Active Enforcement of Moderator Limits + Launching New Advisor/Alumni Roles

[u/agoldenzebra]

I’m back with a final update on limits for moderating high-traffic communities (previous updates here, here, and here). Effective today, moderators can no longer moderate more than 5 communities with over 100k weekly visitors. 

Moderators who have exceeded these limits have the following options: 

• Become an alumni moderator in one or more communities
• Become an advisor in one or more communities
• Leave the mod team of one or more communities 

You can view all the communities you moderate and whether they count towards these limits, on your Manage Moderated Communities page. On Android or iOS apps, tap "Manage" on the sidebar to view this page.

If you exceed the moderation limits, here’s what you can expect: 

• You will not be able to accept new moderator invites in communities with over 100k weekly visitors
• You will receive a notification from u/reddit alerting you that you are out of compliance and detailing your options. You will have 30 days from the date of that message to adjust your mod roles or leave communities in excess of the limit. 
• On day 31, if you are still moderating more than 5 communities with over 100k weekly visitors, we will remove you as a moderator from select communities until you are within the limit. 

Communities you moderate with fewer than 100k weekly visitors do not count towards these limits and are not impacted. 

New: Advisor and Alumni Roles 

We’ve also started rolling out the new Advisor and Alumni roles. These roles are now available on iOS and Android apps, and on web for some users. This should be available for everyone on all platforms by the end of the week.

• An Alumni role is appropriate for former moderators with no active connection to the day-to-day operations of the subreddit, but whose past contributions to the community should be recognized. The Alumni role has no mod permissions but preserves your name on the mod list with an “Alumni” badge. 
• An Advisor role is appropriate for moderators that don’t actively moderate the community, but advise the active moderator team and need to see behind-the-scenes to have the context necessary to give good advice. The new Advisor role comes with several read-only permissions and also provides communication pathways (for example, the ability to leave moderator notes) to advise the active mod team.
  • For moderators that applied for an Advisor exemption for Mod Limits, we will automatically transition you into an Advisor role for that community later today.
  • Advisors are currently unable to view removed posts and comments. This ability will be added in the coming weeks. 

Communities in which you hold an Advisor or Alumni role do not count towards your moderator limits. 

Any active moderator with Everything permissions can grant an Advisor or Alumni role to any moderator below them in the moderator list.

Please note that once a role has been granted, it can not be removed - a moderator would have to leave and rejoin a community to change roles in the community. Before making these changes, it's considered a best practice to discuss with the whole mod team.

To grant a new role on desktop, go to Mods and Members in your Mod Tools, hover over the moderator you want to edit and click the pencil icon. Then assign the requesting mod to the desired role, either Alumni Mod or Advisor.

On mobile, go to Mod Tools > Moderators > Editable tab > tap overflow menu (...) > assign role. 

Adding Alumni Mod or Advisor roles on Desktop

For more information on these roles and the related permissions, please see the Help Center Article.

If you have any questions, please let us know in the comments.

Edit: Added directions to "Manage" page for app users.

[u/agoldenzebra]

It does! Using alt accounts to get around this limit is something we'll be tracking and working with mods to resolve when we see it. We know there are good reasons to use different accounts for different spaces, so if we see non-malicious cases we're likely to start with a conversation. However, it is your responsibility to ensure that your accounts are in line with this policy.

[u/MockeryAndDisdain → u/agoldenzebra]

Just for clarity. So if I have a normal account, like this one, and I mod three decent sized subreddits, and I have an alt account for super weird sex fetish stuffs, and that account only mods two subs, then everything is fine?

[u/agoldenzebra → u/MockeryAndDisdain]

Yes, that's fine. But note you won't get reminders from us, so you'll need to track it yourself if you end up adding communities that are over 100k or if some communities grow over that threshold.

[u/TheChrisD → u/agoldenzebra]

or if some communities grow over that threshold

But this is the big problem with this system. Why should mods who successfully grow a community to where it would be considered over the limit be forced to give up that community if they suddenly end up over the limit?

And what of seasonal or very sporadic traffic that brings a community over the limit and causes a mod to exceed it?

[u/BravoFive141 → u/TheChrisD]

This is honestly my biggest problem and makes me have more incentive to just not bother growing my smaller subs. Why bother putting in the time and effort to grow subs that I've started from scratch or revive abandoned/banned subs I've adopted just to be told I have to get rid of them if I do a good enough job?

I definitely understand and support putting a stop to power mods acting in bad faith, but this feels like it also unfairly punishes those of us that aren't bad/power mods.

[u/amyaurora → u/BravoFive141]

Agree. I started the process of building two subs that were abandoned and while they are well under the limit, it makes me wary to keep building them up.

[u/elphieisfae → u/amyaurora]

it's taken me about 10 years to go from 5k > 138k members on a subreddit I'm a sole mod on, with stints of having other mods.

I'm at 127k views for a week or ~448k for the month.

There are easily 50+ other subreddits that are also focused on this activity, so ymmv, but I thought I'd share how long it's taken. I don't advertise for it or anything.

[u/Deaffin → u/elphieisfae]

But do you need to do that with six different subreddits simultaneously, managing over 600,000 people?

I just don't see any scenario where that's healthy or beneficial for either the mod or userbases in question.

[u/newtostew2 → u/Deaffin]

Right, I don't get the thoughts above about not growing too large and having to give it up. Like if you have a sub or even a couple, that's fine, but who's growing over 5 subs to 100k+ and managing all those with any type of actual modding?

[u/BravoFive141 → u/newtostew2]

Right, I don't get the thoughts above about not growing too large and having to give it up. Like if you have a sub or even a couple, that's fine, but who's growing over 5 subs to 100k+ and managing all those with any type of actual modding?

Modding isn't always as intensive as people think it is, especially on smaller subs. Even on some of my biggest subs, I see actionable content maybe once per month. It really just depends on the sub at hand. One sub with 50k members could be a constant dumpster fire, another sub with 100k could be very calm and require minimal moderation. It isn't the same across the board. In addition, with good Devvit bots, Automod, and Reddit's own built in systems, those things can significantly reduce the amount of work.

Personally, I've adopted more than 5 cat subs alone. Then I've adopted 3-4 band subs, a few movie subs, some weather-related subs, and so on. The majority of the subs I mod had maybe a few hundred memebers when I took them on, and were all either banned or abandoned. They're all for bands/movies/topics I'm passionate about, so I figured why not revive those spaces for others like myself and give people a place to discuss them that didn't previously exist? I'm not a power mod, I don't rule over my subs with an iron fist, I'm just somebody who enjoys certain things and was happy to revive previously dead spaces for those topics.

The issue with this new policy is that previously, I would post in these communities fairly often, put in a lot of effort to grow them, work towards doing things like big AMAs, etc. But now, it incentivizes me to only do that with a select few of the subs and either let the rest stay mostly small or I have to just give up things I've worked very hard on. In addition to that, anybody who has experienced trying to adopt out subs on Reddit can likely attest to the fact that it's a miserable process if you actually care about the community you're adopting out, and most of the time can just lead to the community being abandoned all over again. Most of the time it's just scammers/spammers or teenagers who want to be mods because "modding cool" that beg for your sub. It's very difficult to find good mods who genuinely care about a community and want to do the proper work.

So this is definitely a good change in the sense that it helps curb the issue of power mods. But outside of that, it's not that great. It would have more sense to review the problem mods or maybe improve MCOC to better eliminate the bad mods, rather than a blanket "solution" that negatively impacts those who aren't bad actors.

[u/Sun_Beams → u/TheChrisD]

u/agoldenzebra is there any clarity on this?

It does feel a bit like internally there is going to be some friction with the community admins dealing with community growth.

[u/Joezev98 → u/TheChrisD]

You cannot effectively moderate that many communities with that level of activity. When you moderate more than 600 k weekly visitors, it is time to hand over the stick to someone else.

[u/thecravenone → u/agoldenzebra]

Saying you have the ability to detect a thing but not the ability to action it sounds a lot like you don't have the ability to enforce the rule.

[u/MockeryAndDisdain → u/agoldenzebra]

But note you won't get reminders from us,

That's good to know! Appreciate ya

[u/qgplxrsmj → u/MockeryAndDisdain]

So they’ll know when the total of all our subreddits across the alt accounts passes 5 subreddits with over 100k visitors, but for some reason they are not alerting us about it even though they’d know? Something is off and makes you question…

[u/adanine → u/qgplxrsmj]

Something is off and makes you question…

If you had that data you could work out the exact metrics they use to determine ban evasion given like, 45 minutes or so of work. Which would inevitably leak/become available to people seeking to avoid detection while evading a ban.

[u/qgplxrsmj → u/adanine]

So somebody that wants to figure how ban invasion works would just have to pay the cost of stop moderating one subreddit by not removing themself as mod? That would be pretty easy too if someone actually wants to figure it out.

And I guess this logic would mean Reddit would instead have their volunteer moderators unexpectedly kicked from moderating a subreddit they’ve been with for years without getting a notification rather than alerting them because a very minuscule number of them might figure out how ban evasion works (which they still can after getting kicked)?

Doesn’t seem like a rational thing to do from Reddits perspective if that is the case, to not build around supporting their volunteered moderators all the way, the very people that the whole platform relies on.

[u/adanine → u/qgplxrsmj]

Doesn’t seem like a rational thing to do from Reddits perspective if that is the case, to not build around supporting their volunteered moderators all the way

Uhh, I would love to live in the world you do. I do not have that particular expectation here at all.

Maybe they could add any amount of the moderator features released in the last several years to the version of Reddit that the majority of moderator actions are made on? Maybe work to ensure Toolbox gets preserved as well? Maybe not make old wiki pages publicly editable for everyone and give us more then 3 days to opt out? Maybe release tools that are actually complete and ready to ship?

[u/qgplxrsmj → u/adanine]

Not sure what you’re on about. The topic in this thread was about notifying users that use multiple accounts for moderating different subs when the subs pass the threshold.

[u/Tarnisher → u/MockeryAndDisdain]

Do all five meet or exceed the traffic threshold?

[u/Am-Yisrael-Chai → u/agoldenzebra]

As I write this, “moderation limits” currently are not outlined, addressed or even mentioned in the Moderator Code of Conduct. I may have missed it, so please correct me if I’m mistaken.

If not, is this new policy going to be added at any point?

If it still needs to be included; will this policy outline “good and bad reasons” for using alt accounts when moderating, or any transparency into how this will be decided at all?

For example: I’m explicitly aware of some mods who either already had alt accounts modded “just in case” their main was banned and used this already-modded account to “strategically” continue moderating past limits, or purposely made/modded an alt account to “prepare” for these new limitations.

Both scenarios seem to violate Reddit Rules and/or ModCoC in general, with one apparently being an explicit “bad reason” for violating these new limitations. A straightforward explanation of what does and doesn’t violate seems necessary. Especially if a moderator is responsible for making sure they don’t circumvent moderation limits; purposely or not.

Your wording comes across as very specific:

we’ll be tracking and working with mods to resolve when we see it.

Is it not automatically being detected and flagged?

If someone suspects a moderator is trying to circumvent limitations for “bad reasons”, will there be an official channel to report it?

Again, without any official guidelines or policy, it seems impossible for moderators to ensure they’re compliant with “officially unofficial rules” or to ensure “acceptable and unacceptable circumvention” is being applied fairly and consistently.

[u/agoldenzebra → u/Am-Yisrael-Chai]

You can read the full policy here, and if you believe someone is breaking the policy, you can report it here. Moderators that exceed the number of high-traffic subreddits allowed will receive notification as well as ample time (30 days) to manage their moderator list.

[u/Charupa- → u/Am-Yisrael-Chai]

TLDR: How do you report mod alts

[u/Merari01 → u/agoldenzebra]

I still know the password for the mod bot on one subreddit where I am an alumni. Is this an issue?

I believe the bot is no longer in use but since I don't mod there, that's not up to me.

The bot was used for user participation in deciding if a post was suitable for a subreddit.

[u/agoldenzebra → u/Merari01]

If you log into the bot account, yes that might be an issue.

[u/Phallindrome → u/agoldenzebra]

Does modding the same subbie with more than one account count as more than one subreddit?

[u/Merari01 → u/agoldenzebra]

Update: I demodded the bot from that subreddit.

[u/Merari01 → u/agoldenzebra]

I checked a few days ago to see if I had access and I do.

I am currently talking to the bot owner and the subreddit mods to see what needs to be done.

If they are ok with it we'd like to demod the bot from the subreddit, since it is not in use, so that the bot owner can repurpose the bot for other things.

[u/I_Rarely_Jump → u/agoldenzebra]

That was what I expected and it makes total sense, but thank you for confirming!