Moderator Help Center

There are several things you can do immediately to give your community a leg up. Try taking a week and doing everything in the list below to help your community's odds for success.

• Post fresh content
  • Jumping into an empty community is intimidating. It's up to you to create a welcoming environment, so try to publish at least 10 posts this week. If you are struggling for content, mixing in some crossposting can help.
• Share your community
  • r/promotereddit or r/newreddit are safe places to get the word out about your community without being spammy. 
• Promote yourself in a like-minded community
  • Politely reach out to the moderators via modmail and ask if they might feature you as a related community or allow you to make a promotion post. If they decline, respect their wishes and consider other communities that might also appreciate you returning the favor.
    • If you just started a blue tongued skink community, you might reach out to the mods of a general reptile community.
• Join the conversation
  • Make sure to put a “r/” before your community name to create a link.
  • If you see a relevant post in another community, mention yours in the comment section.
• Update your community description
  • Use precise language to help users discover your community organically
• Set your community topics, content tag, and a NSFW tag (if applicable)
  • Making sure your community is tagged properly can help Reddit suggest it to people who may be interested in it.
• Discoverability settings
  • Make sure you are happy with your settings in regards to who can find and participate in your community. To grow your community, consider being recommended to redditors and whether you’d like the community to show up in high traffic feeds.
• Add a rule or two
  • Setting early expectations for behavior in your community can both help set expectations for your community members, as well as help you explain to users why you may have to remove rule breaking content when it occurs.
• Customize and style your community
  • Even just adding an icon and banner will make your community a more inviting place to visitors. 
• Keep going!
  • Keep your community active and curated by growing your community and staying connected with new and existing members. Routinely update your topics and location settings to improve your discoverability.

If you've already done all of the above, you're off to a great start. 

Building a community with a great culture takes time and dedication. It almost never happens overnight. Don't be discouraged by slow momentum - slow and steady is the healthy path to growth for the vast majority of communities.

 

 

There are many communities on Reddit designed to assist moderators. Below is a list of official and unofficial mod resource communities:

Official:

• r/ModSupport - An admin-run community for posting mod tool-related questions specifically for reddit.com administrators (or “admins”). Be sure to also check in here for special admin posts around moderation and other helpful discussions.
• r/modnews - Another admin-run community for official announcements that impact moderators.
• r/ModCertification- Official hub for Reddit's self-led Mod Education courses on mod tooling and practices, which has now launched as the Reddit Mod Education website. 
• r/CommunityFunds - An admin-run community designed to answer any questions you have about Community Funds. If you need help coming up with an idea, you can join this community and we'll be happy to help you brainstorm and put together your proposal. 
• r/reddit - An admin-run community where we make announcements and discuss notable changes to Reddit. It’s a helpful community to watch for things that may impact your mod team or community.
• r/redditrequest - An admin-run community where you can request communities with inactive or nonexistent moderator teams. Pay careful attention to the rules before making a request here.
• r/ModReserves - community for those requesting reserves and answering mod reserve requests
• r/FrMods - A community where moderators from all French-speaking communities, large and small, can meet and discuss moderation.
  

Unofficial:

• r/modguide - A mod-run community that provides a large number of guides and resources for Reddit moderators.
• r/modhelp - An excellent and resource-rich community dedicated to helping moderators.
• r/AutoModerator - A community with helpful resources and discussions about AutoModerator.
• r/needamod - A place to find new mods for your community or volunteer your moderating skills to a community in need.
• r/newreddits - A community to help your new subreddit get discovered by other users.
• r/bugs - A community to report bugs you may have encountered on Reddit. Although this community is not run by admins, you’ll find admins responding in this community.  
• r/help - A community where you can ask questions about Reddit—and get answers from helpful users. Although this community is not run by admins, you’ll find admins responding in this community.  
• r/ideasfortheadmins - A community where you can suggest new ideas for how the admins could improve Reddit.

 

I’m new to Reddit and moderating, where can I get further help?

The General Moderation Info section contains further resources for moderators while the Getting started moderating on Reddit section is a good place to start.

There may be times when you’re unable to find the answers you’re looking for in our community resources or when you have an issue that can only be resolved through admin intervention.

While not exhaustive, below are some examples of reasons you might need to contact us:

• compromised subreddit or moderator account,
• users evading bans in your community under new accounts,
• users in your community posting illegal or abusive content,
• users in your community breaking the site-wide content policy,
• or issues that seriously impact your ability to moderate your community.

If your question is not related to mod tools (and therefore not generally suitable for /r/ModSupport), you can contact us via https://www.reddit.com/report. If you do not see your issue listed in the report form, please use our contact form to submit a request.

When reaching out, please include:

• a concise description of the issue,
• direct links to posts, comments, or messages pertaining to the issue, and
• usernames of any parties involved.

There are many reasons you may find yourself looking to recruit new mods for your community. If you’re the only mod, you might find that adding more mods to share the load allows you to enjoy your community more. Perhaps you already have a couple of great mods but find that your community’s traffic has gone up sharply. Maybe you're all sleeping when things get crazy. Whatever your reason for wanting to recruit, some experienced mods shared their own recruiting processes, which may help you decide where to start. Below, we've put together what we took away from that conversation.

 

When to recruit:

Different mod teams have different approaches to this. Some mod teams choose to actively recruit on a regular basis, while others wait until they feel there is a clear need for more moderation in the community. The latter can commonly be triggered by quick traffic growth or busy mods with shifting commitments in their lives. Ultimately, you’ll want to figure out your own process that aligns with your community’s unique needs.

 

The recruiting process:

Ideally, a candidate is already active in and familiar with your community and its rules and norms. The approach to actual recruiting can vary and change over time based on a community's needs.

Suggestions and common approaches include:

• Having a formal application process
• Making an announcement to let the community know you’re looking for new mods
• Request mod suggestions from our automated bot, u/ModSupportBot
• Reaching out directly to an active community member
• Asking established mods you know and trust
• Waiting for community members to reach out and show interest in moderating
• Looking for volunteers in r/needamod

The formal application process and direct outreach were the most commonly cited approaches, which we discuss a little more in-depth below.

 

Formal Application Process:

By using an application process, you can elicit answers from potential mods with established questions about things that you know are important to your community. This process may be appealing because it allows you to better understand the interest level of those applying, test their knowledge of the community, and get a feel for how well they might fit in with your community and mod team’s culture. 

Often, this process is combined with making an announcement via a stickied post to let the community know that you’re recruiting and taking applications.

Applications might be taken through an existing form, announcement comments, messages to the mods, or a variety of other ways that suit your team’s needs.

 

Direct Outreach:

If you spend a lot of time actively reading or participating in your community, you will probably start to notice that certain community members stand out as being very active, helpful, and knowledgeable. This might make them ideal candidates to help moderate your community.

Reaching out directly to them can be a good way to get to know their feelings about the current moderation in the community, along with how they might fit in with your mod team and help improve your community.

 

Tips:

If you have an established team of mods, you might consider doing the occasional check-in to see who is still actively interested in moderating, keeping in mind that sometimes life just gets busy.

Giving inexperienced mods a chance can sometimes have positive outcomes due to a lack of preconceived notions about what style of moderation is best for your community.

Always take a quick look at the posting and commenting history of those you're considering adding as moderators to your community. This can sometimes give you a feel for whether or not they will be a good match.

If you mod a globally appealing community that is seeing a lot of growth, sometimes it can be beneficial to recruit people from different time zones.

Unexpected things happening in your community and the world can suddenly turn your regular daily mod flow on its head. In the words of Douglas Adams, Don’t Panic! There are things you can do to help lessen the load, maintain trust with your community, and mitigate fallout when things feel overwhelming.

 

Communicate internally and be prepared to present a unified front.

• Set up a back channel to communicate - be it Reddit chat, Discord, Slack, or whatever makes sense for your team and allows you to communicate quickly and efficiently.
• Define what approach to the crisis your team will be taking and be prepared to present a unified front when talking to your community. 
• Consider picking point people on the mod team to handle any external facing communications. This can help your team’s message remain consistent and allow other mods to focus on putting out other fires where they come up.

Review your rules and determine if they make sense at this time. 

• Your rules should be unambiguous. Clarity in expectations of your community can help lessen the load for you and your team.
• Be flexible with your rules. This might mean relaxing or tightening/adding rules temporarily while things feel chaotic.
• Communicate any rule changes so that members of your community can understand what you’re doing and why.

Talk to and listen to your community - and be transparent!

• Let your community know that you understand their feelings, frustrations, and fears, depending on what the crisis is. Don’t be afraid to share your own feelings and thoughts.
• If it’s appropriate, ask for your community’s feedback. Sometimes fresh eyes on a problem can lead to solutions and ideas you and your team may not have thought of.
• Tell your community exactly what you are doing and why you are doing it. 
• If you have gotten feedback from your community and it has been helpful, let them know that. Show them how you’re building upon that feedback. 

Use sticky posts to your community’s advantage.

• Depending on what is happening, you might find it helpful to sticky a curated list of carefully sourced links. This can help keep things in one place, educate members, and make it easier for the community to find important resources. 
• If you’re getting inundated with new members, it can help to sticky a post that lets people know what your community is about, what your rules are, and what your expectations are of the community. 
• You might also want to sticky posts to direct off topic chatter, request feedback, talk to your community officially, or any number of things that you want to ensure your community sees first.

Leverage Automoderator to educate your community and lessen the lift for your mod team. 

• During the crisis, consider having Automod comment on each new thread, letting your users know about any changes in the community, mega-threads, or otherwise helpful information.
• Set up alerts for reports which allows users to help you find the most pressing issues in your community.
• Full Automod documentation for reference.
• Visit /r/automoderator for peer-to-peer help.
• Use or edit Automod snippets from r/modguide to set common, helpful actions in your community.

Add more mods if necessary.

Sometimes, every effort your existing team makes might not be quite enough and you will find yourself needing help. 

• Try recruiting moderators from within your community when possible.
• You can also use r/needamod to source moderators from the general Reddit community.
• See additional tips from other mods on how you can recruit more moderators.
• If your community is facing an emergency situation and you need additional moderators more immediately, consider using the Moderator Reserves system to request temporary assistance from experienced volunteer moderators.  

Contact us

We are here to help. Please make sure to report rule breaking content and reach out to us anytime you need us. 

Most importantly, take care of yourself.

Dealing with a crisis in your community can be overwhelming, especially since it may be tied to a crisis you’re already dealing with in your real life and out in the world. Don’t feel obligated to moderate through the stress and anxiety you may be feeling. Take a break, breathe, and remember to be kind to yourself, your team, and your community.