Reddit is launching a moderator bounty program amid site-wide outrage

Image credits: Clash

Reddit is launching a “Mod Helper Program” to reward moderators who provide helpful advice to other moderators, along with an updated moderator help center.

This ad comes in between Growing dissatisfaction among site administratorsMany of them rely on third-party apps since it was closed because of Reddit API pricing. Moderators have asked Reddit to improve the moderation tools on the official app, which are nothing compared to those offered by third-party apps that are now defunct. Tensions between Reddit and its moderators remain high, as do the site’s administrators Continue removing entire mod teams To keep their subreddits private in protest of API pricing set by third party app developers Criticize as prohibitive and unsustainable.

The Mod Helper Program is a tiered system that gives helpful mods prizes and gifts. Reddit users gain karma by receiving upvotes and prizes, and lose karma if they receive downvotes. The program rewards moderators who receive upvotes in comments r/ModSupport.

Comments earned on r/ModSupport will be rewarded with rewards that will “signal to other mods that you are a valuable source of information,” the moderator support team says. announce Thursday. Each rank grants unique rewards and benefits, ranging from Assistant to Expert Assistant. Reddit launched a similar program at r/help earlier this year, which rewards users who accumulate karma by responding to other users’ requests.

“Reddit can be a complex place for beginners and experts alike, and the knowledge you share with each other here is incredibly powerful,” Reddit admins wrote at r/ModSupport. “This will lead to recognition of modders who are particularly useful and reliable sources of knowledge for fellow modders, all with the goal of celebrating your support for each other and fostering a culture in this community where modders easily collaborate and learn from one another.”

Reddit has also launched a Modmail Answer Bot, which automatically responds with relevant links to the site’s Help Center. If the recommended articles do not respond to a specific request, a ticket will be generated that will be handled by a human administrator. The bot is designed to simplify supervisor requests so the management team can focus on more complex issues.

In addition, Reddit is integrating the admin help center with its own sitewide center to ensure that support resources can be easily found and accessed from the same site.

The relationship between Reddit and its moderators has become increasingly tense in recent months. more 8,000 subsites have been shut down for 48 hours in June in protest of Reddit’s new API pricing, which went into effect on July 1. Reddit CEO Steve Hoffman claimed that the outage was led by a minority of moderators, describing them as “gentry”. The comment sparked further anger among moderators, who spend hours managing the platform’s communities without pay. In recent months, Reddit has stepped up its efforts to quell the insurgency Remove moderators who refuse to reopen their sub sites. Subreddits that were once thriving like r/malefashionadvice Falling apart as Reddit replaces protesting moderators with inexperienced users.

Reddit has been slow to roll out the moderation tools previously offered by third-party apps, and the updates the site has released are clumsy and inaccessible. Reddit though make an exception Due to API pricing for accessibility applications, which is essential for blind users, in-app moderation tools are not accessible to blind admins. Reddit’s latest accessibility update was full of bugs and “introduced a bunch of new issues,” According to the moderator from r / blind.

Response to the peer-to-peer plugin has been mixed at r/ModSupport. 1 user question Whether automating the support request system will only make it more difficult to receive help from a ‘real person’. They also noted that the subforum is there for moderators to discuss issues directly with administrators, not with other moderators.

“Management engagement wasn’t great here,” the user continued. I don’t know if it’s because you’re not familiar enough with modding tools to provide useful support to the modding community, or you just can’t be bothered. But it seems like you rely mostly on the modding community to address questions and concerns here, and that’s not what people come here for. for him.

In the most voted comment responding to the ad, Reddit user MapleSurpy expressed frustration with the lack of useful moderation features available in the official Reddit app. MapleSurpy said moderators requested ban evasion tools and “active assistance from administrators” when dealing with “problematic users”.

“We’ve asked for better tools on the official app to power subscriptions now that Reddit has removed every third-party subscriber.” He said. What did we get? Another automated system…and special bonuses. Thank you very much, I’m sure this will solve huge problems.

Another user noted that flair doesn’t rely on really helpful comments, and that “funny and funny people” will get to the “expert in no time.”

in to reply In the thread, a moderator said that Reddit’s product teams are working on “some issues” raised by moderators, and will release improvements to mobile features.

“Our team isn’t engineers — so you don’t want us to build things for you, however — we take our time to talk to admins about the issues you’re having and invite them to the product teams,” the admin, who is part of the admin support team, said. “Automating some of the lower-fruit allows us to spend more time helping to solve more complex problems and aggregating concerns from tweaks to help prioritize the tools that are being built.”