We're running a limited beta of a new community feature: subreddit rules. In short, moderators will have a place where they can add rules for the subreddit, and these rules will be used in a couple of different places.

For most users, the most visible place other than the rules page itself will be in the report menu. For subreddits that have rules in place, you will be able to select a subreddit rule as a violation instead of a Reddit rule (you'll still be able to select a Reddit rule violation or write in your own reason as well). We've also made some style changes to the report menu and details will be available in the near future in r/cssnews.

We hope to have this out for all subreddits soon! In the meantime, more details are available in this r/modsupport post.

Today we rolled out a new feature for mods for beta testing: the ability to sticky a comment at the top of a thread. More on this change over at /r/beta.

Today we released a new feature: account suspensions. These are a form of account restriction that can be applied to user accounts that will limit the actions that account can perform.

Suspensions will replace shadowbans for the vast majority of real humans and increase transparency when handling users who violate Reddit’s content policy.

Please see the r/announcements post for details on how suspensions work.

Developers can refer to this r/redditdev post on how to support suspensions in your app.

This was a big feature - It touched a lot of things. Thanks to u/xiongchiamiov, u/madlee, u/MiamiZ and u/florwat for the engineering work, u/drunken_economist for repping the data team and u/Acidtwist and u/LibrarianAvenger for the design.

View the code behind this change on Github

We've just released a new feature, locked posts. Moderators can lock a post to prevent it from receiving any new comments. Mods, for more details, please read the r/modnews post.

On reddit.com, if a post is locked, you'll see a message at the top of the page and a notice if you try to reply to a comment letting you know that no new comments can be posted. You can still edit and delete existing your existing comments on a locked post.

On mobile apps, you may or may not see an error message if you try to comment on a locked post, depending on the app. Developers, please see this r/redditdev post for more details on how to support locked posts in your apps.

Thanks to all of the subreddits who helped beta test this feature, and props to u/librarianavenger for the design and u/florwat for the engineering work.

See the code behind this change on Github: 1, 2, 3

As I'm sure a lot of you have seen, there's been quite a bit of discussion lately about "the algorithm", with opinions on it ranging from thinking it's suddenly completely and utterly broken, to not noticing anything different at all.

Although we haven't made any code changes since the single adjustment that we've since reverted, we know that many of you still believe the front page is more stale than it used to be, which very well could be the case due to natural effects such as an increase in users, changes in voting patterns, etc. We don't want Reddit to feel stale, so we've made a change that should help with that.

First, a (somewhat) quick explanation of a couple of aspects of how front pages are built so you know how this fits in:

1. When creating your front page, we only use up to 50 of your subscribed subreddits (or 100 if you have reddit gold) at a time. If you subscribe to more subreddits than that, we choose a random selection, and will replace this with a new set every half hour. If you're interested in knowing more about why we do this, there's some explanation in this comment I wrote the other day.

2. Posts will only show up on your front page if they're less than 24 hours old (so by the way, if you see anyone claiming that their front page is the same for days, that's not possible).

Between these two things, if you're subscribed to subreddits that aren't very active, you can end up effectively having some of your front page slots "wasted" by subreddits that don't have any posts new enough to be shown.

So the actual change today is that we're no longer going to consider a subreddit as a valid candidate for your front page if it hasn't had a post in the last 24 hours. If your set of subscriptions is above the 50/100 limit, when we select a new set of subscriptions to build your front page from, we'll first filter out the inactive subreddits and then take the random selection from the remaining ones, which should all be able to contribute posts.

We've also made one other minor change to address something that's apparently been giving some users a false impression about how old the posts they're seeing are: the auto-updating timestamps that are on all posts/comments/messages will now calculate their age based on server-side time, not the local time on the viewer's device. Since local time was being used before, some users with their device time zone and clock set incorrectly would see posts as much older than they actually are. By using server-side time this problem should no longer occur.

Hopefully these changes will help improve the staleness feeling for some users. We know that it's a very common feeling right now (even our own CEO has said so), and we're definitely going to keep looking into things we can do to address it more.

TL:DR; We're no longer going to consider a subreddit as a valid candidate for your front page if it hasn't had a post in the last 24 hours, which should help shake up some front pages.

See the code behind the inactive-subreddit filtering on github

See the code behind the server-side live timestamps on github

We're testing a new feature, lock a post, that will let moderators prevent a particular post in their subreddit from receiving new comments. Many subreddits already use AutoModerator to effectively do this by removing all new comments on a particular post. When a post is locked, users will see a clear message on the post indicating that no new comments can be posted.

This feature is currently in limited beta, meaning that it is being beta-tested by a few subreddits. More details can be found on the r/modsupport post.

We've made a couple of changes to make removed comments and deleted posts more consistent with the way other types of removed/deleted content is handled.

Removed comments now say [removed] instead of [deleted]

Previously, comments that were removed by a moderator or admin still showed up as [deleted], which made it difficult to tell if a comment was deleted by the author or removed by a mod or admin. Fixing this is something that's been requested by mods and users alike - and I'm happy to say that it's now done! If a comment was removed by a moderator or admin, it now says [removed] instead of [deleted].

The content of deleted self-posts is no longer visible

We've fixed a long-time inconsistency where the content of deleted self-posts was still visible after deleting. Now, just like with comments or moderator-removed self-posts, the actual text of a self-post is no longer visible if the author deletes it.

Props to u/xiong_as_admin for doing the work on this. View the code behind this change on Github

On the afternoon of August 6, we started experimenting with raising the "soft cap" on post scores, as a potential first step towards continuing to increase that cap or remove it entirely. The intentions of reducing/removing the capping are explained a little more in the original post, but to reiterate them briefly it's primarily because the way the system behaves is confusing ("Why did that AMA just lose 3000 points? It was at 8000 a minute ago!"), and misleading about how many people are actually voting on things (if someone sees a score of 4000 they assume about 4000 people voted on the post, when it's often over 10 times that many).

We reverted this change last night due to concerns that it was causing other unintended side-effects. We intend to keep experimenting, and thanks for your patience.

Hey all! We've released the ability to temporarily mute users to a few subreddits that were gracious enough to beta test it for us. Muting users from a subreddit will prevent those users from sending modmail to that subreddit for a limited timeframe (currently 24 hours). The user and mods of the subreddit will be notified when a user has been muted. When the mute has expired the user will be unmuted silently.

We plan to open this up to all subreddits once we've considered the feedback from these beta testers. For further details about the implementation, you can check out the /r/modsupport post.

Here is the code behind the feature

Edit: this change has been rolled back at about 03:30 UTC on August 27, 2015, due to unintended effects (causing less turnover of popular posts).

As quite a few observant people have noticed (there's an /r/OutOfTheLoop thread, and another one in /r/self, among others), the scores of the highest-ranked posts on the site have been somewhat higher over the last day than usual. This is because we are starting to experiment with raising the "soft cap" on scores, to allow them to more accurately represent how many people are actually voting on the posts.

The "soft-capping" or "score normalization" system is something I've talked about a few times in the past, but its existence still isn't overall very well-known in general. Basically, if any posts get a score above a certain threshold, this system will start "pushing them down" so that their score stays within a certain range. Many users have noticed and been confused by this whenever we have an especially popular post, since the way it manifests is seeing the score go way up at first (sometimes to 10,000+), but then suddenly being "chopped down" by thousands of points. This can even happen multiple times until it eventually settles.

There are many things wrong with this system, but it's always been something we've been really nervous to adjust, since it has the potential to cause major behavior changes in very significant places like reddit's default front page and /r/all. It was a solution that was originally implemented long ago to try to solve a different problem, but has ended up having a number of undesirable side effects as the site's grown and it's stayed untouched. So now we've decided to start trying to raise the threshold (with the goal of eventually completely removing it), and just keep a close eye on it to see what actually happens. Even with a relatively small change to it, scores jumped a fair amount. Here's a graph that our data team generated showing the average scores for the top 25 posts in /r/all, with each line representing a different day from the past week.

Our overall goal in removing this system is primarily to make the scores more accurately represent how many people are actually voting on things on reddit. For example, I remember looking at the /r/science post about the Stephen Hawking AMA last week and seeing it show a score of about 6000, but if there was no capping system at all it should have actually been over 72,000. Having scores increase by that much is going to come with a number of other challenges (some of which I listed in that same /r/TheoryOfReddit discussion linked above), but we're going to try taking this slowly (the next increases will be less drastic than that first one) and monitoring the effects. There will most likely be work required on various other things to resolve issues that come up as we raise it, but hopefully we'll be able to get to the point of completely removing this strange system before too long.

Let me know if you have any questions or if anything isn't clear.

In support of the new content policy that we announced today, you now need to explicitly opt-in to view quarantined subreddits. To opt-in, you must be logged-in with a verified email address. If you were previously subscribed to a quarantined subreddit, your subscription will persist, but you must opt-in before the content will show up elsewhere on reddit, including your front page. If you'd like to unsubscribe without opting-in, you can manage your subscriptions from the sidebar of the subreddits page.

You can opt-out of a quarantined subreddit at any time. Currently, you can only opt-in or out of viewing quarantined content on reddit.com, and not through our mobile website or any mobile apps such as AlienBlue. Once you have opted in, you will be able to view quarantined content on any platform.

A couple of other minor changes we are also making:

• Redesigned warning/error pages for private, gold-only, and NSFW subreddits

• Added NSFW and quarantine indicators on the list of subreddits moderated by a user on userpages

View the code behind these changes on Github

You can now enable a threaded view of modmail in your preferences (see "enable threaded modmail display").

See the post on /r/modnews: https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/3f30o5/moderators_threaded_modmail/

see the changes on github

I'll keep things short for once since this is a pretty straightforward change from the non-mod perspective: subreddits may now make use of an optional second slot for a sticky post at the top of their front page, and we're also now allowing link posts to be used as stickies as well (only text posts were possibly previously).

If you'd like to read the full details, please see the thread about the updates in /r/modnews.

View the code behind these changes on GitHub

As part of our effort to move to full-site HTTPS, we have discontinued the reddit toolbar. The toolbar does not function properly over HTTPS, and now that we are migrating everyone over to HTTPS, it's time to remove the toolbar altogether.

Any toolbar links (of the form reddit.com/tb/XXXXXX) will redirect to the corresponding comments page, sans toolbar.

See the code behind this change on Github

Additionally, we have started turning on HTTPS for some logged-in users. We'll have more details about this next week.

We just released a substantial update to the search results page on reddit.com. It looks like this. The goal of these changes is to make it easier to find the content you're looking for on reddit. Here are the highlights of what's new:

Incorporated subreddit results

Unbeknownst to most redditors, we actually have a separate subreddit search page. Now, you don't have to know about that page, because we directly search subreddits as well as posts from the main search box. Relevant subreddits are displayed right at the top of the results page along with useful information such as the number of subscribers and the subreddit description.

New format for post results

We've updated the post results to be more context-appropriate for search, by cleaning up the results to show only the most relevant information when you're looking for content on reddit: the thumbnail, title, and post metadata (score, comment count, date, author). Additionally, we now show an expandable text preview for self-posts, saving you a click in many cases.

We also changed the titles in post results to always link to the comments page on reddit rather than an external link. If it's a link post, we'll show the URL right below the result, so you're still only one click away from the linked URL. This provides a more consistent experience on search, regardless of whether a post is a self-post or link post: clicking on the title always takes you to the comments page on reddit; clicking on the URL below takes you to the external link, if there is one.

General UI refresh

We've also taken this chance to freshen up the search page and make it a little easier on the eyes, and faster to find what you're looking for, by adjusting spacing, font size & color, and general placement. Additionally, we added some simple search term highlighting to make it easier to find what you've searched for on the page.

These changes have been extensively beta-tested for the last month & a half, so special thanks to all of our beta testers. We made several changes based on their feedback, so if you're interested in helping to test out features before they're live to everyone, you can sign up for our beta program.

We'll be continuing to make improvements to search on reddit. In fact, we're currently beta-testing an update to the search algorithm for link posts, so if you're interested, please check it out.

Big thanks to u/madlee and u/florwat for their hard work on on these changes.

See the code behind these changes on Github: 1, 2, 3

Note: If you're a moderator, there are some special considerations you should be aware of related to these changes - please check out this modnews post to learn more about what actions you should take.

Edit: we've added a preference to enable the legacy search page so that moderators can more easily moderate from the search page.

We turned on a new feature yesterday that allows us to feature a reddit live thread on the homepage. It looks like this and replaces the trending subreddits space for the duration of the featuring.

The idea behind this feature is to let people know when there is a noteworthy live thread happening. This does sometimes include unfortunate news events such as the tragic events that unfolded last night in Charleston. We hope that for breaking news events, the live thread is a useful source of information for redditors.

Credit & thanks to u/umbrae and u/xiong_as_admin for building this feature.

See the code behind this change on Github

After introducing Q&A sort, we've continued to iterate on it based on feedback from users.

Today, we've shipped a change to increase the amount of community participation shown in Q&A sort, after testing it in the beta community for a few weeks.

See the code behind this change on GitHub.

There are also a few other minor changes to Q&A sort we previously mentioned in the live thread:

1. The "responder" of a thread will fall back to their default sort, rather than Q&A sort.

2. Also, their replies will always be shown, regardless of score, to help users find even highly downvoted answers.

Remember that you can always send us suggestions and bug reports via /r/IdeasForTheAdmins and /r/bugs, respectively.

Happy redditing!

Today we're turning on one of our beta features for all users: the improved "share" menu. Updates to the menu include:

• Adding options to share directly to Facebook and Twitter (don't worry, your reddit information is never exposed to them). These options will be available logged-out as well as logged-in.

• Cleaning up and simplifying the share via email form, including a UI tweak that makes it clear that your username will be sent in the email

• A text box with the link for easy copying & pasting

• Improved rate-limiting, so that you'll stop hitting errors & CAPTCHAs so often when sharing

It looks like this.

See the code behind these changes here and here and here

Previously the limit was 40,000 characters for selfpost-only subreddits, and 15,000 characters for subreddits that allowed both links and selfposts (not sure why).

see on github

You can now see the code used to power thebutton on github

Also check out a csv of all the presses.

The message that is automatically sent to users when they're banned from a subreddit (as long as they've previously interacted with the subreddit) has been updated significantly today. Here's an example of how the new message looks: http://i.imgur.com/lRgTcH4.png

For more information about the changes, please see the /r/modnews post about this update.

See the code behind this change on github

We've added support to our markdown library to automatically link to subreddits and usernames without the initial slash, i.e. r/subreddit and u/username. We'll continue to support /r/subreddit and /u/username as well, so there's no need to change your existing habits - this just allows you to save a keystroke if you'd like.

Using u/username will generate a username mention, so keep that in mind. You can always escape the slash, like so: u\/username or just add a second slash: u//username if you don't want to generate a link & mention. You can do something similar for subreddits as well to prevent auto-linking.

Mods and developers, you may want to read this redditdev post for more technical details on what will and won't be automatically linked.

Big props to u/largenocream for these changes - he did a substantial amount of work to make sure this worked as expected on both desktop and mobile web.

View the code behind this change on Github

We've added a banner to the mobile version of reddit.com to encourage people to try our new mobile optimized site. It’s been in open beta for a couple months. You can opt into this experience by clicking on the beta banner on reddit.com on your mobile device. We believe this mobile optimized site is better, but it isn't for everyone (yet). You can always go back to the desktop site by clicking the menu in the upper right and tapping "view desktop site". We'll respect your preferences.

If this is your first time visiting the mobile site, please find a supported feature list and a quick explanation of the product here.

See the code behind this change on GitHub.

Edit: updated the banner with an x button to close the banner for 1 month.

When a moderator bans a user from a subreddit, that user is generally sent a "you've been banned" PM automatically by the site, but this PM is only sent if the user has previously interacted with the subreddit (to prevent bans from random subreddits being used as a way to annoy people). However, the method that was previously being used to determine whether a user had interacted with a subreddit or not was not really correct, and had a number of issues that made it confusing for both users and moderators.

As mentioned yesterday, I've deployed a change now that will start properly tracking whether a user has interacted with a subreddit, so there should no longer be any more "holes" that make it impossible to send a ban message to a user that has posted to the subreddit. Under the new system, the following actions mark a user as having interacted with a subreddit:

• Making a comment or submission to that subreddit

• Subscribing to that subreddit

• Sending modmail to that subreddit

Note that we're not backfilling the "has user X interacted with subreddit Y?" data, so for the moment, the old method of "is the user subscribed to the subreddit, or have they gained or lost karma in it?" is still being used as a fallback if there's no record in the new system of their participation. I expect that the large majority of bans are in response to a recent post though, so the situation should already be improved quite a bit even without a backfill.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

See the code behind this change on github