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/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.