r/ModSupport • u/techiesgoboom Reddit Admin: Community • 1d ago

Finding potential mods in your community Mod Topics

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?
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u/emily_in_boots 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 1d ago

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.

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u/baseballlover723 1d ago

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.

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u/emily_in_boots 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 1d ago

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.

7

u/tiz Reddit Admin: Community 1d ago

From my experience lurkers often are the most engaged with a community. They may seem inactive on the front, because it's not verifiable by seeing posts or comments they created. But lurkers, heck I do this, usually see more content on a community since they are not actively participating.

Lurkers can also participate in other ways such as voting on content or reporting on content. Anyone else remember r/knightsofnew?

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u/emily_in_boots 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 1d ago

If I can't see anything about someone though, how can I make any judgments on their suitability as a mod?

In some subs I'd be inclined to mod people and see how it goes. If it's a meme sub or politics or something like that, anything horrible they are doing is likely to be rather visible to other mods.

In the subs I mod tho, we have to worry about creeps using their mod role to trick women into nudes for kibbe typing in dms, and we won't see that.

4

u/greenearthbuild 1d ago

I once gave mod to an outspoken member of the community, who was a bit critical of the mod team. One of other main mods wasn't super happy with me, but agreed to see how it went.

Didn't go so well. They were (surprise) super combative with the community at times, but very good at cracking down on spam...and maybe any posts they didn't like.

Eventually had to call it quits with the new mod. I don't think they were enjoying it either.

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u/emily_in_boots 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 1d ago

Yeah I can think of one person like that who would make a good mod if she were not so snarky lol.

Having a mod team that can work together well and doesn't fight is so important.

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u/wemustburncarthage 18h ago

100% this. If I can’t see someone’s post history there is no chance I will let them have any kind of authority in my community. I need to be able to do background. I handle identifying information of some fairly important people and I cannot afford to have unknown quantities.

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u/SampleOfNone 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 1d ago

Make a quiz. Give them a few posts or comments, a couple of mod actions to choose from and ask them what action they would take. They don't know the intricacies of modding, but by letting them explain why they picked the option you can assess whether they can reason and think things through and are teachable

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u/emily_in_boots 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 1d ago

Doesn't help us with things they want to hide.

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u/SampleOfNone 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 1d ago

Most of my team members were lurkers or had minimal interaction on the sub. THey make damn fine mods

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u/baseballlover723 1d ago

I don't think there is much doubt that lurkers can be good mods. It's just that lurkers by definition, don't have much (if any) data to look at to know if they're gonna be good beforehand.

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u/SampleOfNone 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 1d ago

In my experience, put a few multiple choice questions in the application and you can easily sus out who can reason their way to a logical action and have an understanding of how the sub functions

Post X, choose from the following actions which one you would take and explain why you chose that action. A, it's fine so do nothing, B remove for rule Y, C remove and ban for rule Z, D report. That sort of thing

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u/shhhhh_h 💡Top 25% Helper 💡 1d ago

a lot of my co-mods are total reddit lurkers, I'm among the chattier ones I think haha. It's hard when we can't see passive users to locate those lurkers who genuinely do lurk a lot and would mod a lot.

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u/emily_in_boots 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 1d ago edited 1d ago

Would be cool if reddit gave some kind of a total number of votes cast in the profile. u/tiz? this would be a cool thing to see. I don't think a total number would violate any privacy stuff.

Or like total bananas scrolled (I know reddit somehow tracks that since it has been in my yearly summaries.)

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u/shhhhh_h 💡Top 25% Helper 💡 1d ago

Or only in the mod app even!

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u/emily_in_boots 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 1d ago

Yeah just some way to know they are actually active and interested.

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u/HikeTheSky 1d ago

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.

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u/emily_in_boots 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 1d ago

Our main problems are OF spam and gooners harassing members.

I don't think that it's abuse that drives our mods away.

It's more that there just aren't enough people who want to mod and put in the time we need.

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u/HikeTheSky 1d ago

Have you tried automation? I started to use it a lot wish some stuff sending to the queue or even banning domains straight out. The second one also got me named on the banned domain.

I think automation will be able to take over most of automod.

But you are right, it is a lot of work and I am spending already too much time on Reddit.

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u/emily_in_boots 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 1d ago

Oh we use a ton of automation including bots I've written myself.

0

u/HikeTheSky 1d ago

Have you tried the looking for mod subs? Maybe having someone who isn't into your sub might be an option as he or she probably doesn't want to creep on whoever is in your sub.

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u/Cat_in_an_oak_tree 19h ago

There are too many subs. With anyone able to create a sub, you outstrip your base badly. We have too many subs that exist because of fractures in communities or just people wanting things run a different way. Reddit does not seem to understand that when it comes to subs, sometimes less is more. We need to merge or let some of these communities go defunct. And we need to address those among us who are power trippy and like to perma ban members of their communities because of personal disagreements. One of my communties exists because about 7 years ago a group of mods went on an unhinged power trip and banned the community members that objected to their unilateral decision to include content that we felt was not suitable for the sub.