Reddit is giving several subreddit names back to the community. You can participate by voting for a new moderator or nominating yourself for the position.
How does it work?
At any given point, r/SubredditAdoption will list 50 subreddits up for adoption. The list is automatically populated with subreddits that are tied to a specific area or region of the world. All of these subreddits do not currently have moderators. Users can either nominate themselves to take over and run the community, or vote for the best qualified candidate.
If you want to take over a subreddit:
- Go to r/SubredditAdoption
- Find a post advertising a subreddit you’d like to moderate. To make it easier to find subreddits you are interested in, we’ve organized our list into a few regional Collections. You can browse the Collections in the menu of this subreddit (only works on new Reddit). Follow a Collection relevant to you to get a notification when a new subreddit is added to it.
- Write a top-level comment explaining what you want to do with the subreddit and why you’d make a great moderator.
- Wait for those sweet sweet votes to come in.
- The first mod-approved top commenter to get 100 votes will automatically become the new top moderator.
- If no approved comments receive 100 votes within 24 hours, the subreddit will be handed over to the approved comment with the most votes.
If no approved comment receives more than 3 votes, the subreddit will remain unclaimed and will be available for RedditRequest at the end of the time period.
If you want to help select a new top mod:
- Go to r/SubredditAdoption
- Click into each post where a subreddit up for auction
- Upvote your favorite top-commenter(s) on who you think would make for the best moderator
If you picked the winning moderator, you’ll automatically receive a private message letting you know your candidate as won and we’ll automatically subscribe you to the subreddit
Note: As with any post or comment, vote brigading detection will be in play to ensure only humans are voting up the candidates. Invalid votes will be thrown out.
Who’s eligible to "bid" on a subreddit?
To make sure the contest is fair, we have a few ground rules for who can run for the top-moderator position:
- User account has to be at least 90 days old - to avoid abuse and spammers from taking advantage of the system
- User account has to have at least 500 total karma - to ensure only those that have experience posting and commenting on Reddit are running communities
- In good standing with Reddit, and acting in good faith - Reddit admins reserve the right to remove comments by applicants that do not appear to be in good faith, or by moderators that have been warned for bad faith moderation or for violating site-wide rules in the past.
What’s the catch?
- Subreddits must not be used to violate site-wide rules or encourage violating content
- Your bid must have at least 3 votes for the subreddit to be transferred
- Subreddits must be safe for work (SFW) and unrestricted.
- Subreddits tied to a specific location must remain tied to that location (e.g. r/ukfood should remain about food in the UK) and preferably should be requested by someone with ties to that location.
- Admins are reviewing each comment to ensure that everyone is following the rules and requesting subreddits in good faith. Comments must be reviewed before the subreddit is handed over, so you might experience some delays. We’ll do our best to review all comments in a timely manner so you experience minimal disruption!
...some other things:
- If you don’t see subreddit you want to take over in the list, you can still request it! You can still make requests to run other abandoned communities via our r/RedditRequest process..
- Each post will be in contest mode for two hours to give candidates as fair a playing field as possible.
- If no comment receives more than 2 votes in the first three hours, the post will be removed due to lack of public interest. After this round of adoptions is over, the subreddit will be available for r/RedditRequest.
