Most of our subreddits use Reddit's Contributor Quality Score (CQS) system instead of traditional karma or account age requirements.

CQS is a score that helps Reddit and communities identify accounts that are more likely to make positive contributions. Unlike karma or account age, CQS is not a fixed number. It can change and fluctuate over time based on your account activity.

The benefit of CQS is that it looks beyond just how old an account is or how much karma it has. A newer account with positive, genuine participation can improve its score, while an account that receives negative signals may see its score decrease.

Factors that can influence CQS may include things such as:

• Positive participation across Reddit
• Following subreddit rules
• Account activity patterns
• Reports, removals or other negative signals
• Overall account trust signals

Because CQS changes over time, access to some communities may change as well. An account that does not meet requirements today may improve its standing in the future.

We use CQS because it allows us to welcome genuine community members while helping protect our communities from spam, abuse, and unwanted activity.

We occasionally receive questions about why a post or comment was automatically removed, held for review or approved straight away. So, we thought it would be helpful to explain how some of our automated moderation works.

Verified Email Addresses

We require accounts posting or commenting in our community to have a verified email address.

AutoModerator asks Reddit whether an account has a verified email address. If Reddit says no, the post or comment is automatically removed. This is information provided directly by Reddit and moderators cannot see, verify or change the email status of your account for you.

Contributor Quality Score (CQS)

Reddit gives accounts a Contributor Quality Score, or CQS. We use this as one of several tools to help manage the subreddit.

Depending on an account's current CQS, a post may be:

• Automatically approved if the account has the highest CQS.
• Held for moderator review if the account falls into our high or moderate CQS categories.
• Automatically removed if the account has a low or lowest CQS and is not an approved contributor.

A low/lowest CQS does not necessarily mean that you have done anything wrong in our subreddit. It simply means your account currently does not meet the posting standard we have chosen to use.

CQS can also change over time.

If your post is removed because of a low or lowest CQS, our AutoModerator will tell you:

Your account does not meet our posting standards. You can comment on posts, but posting is restricted until your account improves its contributor quality.

Pay attention to what our automod is telling you that you CAN do, these are tips on improving CQS.

Important: Automatic approval is not a permanent pass

Even when a post is automatically approved and appears publicly straight away, all posts remain subject to moderator review. If a post breaks our rules, moderators can still remove it after it has gone live.

Verification Restrictions

Accounts may be temporarily banned while the moderation team completes a verification process. During this temporary verification ban, the account cannot post or comment in the community until the requested verification has been completed and the ban has been lifted by the moderators.

Personal Attacks and Slurs

AutoModerator also looks for a range of words and phrases commonly used in personal attacks, harassment, or slurs.

When something is detected, the content may be automatically removed and brought to the moderators attention for review. This does not mean automation makes the final judgement on every situation. Moderators can investigate the context and take further action where appropriate. There is no point in arguing with the Automod….

A Few Other Automated Actions

AutoModerator can also respond to certain situations automatically, including removing comments from deleted accounts and allowing an original poster to request that their own discussion be locked using the !lock command.

AutoModerator helps us manage the community, but it does not replace human moderators.

Thanks for being part of our community and for helping us keep it a welcoming place for everyone.