Balancing Openness and Safety: Central and Peripheral Governance Practices in the Lesbian Subreddit Ecosystem

TL;DR

This study explores how lesbian subreddits balance openness and safety through distinct governance practices, revealing a division of moderation roles between central and peripheral communities within the ecosystem.

Contribution

It introduces an ecosystem-aware framework for understanding moderation, combining network analysis and thematic review to highlight differentiated governance roles.

Findings

Central subreddits focus on content curation and visibility.

Peripheral subreddits prioritize boundary and participation control.

Ecosystem-aware moderation enhances safety and inclusivity.

Abstract

Online LGBTQ+ communities face a persistent tension: remaining visible to welcome newcomers while protecting members from harassment. This challenge is particularly acute for lesbian communities on Reddit, which operate not as isolated groups but as an interconnected ecosystem. We examine how this tension is negotiated across the lesbian subreddit ecosystem (N=29) by combining network analysis of cross-subreddit links with a qualitative thematic analysis of 167 subreddit rules. Our findings show a functional division of governance labor between central (34%) and peripheral subreddits (66%). While all communities share a baseline of safety regulations, central subreddits prioritize content curation and feed quality to support a large, public-facing audience, whereas peripheral subreddits emphasize boundary maintenance and participation control to protect smaller, identity-specific niches. These findings challenge monolithic moderation approaches and highlight the need for ecosystem-aware design. We argue that effective moderation requires role- and context-sensitive tools supporting visibility and safety across interconnected spaces.