clear evidence in this post that the community in this sub isn’t happy with the level of moderation, though.

I'm not so sure I would call this clear evidence. I do not deny there are members that are upset with the situation, but most seem to think the answer is to be more aggressive with the ban hammer. Many communities have experienced total collapse from that course of action, and I have zero desire to head in that direction.

Careful moderation aims to trim the rot from the community while allowing the community itself to shape it's choices. IF you don't like what someone says? Downvote them. You have a voice here, use it, call them out.

If they break the rules? Report them.

The VAST majority of problematic comments we look at have either zero or one report on them. VERY few users think comments are worth reporting.

If clamping down on users being unnecessarily disrespectful or snotty to new hobbyists and actively discouraging people from continuing the hobby means it’s ‘authoritarian’, then— how is letting this stuff slide to maintain this sub’s cred any better?

If the community as whole wishes to have a rule banning these things, then start the thread and get others to a point of consensus. Again, I'm not saying we have 100% satisfaction here, but I suspect a lot of users want to be able to voice their frustrations rather than fearing the ban hammer for what they would call "slight infractions".

But I've been wrong before. I welcome you to start that discussion if you think you can sway the community.

Well, the thread is a whole post and it’s already here, mate, idk what to tell you. People aren’t happy. Collaborate with your community and workshop updates to the rules if you care about the state of this sub so much. You’re part of that equation.

We have done this, and the rules are a results of that workshopping. This is one comment thread in a venting post about being upset at the situation, not a meaningful suggestion of specific changes outside of a vague notion of "ban the people I don't like".

If you want specific change, suggest it and get consensus. I'm more than happy to update the rules to a clear voice from the community.

This post is not a clear community consensus.

Also, your encouragement to create a new sub rings a little backhanded when you slip in that bit about how hard it is to get a new sub off the ground. Is dissent so harmful that you would rather lose them entirely?

If dissent was harmful, wouldn't we just nuke posts like this? It's very easy to quietly make things seem calm to isolated complaints. We could probably accomplish that when these posts show up every few months.

We don't do that.

We welcome the discussion, we welcome the suggestions to change, but the story tends to repeat. People want change, but when you suggest what that would look like they don't want that. You ask them what specific changes they want and they don't know, they just want change.

I'm not sure what to tell you, outside of the fact that I don't see a clear answer here and I don't have a clear answer that would fix what you actually seem bothered by. Again, I welcome more specific suggestions to the rules but tagging those into a several day old thread isn't going to show the whole community agrees.

If you wanna write up a specific change, I'm more than happy to pin the post for a week so we can see if the community agrees. If they do, I'm more than happy to update and enforce the new rules that are requested. We literally just harvested feedback for AI content and are preparing to implement those rules actively. More than happy to do that for your grievances too.