Moderating Leaves on Reddit

 
 

A Typical Day

Before we get into specifics on how everything works, let’s just walk through a typical session:

  • You arrive on Leaves and take a look at the numbers that Moderator Toolkit has for you (more on this later) — not too bad, 22 unreviewed posts, 16 moderated messages to look at, and three mod mail messages. You also know from experience that there’s a hundred or so comments to review.

  • You click into the Moderation Queue and see 16 messages that the automoderator has set aside for you to look at. Until you review and approve them they won’t be visible on the group. You read these over and either approve them, send a message to the user to revise them, or send a message to the member that we have removed it for good.

    We’re one of the few subreddits that lets people revise posts and comments when it’s appropriate. It’s a bit more work, but it’s worth it.

  • Then you have a look at the Unmoderated Posts queue. Most are fine, but you need to ask for edits or remove a few. The rest you approve.

  • Finally, you look at the comment stream, reading back to the last unreviewed comment. Unlike many subs we also review every comment. It helps keep things on track, and the comments are often the place where people can start being uncivil, so it’s best to stay on top of things.

  • Finally, depending on what kind of mod you are, you will have a look at the Mod mail that comes in. Most times it’s people who have revised posts the way we asked, sometimes it’s people who are in a pretty bad mood about something we’ve done, but don’t worry, we won’t ask you to deal with them until you have a little experience!

Now let’s look at how those things happen.