform/service a lot more than the average user.
They’re called a power user because they’re leveraging power by doing more to exploit (not a negative term here) potential out of what they have as a user; at least, that’s how I interpret the phrase.
You are absolutely right with your description. One thing to note since OP was looking for the distinction: most mods are power users. It’s usually the most active and enthusiastic users who have the desire to become a moderator.
I get that mods are a subset of power users. But it seems the bar for the latter may be as low as “anyone who, upon reading an interesting article, heads over to Reddit, checks for an extant link, and if none is found posts one.”
I seriously thought that was table stakes for using the site.
The large majority of users on Reddit just scroll through clicking links, maybe upvoting or commenting once in a while
This is exactly my interpretation. They leverage tools above and beyond the average user. This makes the time they spend engaging with the platform more productive, higher quality, and more visible than the average user. Think of it not as power in the political sense, but in the sense of a ‘power’ tool.
Power users to me are people who don’t use the default settings/apps. Could be add ons, could be third party apps.
That’s still a big range in tech savviness, but it generally separates out people who are willing to troubleshoot, put up with a bit of wonkiness in their experience, and in general care more about how the powers that be operate the site/software/whatever.
To me power user always meant someone who would go into .ini files and configure the program beyond what normal user would be expected to do through UI. It’s weird that this term is now being used in social media.
Offline, I associate it with someone who writes batch files or scripts. I suppose that’s changed a fair sight since the '80s, but it hurts my brain that installing Firefox throws one into rarefied air before uBlock even comes up. And still, that’s where I set the baseline for being online simply because I cannot comprehend the last decade-plus actually putting up with every ad served … I can’t even conceive the volume of time spent putting up with them, let alone inteacting.
To me, powerusers are the ones that post the majority of content that actually gets engagement, and the ones that bother to comment beyond single words or sentences.
The majority of users only upvote or downvote on the things that a minority posts. The powerusers are the latter group.
There is no hard line where one turns from one into the other, I think.
In the case of reddit, a poweruser would be anyone using a 3rd party client! (a bit of sarcasm there).
For the fediverse (lemmy/kbin/mastdon/etc…), I’d basically say those who are running their own instances would fit the bill.
Someone with a heightened sense of self importance!
I’d actually buy that it’s a self-anointed title. In other words, meaningless.
Power user has a very different connotation in social media than it does for general software or hardware usage.
Power users are the ones who submit the most content, post the most, run the most communities, etc. they’re the people who post literally hundreds of times per day, mod 20 subs, etc.
They’re essentially content farmers who’ve been given a cutesy name to make it seem like what they do is good.
I use Brave. My most used extensions are:
- Awesome Screenshot - takes partial and full browser window screenshots. It can also record screens. It looks like they’ve added “ChatGPT” into the name for some reason.
- Bitwarden - password manager
- VisBug - allows you to view webpage styles and tinker with the layout of live webpages.
- Homey - a replacement for the default New Tab, which includes beautiful live wall papers and convenient access to bookmarks and other widgets.
FYI i think lemmy did the “switch a post out from under you” bug
I had the same thing happen to me this morning also. Very confusing as a new user.
LOL it looks like you’re right. Oh well. Maybe a poweruser could use some of these extensions :D
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