A lot of that has to do with the name. The majority of redditors use reddit during work or school. Lots of work and school networks block anything with the word "Porn" in it. There are other reasons, such as our refusal to worship imgur (anything rehosted is removed). That's all irrelevant, though. I don't think you understand how I moderate most of my subreddits.

In subreddits like /r/TheoryOfReddit, where the community was essentially handed to me, I take my mod duties very seriously. We discuss every rule change long and hard, we get community feedback, and we have a very large mod team for a moderately sized subreddit, meaning more community representation. I feel like I have a responsibility there. If I didn't, I wouldn't have accepted the moderator position. Not to mention, that subreddit is actually productive. It isn't just devoted to eye candy or humor.

Most of my subreddits, however, are subreddits that I created myself. They did not exist before I typed their name into the "create a subreddit" box and hit submit. I'm talking about subreddits like /r/EarthPorn and /r/reactiongifs. They are also usually "low-effort content" subreddits... images. It started when I used to browse /r/pics on a daily basis. I got sick of the chaos, and I started to create subreddits that would siphon off one type of image or another, either to improve /r/pics by removing crap (/r/reactiongifs), or to filter out the good content so I didn't have to wade through the memes and image macros that dominated /r/pics at the time (The SFWPorn Network). I made the rules exactly how I wanted them, and I submitted the type of content I wanted to see there, and I added the mods that I wanted to add there.

Reddit policy is that mods are gods in their own subreddits, and the top mod is Zeus, so I acted accordingly. They are essentially moderator playgrounds, and the subscribers are free to come and go as they please. Sure, we all want to see the subreddit thrive, but we also want to have fun doing so. That's very important. No one's getting paid. If you aren't having fun, why bother? As you know, getting called a niggerface jewcunt isn't fun, so we ban those people. And then if they send a mod mail cussing us out even more, we reply in nothing but reaction gifs. That, my friend, is fun.

I never wanted The SFWPorn Network to be THE imaging community on the internet. I wanted it to do exactly what it's doing now - provide "eye candy" images in various categories for easy consumption. That's it. When I go to /r/EarthPorn I want to see a landscape - not a waterscape, not a cityscape, not some abandoned farmhouse. I want to see a natural landscape. If I wanted to see those other things I'd go to /r/WaterPorn or /r/CityPorn or /r/AbandonedPorn. If a moderator thinks a picture is in the wrong category, they remove it. If we could simply move it to another subreddit, we would, but you know that getting the mod tools we need from the admins is like pulling teeth. I doubt it will ever happen so we work with what we have. The SFWPorn Network is a nice little package, all wrapped up in a bow, designed to be mostly bot-moderated, with human mods simply 'moving' submissions that they feel are categorized incorrectly. We aren't catering to the submitters here, we're catering to the consumers.

You see, I know how I could make The SFWPorn Network become THE imaging community on the internet. Remove all the rules about categories, and as long as it's serious photography (aka no memes/image macros), and vaguely related to the subject at all, it would be allowed. We wouldn't bother requiring the resolution in the title or any of the other weird rules. It would be /r/pics split into subcategories.

In fact... wasn't that your suggestion in the first place?