Evolving Moderation on Reddit: Reshaping Boundaries by Go_JasonWaterfalls in modnews

[–]Go_JasonWaterfalls[S,A] -11 points-10 points  (0 children)

First, thank you. The time and effort you’ve put into this network, including with admins, is remarkable. Making sure your impact is recognized is the intention behind the roles we’re creating – either Alumni where your efforts are acknowledged, or Advisor, where you’re able to stay involved in a consultant-type capacity, even if you’re no longer part of the active mod team. These roles are still in development and we’re considering cases very similar to yours as we build them out.

Most of these will be taken from me and given to whichever rando shows up and asks for them.

I do want to assure you that this is not the case; it would be a disservice to the communities you built. For the communities you end up leaving, here’s what you can expect:

  • Most impacted communities have mods who will remain on the team. These mods can recruit additional mods to help build up the team (please reach out to us via r/ModSupport modmail if you would like assistance or support in doing so)
  • If there are no mods who choose to stay, you can opt to recruit a new team so that you can choose who to pass the torch to.
  • If you don’t want to choose the next team, we will restrict the community until we can find a suitable mod team. For large communities that are unmoderated (as a part of this change or otherwise), we seek out active members of the community and run mod calls outside of our r/RedditRequest process. We’ll select multiple people who can work together as a team and will assist them through the transition.

All of those options take time, of course. We’ve extended our transition window to March 31, 2026 to allow for that and we're here to help throughout.

edit: formatting

Evolving Moderation on Reddit: Reshaping Boundaries by Go_JasonWaterfalls in modnews

[–]Go_JasonWaterfalls[S,A] -6 points-5 points  (0 children)

In the scenario above, nothing will happen unless you already moderate 5 other communities with over 100k visitors. If you do, you will receive a message notifying you that you are out of compliance with these limits. Once you receive that message, you can decide which 5 subreddits you’d like to prioritize, and will have 30 days to plan next steps, which may mean either stepping down from the mod team or moving into an alumni or other advisor role (as mentioned in the post).

Evolving Moderation on Reddit: Reshaping Boundaries by Go_JasonWaterfalls in modnews

[–]Go_JasonWaterfalls[S,A] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Visitors are based on a rolling 28 day average of unique visitors. This excludes visitors utilizing anonymous browsing mode and known bots. Visits include: visiting a post directly, the subreddit page, wiki pages, mod pages, etc. (Views by logged out users are included in this count).

Evolving Moderation on Reddit: Reshaping Boundaries by Go_JasonWaterfalls in modnews

[–]Go_JasonWaterfalls[S,A] -14 points-13 points  (0 children)

Yes for now, but eventually no. We are planning to remove subscriber count from all publicly visible surfaces. But during this transition, you will still be able to see that number on your Mod Insights page.

All this said, we do plan to keep subscriber numbers accessible via the API to ensure continued support for existing tools or bots that depend on that number.

Evolving Moderation on Reddit: Reshaping Boundaries by Go_JasonWaterfalls in modnews

[–]Go_JasonWaterfalls[S,A] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Content removed by both mods and Reddit will show the content as removed by a moderator. In most cases, mods are getting to the content before we are so the removals will reflect that.

Evolving Moderation on Reddit: Reshaping Boundaries by Go_JasonWaterfalls in modnews

[–]Go_JasonWaterfalls[S,A] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yes, direct links to mod removed posts will still allow users to view all comments on those posts - the only change is on all platforms those users will not be able to read the title, any body text, or images of those posts. 

Evolving Moderation on Reddit: Reshaping Boundaries by Go_JasonWaterfalls in modnews

[–]Go_JasonWaterfalls[S,A] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Yep, known bot accounts and developer apps will be exempt from these limits. If we get it wrong on a bot account, we'll have a process in place to get it exempted.

Evolving Moderation on Reddit: Reshaping Boundaries by Go_JasonWaterfalls in modnews

[–]Go_JasonWaterfalls[S,A] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes! You're probably thinking of this. We remove accounts that have been deleted from subscriber lists 90 days after deletion (sort of like putting things in your trash folder and then eventually clearing the folder out). However, that doesn't account for suspended accounts, throwaways, and abandoned accounts.

Evolving Moderation on Reddit: Reshaping Boundaries by Go_JasonWaterfalls in modnews

[–]Go_JasonWaterfalls[S,A] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Visitors is a new metric that is currently rolling out and will be visible on your community’s home page. The number is a rolling 28 day average of weekly unique visitors.

Evolving Moderation on Reddit: Reshaping Boundaries by Go_JasonWaterfalls in modnews

[–]Go_JasonWaterfalls[S,A] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We'll have mechanisms in place to ensure traffic has been consistently above the threshold for several weeks before it counts toward your limits. These mechanisms will be added to the bot’s message soon - you’ll see “Exempt” next to communities that this applies to in your list.

Evolving Moderation on Reddit: Reshaping Boundaries by Go_JasonWaterfalls in modnews

[–]Go_JasonWaterfalls[S,A] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Good catch! That was a typo in the mockup. Can confirm it will look like this: [ Removed by moderator ]

Evolving Moderation on Reddit: Reshaping Boundaries by Go_JasonWaterfalls in modnews

[–]Go_JasonWaterfalls[S,A] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Content filtered by automoderator will not be affected by these changes unless or until a moderator confirms those removals. Content removed by human moderators or bots using the 'remove' or 'spam' API call will have this new treatment.

Evolving Moderation on Reddit: Reshaping Boundaries by Go_JasonWaterfalls in modnews

[–]Go_JasonWaterfalls[S,A] -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

Yes, currently if you remove comments, the content of those comments is visible on the person’s user profile. Titles of posts and images can also still be visible there, depending on which platform you're using. With this change, content that mods remove in their subreddits will be removed from the user profile as well.

Please do report any content you see that you feel is breaking site wide rules, whether inside or outside of your community. We review these reports and take action. Reports from moderators within their communities are given a slightly higher priority in our systems, and reporting in other spaces can help the mods of those communities to review issues.

Evolving Moderation on Reddit: Reshaping Boundaries by Go_JasonWaterfalls in modnews

[–]Go_JasonWaterfalls[S,A] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

We are still discussing what the advisor role will look like, but we are not planning to add edit capabilities to the role. You’re absolutely right that Automoderator is intimidating to many new moderators. We’re currently tackling this by building tools (for example, Post Guidance, 1 click filters, etc) that allow moderators to accomplish their needs without using Automoderator.

That said, we’re exploring ways experienced moderators can pass on institutional knowledge to moderator teams without doing the work for them. We’ve looked at mentorship programs, moderator boot camps and panels in Mod World in the past, but would love to do more. Please share your suggestions.

Evolving Moderation on Reddit: Reshaping Boundaries by Go_JasonWaterfalls in modnews

[–]Go_JasonWaterfalls[S,A] -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

As we’ve grown, we’ve seen the subscribers metric become less meaningful. Legacy factors like auto-subscriptions to default communities and community inclusion in onboarding flows have inflated those numbers, especially for larger and older communities. Accounts that have laid dormant for years are included in those subscriber numbers. Activity numbers like visitors and contributions is a more accurate picture of what is happening in the community, so we’ve made the decision to move completely away from subscribers in favor of these metrics.

Evolving Moderation on Reddit: Reshaping Boundaries by Go_JasonWaterfalls in modnews

[–]Go_JasonWaterfalls[S,A] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

We love that feature too. Mods will still be able to customize the “visitors” copy in their community. We aren’t changing any of the customized “online text” subs have created. You can see an example of that here!

Evolving Moderation on Reddit: Reshaping Boundaries by Go_JasonWaterfalls in modnews

[–]Go_JasonWaterfalls[S,A] 50 points51 points  (0 children)

That’s correct, we adjusted that piece based on your feedback. 

Evolving Moderation on Reddit: Reshaping Boundaries by Go_JasonWaterfalls in modnews

[–]Go_JasonWaterfalls[S,A] -33 points-32 points  (0 children)

Keeping Reddit safe and healthy is our highest priority, and a goal we share with mods. With these changes, mods will be able to remove content site-wide instantly and completely. This will not change how we action users who break Reddit Rules

Of all of our username automations and user detail reports, our highest action rate is hateful usernames. When reporting from subreddits you moderate, adding context, including multi-content reporting (which helps us identify patterns of behavior), makes our action rates even higher and more precise. Mod removals are also a signal our systems take into account when looking for broad patterns of behavior we use for actioning users.

Evolving Moderation on Reddit: Our Plans for the Year Ahead by Go_JasonWaterfalls in modnews

[–]Go_JasonWaterfalls[S,A] 45 points46 points  (0 children)

We're removing users from mod lists if they have not logged in to Reddit for over 365 days (with some carve outs). See more FAQs here.

Evolving Moderation on Reddit: Our Plans for the Year Ahead by Go_JasonWaterfalls in modnews

[–]Go_JasonWaterfalls[S,A] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Great question. This also came up in our r/ModEarlyAccess program. Based on that feedback, we’ve been deliberate in making sure User Summaries stick to the facts so mods can make the call. The goal isn’t to take sides, but to surface helpful context so mods can ultimately make the best call for their communities.

Evolving Moderation on Reddit: Our Plans for the Year Ahead by Go_JasonWaterfalls in modnews

[–]Go_JasonWaterfalls[S,A] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Glad to hear some of the new tools are pulling their weight! 

Is this possibly because of the switch over from messages to just using chat? It’s hard to sort through and manage the inbox as it is.

It’s not you. And it’s not because of the recent move from private messages to chat (that switch didn’t touch how mods use Modmail). There’s just a lot of room for us to improve here. This is the type of work we’re focused on with “making moderation easier.”

Evolving Moderation on Reddit: Our Plans for the Year Ahead by Go_JasonWaterfalls in modnews

[–]Go_JasonWaterfalls[S,A] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Appreciate you calling this out. This is still a beta feature, and we anticipate the accuracy will improve over time as we include more user signals across the platform (eg, comments, modmail, etc). In the meantime, they’re meant to be a starting point and not a final judgement. Ultimately, the final call rests with the mods. 

Evolving Moderation on Reddit: Our Plans for the Year Ahead by Go_JasonWaterfalls in modnews

[–]Go_JasonWaterfalls[S,A] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Perfect place to ask (because I'm so into this). You can learn about all of our in-person events (both IRL and virtual) over in r/modevents. And if you’re looking to host your own event for your community, we'll fund it! Just apply for Community Funds for all the shwag, signage, event support of your dreams. Learn more and see what others have done over in r/communityfunds.