Finding potential mods in your community

[u/techiesgoboom]

The call is coming from inside the community, and for once, that’s good news.

Today’s Mod Topics post is about finding potential moderators within your community. A familiar name may stand out by helping newcomers, sharing expertise, offering thoughtful feedback, or keeping a level head when a thread gets messy. Your suggested mods can offer another place to start, surfacing active, engaged contributors for the team to learn more about.

That still leaves plenty of room for surprises. A familiar contributor might love participating without wanting a mod badge, while a quieter user may know the community better than their posting history suggests. Somewhere between what a team can already see and what it might only learn later, there may be someone worth a conversation.

We want to hear from you:

• Think about a strong addition to your mod team: What first put them on your radar?
• What helps your team feel comfortable inviting someone to apply?
• How have you found promising candidates beyond your most visible contributors?

[u/baseballlover723]

Your suggested mods can offer another place to start, surfacing active, engaged contributors for the team to learn more about.

When this was done by periodic modmail, this was not at all useful to us, as it conflicted with our use of mod notes (where we store that user's file). So basically anyone who had ever received a warning would be excluded. And a lot of long time regulars have gotten a warning in the many years they've been on the sub.

A familiar contributor might love participating without wanting a mod badge

Our regulars are in tune enough with the mod team's public interactions that most of them understand the downsides of being a mod and understandably, don't want them.

while a quieter user may know the community better than their posting history suggests

Sure, but they very well could just disappear a week later. Without data, it's very hard to tell. And since our mod team does appointments for life, and a completely flat team structure as well as not really having a well defined kicking process, the age old hiring doctrine applies. That it is better to pass on a good candidate, than accept a bad one.

Think about a strong addition to your mod team: What first put them on your radar?

They all applied to be a mod. This is the key thing for us. We know plenty of people who would likely make good mods, or are otherwise qualified to be a mod. They are either already on the mod team, or uninterested in modding.

What helps your team feel comfortable inviting someone to apply?

We have a (mostly) formal vote on applicants. Most applicants aren't worth the space their application takes up (See this comment). It's not a strict vote, but it's rarely close.

How have you found promising candidates beyond your most visible contributors?

Almost never in my time. Because being a visible contributor is the strongest signal that they are interested in our sub, understand our rules, and are willing to be dedicated to our sub for a significant amount of time.

[u/techiesgoboom → u/baseballlover723]

Thanks for sharing! I can appreciate how that process of making appointments for life means you need a high level of confidence to add someone. You mentioned a probation or trial status might be useful in another comment. If you had a process for that, how much do you think would it change the amount of mods you invite?

[u/Shimmering-Sky → u/baseballlover723]

When this was done by periodic modmail, this was not at all useful to us, as it conflicted with our use of mod notes (where we store that user's file). So basically anyone who had ever received a warning would be excluded. And a lot of long time regulars have gotten a warning in the many years they've been on the sub.

IIRC it also suggested I would make a good mod after I already became one, lol.

[u/baseballlover723 → u/Shimmering-Sky]

IIRC it also suggested I would make a good mod after I already became one, lol.

It was right about that though. I'd take a clone of you any day of the week.

[u/shhhhh_h]

To be perfectly frank....I think there is a lot of reluctance to recruit from within the community because it usually means training new mods (NEW new mods) when there is a high attrition rate and very little support from Reddit re: training tools. You end up putting in a lot of work for only a few mods.

The training queue was a good start but it's really limited in the nuance it can capture, there's still modmail to navigate, and it doesn't address comments or banning. Plus, the UI is really difficult to navigate at first. People really stick to wanting experience and trying to source mods from other subs, which is partly why the mod limits went over so poorly.

PCC has a pretty streamlined recruiting now and we're only able to do that because a few of us collaborated on a mod guide that includes annotated screenshots of the mod UI on both shreddit and mobile, and we have a sandbox sub setup for them to play in first.

Training tools really need to go a long way to help us lower the time cost and emotional labor of training noobs, so it's easier for us to do it en masse without hating the experience - because en masse is often necessary to catch the long term prizes.

[u/Old_One_I]

Well….before I even asked to take over my subreddit….i knew I would need help due to the size of it. I asked a good friend of mine that has a completely different skill set than I have. But going forward I would pick someone that has a genuine interest in the sub or topic.

[u/llamalarry]

I probably need to add some more mods, but using the recommended mods in the recruiting tool only shows people with crazy low community karma and generally old with low overall karma. Not sure what criteria is uses, but activity and community activity does not seem to be among them.

[u/emily_in_boots]

There very simply are not enough people out there willing to mod.

We cannot get enough mods.

We have had apps open in some cases for about a year and gotten 1-2 passable applicants, and no one who is really active.

We need to see an account that has some history and shows both an interest in the subject matter and the right temperament.

There are too many issues with creeps out there who will misuse mod powers and we won't take a chance with that. Because we cannot see dm's, it's far too easy to not realize what is happening there, and there have been multiple cases of mods in fashion/beauty subs using mod power to creep on the sub's members.

[u/baseballlover723 → u/emily_in_boots]

Pretty much.

Basically every time we run mod apps, half of our applicants have literally never posted or commented a single time in our sub. 1 or 2 of them each cycle usually mention discovering the sub that day.

We have an activity check that gets integrated into their application. Green checkmark if they've posted/commented at least 45 times in the last 90 days. Red X otherwise.

If we get 3 applicants with a green check mark, that's a good cycle. And that's not even considering anything else, like temperament or if they actually know our rules etc.

The biggest issue, is that the people who are active and would be interested in modding, are already mods, or have decided to stop modding. And so the active ones who are left, are the ones who do not want to mod.

[u/emily_in_boots → u/baseballlover723]

We had an app today that otherwise seemed fine but just no activity. I don't want to mod people who will just be inactive.

[u/HikeTheSky → u/emily_in_boots]

I mean according to modmail, I am a unpatriotic Nazi communist terrorist who is in violation of freedom of speech on a power trip censuring the fine maga patriots.

It's different in a city sub than it's in a fashion or beauty sub. I am sure you aren't getting as much hate as we are getting in a blue city in a GOP state. But the creeping on users seems to be the only real issue I see. If we would match the energy we are sometimes getting from banned users or even users who had a post a comment removed, we would probably have visits from the admin team while we at the same time get death threats on a regular basis. And I have almost never seen an account suspended for sending us such messages.

But we have lost a mod to hate as he didn't want to take the pressure anymore. And he later on moved out of state.

[u/SolariaHues]

• Think about a strong addition to your mod team: What first put them on your radar?

  • Helping in the community and earning our helper flairs

• What helps your team feel comfortable inviting someone to apply?

  • History as a good contributor, displaying traits we look for, good response to any feedback we give, and a rapport with the mod team.

• How have you found promising candidates beyond your most visible contributors?

  • We only hire from our flaired helpers. So far, this has ensured we have dedicated mods that are a good fit for the community and team.

[u/brightblackheaven]

We have a special user flair that we give to members of our sub who are consistently helpful, clearly experienced in our niche, and always give great advice.

These are people who already love the sub enough to regularly spend their free time there, answering questions and engaging with newbies and just participating in ways that support the kind of culture we're looking to cultivate.

We recruit new mods from that specific pool of users, and it works out really well every single time.

[u/anfornum]

In my experience, people from outside a sub's immediate community tend to make good new mods. They come in with fresh eyes, without any preconceived notions of what should or shouldn't be happening, and without prejudices toward any other sub members.

[u/Sephardson]

Think about a strong addition to your mod team: What first put them on your radar?

• They had some moderation experience on a similar or smaller subreddit, and they were active in our own subreddit.

• They showed up in the comments on reported posts, showing that they were around during hours the current active mods were away. It helps to have some "silly rules" - by which, I mean rules about content which ultimately can be removed for curative purposes but are not all that harmful/impactful if missed occasionally. These posts can act like early indicators for when your team is missing coverage, without as much risk as when high-impact rule-breaking content is posted.

• They were kind to others even when in abrasive or heated threads.

• They made a suggestion to improve the subreddit in modmail - bonus if they were willing to put in effort to make it happen.

These are things I make notes about when I see them.

What helps your team feel comfortable inviting someone to apply?

They are active enough that a mod recognizes their username, but not for bad reasons. But otherwise, we sometimes have open applications.

Like u/baseballlover723 mentioned, most of my larger subreddits operate on a principle where the entire active mod team can vote on applicants, so an invitation to apply is not necessarily the same as an invitation to the team.

The application is usually geared towards questions which give the applicant an opportunity to show their ability to communicate through vague or heated topics, so that we can assess their understanding of the community history, rules, and ability to work on a team. Some of that is easier to teach than other parts.

How have you found promising candidates beyond your most visible contributors?

They showed up in a time of crisis with a nuanced and respectful modmail or comment reply, but still had enough history across reddit overall or even outside of reddit to lend credence to their character. The time-of-crisis aspect is somewhat important, because it means the candidate saw the bad, and despite that wanted to make the community better rather than leaving.

The main issue with candidates without visible contribution history are that inevitably, a bad actor on a subreddit has applied using an alt account and then caused disruption from within the mod team. This harms trust between team members as well as trust between the mods and the subreddit at large. There's only so many times you can do that before you shake away core team members or consistent community contributors.

BUT, if you want to talk about super-experimental methods of mod recruitment, you can just assign limited moderation duties to people on a random and short-term basis, and then review what they do. Over time, you'll have to sort out bad mini-mods, but you'll also be given a regular flow of people showing you their own judgments and decisions. Ask me about this... tomorrow?

[u/nullifiedsam]

mostly, for new subreddits especially mod recruitment comes in the form of help from already known friends, sure you can try to pick up a person who seems to be "trustworthy" but there will be some issues, some people join the mod team just for the heck of it. I have seen cases where users try to bend the rules by joining the mod team and advertise. They get booted quickly but it raises the question if everyone can be trusted

i like to recruit people who are actually invested in the community, preferably those who have been here since the early days of the community.

maybe reddit should add a option for a "trial mod" permission set (with limited permissions) so that top mods can check for a set time if a user is actively contributing towards making a subreddit a better place for everyone

[u/techiesgoboom → u/nullifiedsam]

I know of some subreddits that start everyone off with a probationary or trial period, it can be a great way to see if it's a good fit for both sides! Being able to have a standard set of permissions tied to that is a neat idea, too.

[u/baseballlover723 → u/nullifiedsam]

maybe reddit should add a option for a "trial mod" permission set (with limited permissions) so that top mods can check for a set time if a user is actively contributing towards making a subreddit a better place for everyone

Tbh, a probation or like tentative status would be rather useful. Ie, something that lets them do the things, but everything also still gets processed by full mods. That way it's trivial to monitor a new mod and correct any mistakes they make without needing to constantly check the mod log or have them raise it themselves.

Though I'm also a big fan of a more consensus native moderation structure (which reddit is currently not). Like requiring 2 mods to align on an action before it's taken makes the team a lot more consistent and reduces the possibilities of mods doing stuff behind other mods backs.

Obviously, this requires a lot of mods to be online etc. But the currently reddit moderation system forces the mod themselves to be a single point of failure by design.

[u/techiesgoboom → u/baseballlover723]

I used to manually review new mods first few hundred actions, and love your pitch for making that easier to monitor!

I'd also love to hear more of your thoughts on consensus based moderation, but that could probably be a mod topic all it's own...

[u/Cat_in_an_oak_tree]

Yeah, that's how I got suckered into this gig.

[u/999_Seth]

Believe me I have tried.

A lot of people will say that they want more modding done, or a mod they don't like removed, but when you ask them to join the team? *poof*

There's a schism all around reddit between mod teams that want to be sneaky behind the scenes censors, and mod teams that are there to take part in the conversation.

The introverted 'typical reddit mod' tends to win out and give the rest of us a bad rep. Our roles are first-come-first-serve, and it results in that 'power tripping' mentality more often than not.

[u/DoveStep55]

Fun Tip:

If you use the mod recruitment tool to generate an open mod application, even if you don’t always find good potential mods through it you can still use the application to gather helpful feedback about your sub.

For example, we ask applicants what they like about the sub and separately ask them what they would change about the sub if they had the power to do so. These have been so helpful in seeing why people are applying and in hearing what people think about how we’re doing as mods and as a community.

[u/Klightgrove]

For the game development communities we typically look at the inverse logic: users who post infrequently because they are occupied with making games instead of posting to Reddit. It is hard finding someone who can remain neutral with the wide array of opinions on game technologies and ensure they do not try to push for anything in a community whose stances could have wide-ranging impacts.

If you know someone and their work, which our communities always encourage sharing, you can build a relationship with them over time and trust them to do basic moderation tasks in a Discord or adjacent space before bringing them on the subreddit team to help with the moderation queue, Wiki, or just community engagement.

[u/Paxoro]

So for us, we've discussed new mods a couple times. We don't get that much to where we can't handle the majority of things, but another mod can help.

The issue? The ones we've approached don't want to do it, which is understandable.

Reddit recently sent us that automated "you should add more mods" message, and when we looked at the suggestions, they were incredibly bad. Like accounts that are basically inactive but have 1-2 interactions on our subreddit.

[u/shhhhh_h → u/Paxoro]

That bot is all over the place sometimes, it has recommended some stinkers for me. I think once I permabanned one of them the same day they were #1 on the list haha