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.
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.