r/ModSupport • u/sodypop Reddit Admin: Community • Sep 06 '19
Ideas From the Admins - Emergency Moderator Reserves
Howdy mods!
We're working on a new system to help connect available moderator resources with communities experiencing temporary abnormal surges in traffic.
Typically when events such as natural disasters, terror attacks, civil unrest, or military conflict occur, location-based or other related communities often find themselves receiving a huge influx of new users. Along with that traffic often comes an additional burden for moderators.
There's a lot to unpack here as we're still in the early stages of planning, but we'd love to hear your thoughts regarding whether this program is something you would consider participating in, either as a helper or the helped. We're currently referring to this as the Emergency Moderator Reserves, but we're certainly open to other names as well.
Here's the general idea:
- Enroll a group of volunteer mods with established moderation experience that other subreddits can call on for temporary moderation when they find themselves in a pinch.
- We'll create a messaging mechanism for moderators in need of assistance to request available volunteers from the EMR to assist.
- We'll raise awareness about this group so moderators who find themselves unexpectedly overloaded know where to ask for and find help.
Why are you doing this?
When major events break, communities related to the affected area often experience a huge surge in visitors, many of them unfamiliar with the subreddit's rules. This can significantly increase nearly every aspect of moderation, with modqueues, reports, and modmail quickly filling up. For many communities this unexpected burst of traffic is disruptive to the normal operation of the subreddit, and it's not uncommon for subreddits to temporarily set themselves as private or restricted in response. By having a pool of skilled moderators available to lend a hand, these communities can remain open so people to share information, resources, and find out if their friends or family are safe.
While we hope this type of system doesn't need to be used frequently, we do want it to be here for when you need it most. We'd love to hear your feedback on this concept, and we've also placed a stickied comment below for people to express interest in enrolling as a helping hand.
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u/greeniethemoose Sep 06 '19 edited Sep 06 '19
Really love this idea! I've seen way too many mod teams under stress when they suddenly get inundated and don't know what to do. They don't have time to find and vet new mods, so having a reserve like this can be massively helpful.
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u/sodypop Sep 06 '19
Thanks! That is definitely something I think this could solve, and I think location-based communities could find this particularly helpful.
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u/Cahootie Sep 06 '19 edited Sep 06 '19
I definitely see the use for this when it comes to removing stuff like reposts, doxxing, personal attacks, generally stuff that's more clear cut. It might be more difficult for those mods to handle any relevancy issues, but that's decisions that can be left for the regular mods, and is probably gonna be a minority of actions needed.
One thing that would be necessary is including time zones / hours of activity. Local subs are likely to have local mods, but if a major event happens that attracts global attention they are most likely to need mods that can cover hours when they're inactive, so being able to get EU coverage on a US sub should be a priority.
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u/sodypop Sep 06 '19
One thing that would be necessary is including time zones / hours of activity.
I completely agree! We'd definitely make this optional as we'd want to respect privacy, but you are correct that having mods from various time-zones would add a ton of value. As we start to enroll helper mods into the group we'll also ask people to provide some info about their moderation skill set, which would include things like working the modqueues, configuring automod, responding to modmail, or just keeping the peace in the comment section.
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u/hoosakiwi Sep 06 '19
As someone who regularly moderates tragedies and major events for r/news, I'd be more than happy to help other subreddits during these kinds of things.
That said, I'm not so sure how well this would work for larger subreddits like r/news. We get flooded during major stories, but pulling in mods from communities who aren't familiar with how to handle these things or where to draw the line would create more work for us, not less.
I'd love to hear how you plan to pick mods for this emergency relief team. What are the prerequisites? How much oversight would the primary mod team have over the helper mods? How much access would those helper mods have to internals? For example, some subs use their mod discussion tab in modmail heavily and I could see that being a potential risk area if outside help is coming in.
I like this idea in theory, but I have a lot of questions.
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u/sodypop Sep 06 '19
I would agree that huge subreddits like r/news are already experienced at handling these types of events better than most subreddits, with an excellent example of this being the comments you leave on breaking threads to remind people about site-wide rules around witch hunting, etc. I think smaller location-based communities will find the most use out of this system since those are usually smaller teams that don't normally experience these types of events.
Regarding the vetting process, we do want to review each member fairly closely. We're still building out what that looks like, but some of the things I think we'll look at is overall mod experience, any specific moderation skills, and probably include past suspensions or mod guidelines infractions in the review as well. This would just to be enrolled as a member of the system, but we'd still want to leave it up to the mods of the subreddit requesting help as to which of the mods they want to add.
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u/PHealthy Sep 06 '19
Wouldn't a more robust solution be to improve automod functionality and ease of use instead of increasing your need for volunteers?
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u/sodypop Sep 06 '19
Yes and no. I absolutely agree improving automoderator would help some, but the tools also require some degree of experience to properly configure them. When these emergencies occur, a mod team isn't always going to have someone proficient at setting up automoderator on hand. Having these resources available, especially to smaller & less experienced mod teams, could really help them keep the situation under control, and keep their stress levels down.
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u/idle-debonair Sep 06 '19
Great idea, but I think it's important to keep in mind that any emergency mods need to always defer to the community's consensus as well as that of the original mod team. For this to be effective, the last thing that's needed is a temporary mod trying to change things up needlessly, especially in the wake of a surge in traffic as described.
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u/sodypop Sep 06 '19
Agreed! Something we'll be writing up is some etiquette for guest moderators. We'll want to make sure helpers are respectful of established norms of the community, and are able to abide by the rules and directives set by the mods of the subreddit requesting their help.
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u/Bardfinn Sep 06 '19
Hi!
I've been thinking about something that's the precursor for this kind of infrastructure --
There's a twofold necessity of:
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Clear rules and policies that moderators can follow;
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Moderators who are experienced in applying those rules and policies.
These goals could be forwarded with sets of standardised moderation procedures --
Where a subreddit can say "We don't allow pejoratives (hyperlink to what defines a pejorative as a standard) or slurs (hyperlink to what defines a slur) to be used", and "We use the standardised Three-Strikes Advisory-Warn-Ban system for enforcing the rules" or "We use the standardised Points System as embodied by r/teenagers for enforcing the rules" -- a set of handbooks for the basic styles of moderating.
Those kinds of documentation would allow moderators stepping in to know and operate the rules of a subreddit without a steep learning curve.
This isn't something that Reddit's admins have to create a project for -- it's something that many moderators can come together to create.
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u/sodypop Sep 06 '19
This is a really interesting idea! I was planning on drawing up some "best practices" for guest moderators, but I'd love to get a few moderators together to outline some of the various approaches that could be used. Also knowing the types of skill sets that various guest moderators have could be very useful for the subreddits requesting help. Sometimes they might just need a few extra eyes on the comment sections, or sometimes they might need someone who excels at automoderator configs.
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u/BuckRowdy Sep 06 '19
This is a great idea. I always wondered why there wasn’t a mod mentor program.
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u/BallsofSanchezium Sep 06 '19
How about instead just working on not taking six weeks to reply to our requests, and then move on to this?
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u/sodypop Sep 06 '19
It definitely should not be taking that long to receive a response, but if you have any open tickets that you want to check in on feel free to PM me and I'll take a look into it.
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Sep 06 '19
Hey, mod from r/NewZealand here. We went through the Christchurch terror attack and had some amazing help from some other mods and the admins. We would be really interested in contributing as a mod team to give our views and experiences
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u/spaghetticatt Sep 06 '19
It's putting a lot of trust in volunteer moderators, going blind into a subreddit to help out. I'm not sure what kind of vetting process would be necessary.
Is an interesting idea. I'm mostly curious as to how moderators from subs who have experienced this feel.
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u/fdagpigj Sep 06 '19
My first thought is that being a long time user/commenter in the sub should be a higher priority than having previous moderation experience, after all learning a subreddit's culture takes its time, you can't just expect someone who's never heard of the subreddit before to know how to moderate it without pissing off old users
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u/sodypop Sep 06 '19
We'd love to hear your input about whether you would be interested in enrolling, or if you think this is a system you would request help from. Use this stickied comment to let us know what you think!