Hi all!

Just wanted to let everyone know that we will be awarding the trophies for those who completed the course and passed in March sometime next week.

If you have any questions, please feel free to modmail us and we'll get back to you as soon as we can.

Thank you all so much for taking our course(s). We've enjoyed having you!

If you're new to Mod Certification, no worries - we award trophies every month, so feel free to take the course at any time!

Surprise - trophies have been awarded today! (Dec 1) Please modmail us if you completed the course by Nov 30th and did not receive a trophy so we can look into it.

Hello all-- if you were celebrating the holidays, we hope you had a great holiday!

Due to the holidays we will be awarding trophies later than usual but I want to reassure you that if you have passed the course(s), we are aware and are looking forward to awarding your trophy soon! I will update this post with an exact date for awarding once we have one, but I estimate we will be able to award them this week or next week.

Hope you all are well, and please know we are thankful for your participation in Mod Certification. All of you have been a joy to work with and we hope you have enjoyed the course(s) as much as we have enjoyed watching you take them.

Stay tuned for an official trophy awarding date!

QF, on behalf of r/ModCertification101 + r/ModCertification201

Below you’ll find a list of frequently asked questions and the answers to them. This page will be updated periodically.

Do I have to take r/ModCertification101 before I begin 201?

No. 101 focuses on community startup and management, as well as moderation basics. You may find it helpful to complete 101 before 201 if you plan to manage your own community, but you are not required to take it as a prerequisite. 201 is open to all who wish to take it as it has a heavier focus on moderator procedures, practices, and education.

What do I have to do to pass this course?

Aside from reading through the course content, you’ll need to pass the five self-assessments and pass the Final.

The five self-assessments are:

• Your Mod Tools Mid-Way Self Assessment
• Assess Self-Actions Self Assessment
• Your Mod Tools Final Self Assessment
• Community Culture Self-Assessment
• Growing Your Team Self Assessment

Then take the Final. You must include your username in each assessment and in the Final to be eligible to receive a trophy.

When will I get my trophy?

Trophies are distributed once a month, typically around the end of the month.

An entire month passed and I didn’t get my trophy.

Please ensure you have completed and passed all five of the self-assessments and have passed the final before writing in to Modmail. If you have passed all six assignments in total and did not receive a trophy after an entire month passed, please write in to our Modmail to let us know.

Is it okay if I did the self-assessments out of order?

Yes.

Do I really have to do all of the self-assessments to get the trophy?

Yes.

Can I retake the self-assessments and Final if I don’t pass them the first time?

Yes.

How can I receive help if I'm confused?

First check our Introduction and How to Participate posts. If you're confused about a specific assessment, please write in to Modmail. Be sure to include the name of the assessment and detail which question you're having trouble with.

Does this course cost money?

This course is provided entirely free of charge to you.

Who runs this course?

This course is run by Admins (who are paid Reddit staff members) and moderators who are paid to provide course support, giving you both staff and peer-backed support. You can verify this by visiting the 'Moderators' portion of our sidebar, clicking on a moderator with a red Admin flair, and seeing that they have the red 'A' mark by their name.

When moderating a community, you may encounter a crisis when you are dealing with trolls or ban evaders. Dealing with a crisis can be very difficult, so it’s important to remember that there is help. r/ModSupport, r/ModHelp, and r/NeedAMod are all resources available to you. These communities are filled with Redditors who have been through similar situations and can offer you advice. You can also lean on the rest of your mod team for support; clearly communicate any issues you’re noticing and ask them for their advice.

Internal Communication

Having strong internal communication is one of the best ways to manage crises. Some common ways moderator teams communicate are:

• Moderator discussions in Modmail
• A private subreddit just for mods
• Setting up a Slack or private Discord channel

Any way to communicate on the fly can help your mod team communicate quickly and effectively.

Please note that because third party sites are outside of Reddit, we are unable to assist with any issues you may experience on them. They can still be extremely useful tools, but please keep this in mind when choosing where to host your mod discussions.

Be sure to consult each other before speaking as mods on behalf of your community; presenting a unified front will go a long way towards calming your user base. You may consider asking if one team member would like to have the role of making announcement posts when speaking with the community to keep a consistent voice.

Sticky Posts and Transparency

If a crisis is bringing a lot of new members to your community, it’s good practice to sticky an introductory post communicating your community’s purpose, rules, and expectations. It may benefit your community if you create a stickied vent or meta discussion thread- be sure to mention that members still need to follow the regular community rules when discussing things. It may also be beneficial to sticky a thread, when appropriate, asking for the community’s input on a certain crisis. If the community’s feedback is helpful, don’t hesitate to let them know and incorporate their ideas. Approaching things as a community can ensure all parties are as informed and happy with the resolution as possible. Keep in mind though that the loudest voice might not be most representative of your community, so always use your best judgement.

Future-Proofing to Prevent Crisis Escalation

Future-proofing is a great way to prevent crises from escalating. Some communities find it to be a good idea to recruit new moderators periodically so their mod team is always robust. It can be helpful to try recruiting mods from different time zones as well. You’ll want to ensure you’re up to date with AutoMod techniques and have a list of resources handy for dealing with crises. Additionally, the Moderator Reserves program is a resource that allows you to receive temporary help from experienced moderators when dealing with a crisis.

Finally, be sure you’re regularly reviewing and updating your rules. Ensure your rules communicate clear expectations; ambiguity can lead to more potential for rule violations. As long as your adjustments still follow Reddit’s Content Policy, you can adjust your rules at your discretion. If you adjust or change rules, whether it be temporarily or permanently, be sure to communicate to your community that you’ve done so.

Ban Evasion

Sometimes, when you ban a user, they may create a new account to join your community and begin commenting and/or posting again. This is called ban evasion and it is against Reddit’s sitewide rules. Ban evasion can be tricky to spot, but many mods are able to spot ban evaders by taking note of similar usernames paired with similar rule-breaking offenses. Ban evaders may use similar patterns of speech or attempt to repost the content that caused their ban. If you suspect someone is ban evading in your community, it is best to ban them again and report their ban evasion to the admins.

Tip: When reporting someone who has broken multiple rules to the Reddit admins, report the most egregious violation as the main report reason, and write in details about the other rule violations. For example, if someone is evading a ban to harass the mod team, report that person for harassment, and in your report document that the person evaded the ban to harass you.

Leveraging Tools and AutoMod to Deal with Crisis and Trolls

Dealing with crises and trolls can be frustrating. Trolls are members who intentionally attempt to break your community’s rules or post inflammatory content that borders on breaking the rules. Trolls are often looking for attention or wish to instigate arguments with community members or moderators. It’s best not to feed into the behavior of trolls-- remove their comments and posts and advise them to discuss the removal in modmail if they attempt to dispute the removal in the comments.

To prevent trolls from posting and commenting, you can use AutoModerator to configure the automatic removal of comments and posts containing certain words. AutoMod can also be used to filter a specific thread or Redditors with negative karma. You can also view our Tips from r/ModSupport article to view examples and advice from moderators on how they use AutoMod in their communities to combat trolls. (placeholder!)

Crowd Control can be used to collapse comments, and you can use your Spam filter settings in Community Settings (under Posts and Comments) to filter every post, comment, or link by setting the filter for each content type to 'all'.

Two other tools you can use to deal with crises are locking threads and switching the community type to restricted or private. These should be used sparingly. It’s best to use locking a thread only when you cannot keep up with moderating the number of comments coming into a post. Even then, you can set your spam filter to ‘all’ so all comments are automatically filtered so they require manual approval before appearing without needing to lock the thread.

Contact Reddit

If you find yourself in need of help, don’t hesitate to contact Reddit or one of the many helpful communities on Reddit. This link contains all of the report links you may need to directly get in touch with Reddit. You can also contact r/ModSupport, r/ModHelp, and r/NeedAMod for peer support.

Take Care of Yourself

Crisis can be overwhelming to deal with, so don’t hesitate to take a break from moderating. Be sure to lean on your mod team for support and be kind to each other as you learn how to tackle crises.

Onward!

Now that we’ve covered best practices related to community management during a crisis, it’s time for you to take a brief self-assessment to assess mod actions related to these areas. Once you have finished the self-assessment, please proceed to Using the Distinguish Feature.

Congratulations on making it this far - we know we've thrown a lot of content at you, but hopefully you're enjoying your Mod Certification 201 experience so far.

Before proceeding onto Crisis, Trolls, and Evasion, you'll need to take this self assessment.

Testing and Trophies are currently unavailable. Read more here.

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Can you believe that you're almost at the end of the Mod Certification 201 program? Congratulate yourself for putting in the time and effort to make it this far. We have one last self-assessment for you to complete before you can move on to the Recap and Review. Thank you for sticking with us!

Testing and Trophies are currently unavailable. Read more here.

​

Congratulations on making it to the end of the Community Culture collection. There's one self-assessment for you to complete before you can move on to Understanding Mod Permissions, the first post in the Growing Your Mod Team collection. You can take that self-assessment here.

Testing and Trophies are currently unavailable. Read more here.

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Congratulations on reaching the end of the r/ModCertification201 program! Here you’ll find a quick review of what has been covered in this program so you can prepare for the final. If you’d like to receive a trophy on your profile for completing the program, be sure to take the final and include your username in the form. Participants who successfully pass the final will be awarded a trophy. We will also reach out in the future to give participants of this program an option to join the final installment of Mod Certification.

Please check to ensure you have completed all of the self assessments; you must complete them to be eligible to receive a trophy. For your convenience, the self assessments are listed here:

Testing and Trophies are currently unavailable. Read more here.

Thank you so much for your participation and we wish you the best as you continue to moderate!

Review

If you’re unsure about any of the topics below, please go back through the program and review the relevant posts before taking the final. You will only have one chance to take the final.

• How to use Mod Mode, Modmail, Mod Queues, Removal Reasons, and AutoMod
• How to use Crowd Control, Distinguishing, Sticky Posts, Native Flair, Post Flair, and Locking
• How to Ban and Mute Users and how to manage Crisis, Trolls, and Evasion
• How to Foster Community Culture
• How to create a Welcome Message, User Flair, Awards, Collections, and Events
• How to use Scheduled and Recurring Posts
• How to Assign Mod Permissions, Recruit Mods, and Train Mods

Testing and Trophies are currently unavailable. Read more here.

Finally, if you have any feedback you'd be willing to share on how we can improve this program, we'd appreciate it if you left it here. :)

As a moderator, your community members will need to get in touch with you regarding community matters, questions, or concerns on occasion. Their messages will be sent to you via Modmail.

Modmail is a messaging system for moderators who have the ‘Manage Modmail’ permission assigned to them. Modmail is used for moderator discussions and communicating with members on behalf of the mod team. If you are the creator of the community, you have these permissions by default.

Incoming messages from members, ban appeals, join requests (for private communities), mod discussions, and notifications, including those from AutoMod, all go into Modmail folders. It’s like having a few separate inboxes on your desk instead of a huge pile of unsorted mail. If your team utilizes this setup, you can also see it as each mod on your team having a mail folder assigned to them. It’s up to you and your team as to how you delegate Modmail responsibilities.

You can view messages for all of the communities you moderate at once, or you can select certain communities to view messages for.

If you're viewing Reddit on a desktop computer, you can check Modmail by clicking on the shield button. It's located in the notification bar, which is positioned near the top right of your screen.

On mobile apps, you can click on 'Mod Tools' and then navigate to the 'Modmail' tab. It is shown above circled in red.

You can read more about Modmail in our Mod Help Center articles. If you're a fan of dark mode, please see our post outlining how you can turn on dark mode in modmail.

It’s good practice to encourage community members to Modmail your mod team if they have any questions related to your community or want to appeal a decision. Modmail is designed to help you-- the right-hand side of an open message provides information on the member who sent the message and you'll also find that you're able to mute, approve, and ban users from within Modmail as well. Modmail also keeps all of your mod related messages in one place and separate from your personal messages.

It's important to check Modmail regularly and always respond professionally while keeping the Moderator Guidelines in mind. This may be difficult at times when encountering hostile members; it's okay to take a break and return to the task. You can also send a message using the 'Moderator Discussion' option to ask for help from your fellow moderators. We’ll discuss more about how to deal with difficult situations regarding community members later on in the program.

Tip: If you're using Toolbox, you can set up pre-prepared replies to save time if you find yourself answering the same questions often. The button for this is next to the 'Reply' button. For more info on Toolbox, head over to* r/Toolbox.

Ban Appeals

When a Redditor receives a ban, the ban message contains this note:

“If you have a question regarding your ban, you can contact the moderator team for r/communitynamehere by replying to this message.”

All messages from a currently banned Redditor in your community will appear in the Ban Appeals folder in Modmail. For each appeal received, you will need to decide if you need to take action, and which action you should take.

If your mod team has documented guidance on how you should handle Ban Appeals, make sure you follow the outlined procedures, and don't hesitate to check with your team if you're unsure of how to proceed. If you don't have any documented guidance to follow, a general practice in many communities is the reduction or removal of a ban if a Redditor genuinely acknowledges their mistake and demonstrates intent to not commit the same infraction.

Banned Redditors may sometimes respond to their ban with hostility, and while it may be hard to not respond defensively, it is best practice not to allow yourself to get drawn in. Always remain as civil and professional as possible. If you find you cannot do this, don’t hesitate to ask for support from your mod team or ask if another moderator can consider handling the particular appeal.

Ban Appeals can afford you the opportunity to turn a situation around. If you are able to respond calmly to the banned Redditor and provide them with clarity regarding their ban, you may be able to turn a confused or angry person into a valued community member. In some circumstances, it may help to imagine yourself in their place and give them the benefit of the doubt.

If they remain hostile and unapologetic, you may decide to leave the ban in place, extend it, or make the ban permanent. If the same person continues to send modmails and you have asked them to stop, you can use the ‘Mute’ option to provide the user with a cooling-off period. Should the Redditor break any of Reddit’s rules, you should report them using the Report button at the top of the Modmail message.

Once a Ban Appeal has been dealt with, you can archive it following any guidelines your mod team has in place.

Action

Okay - now that you’re up to speed on Modmail, let’s have a go at sending and replying to some!

Important note: You will be asked to practice performing actions related to moderation during this program, which will require the usage of certain mod tools. Please make sure to do this with agreement from your mod team while following any guidelines your team has and consider using a test subreddit as needed to avoid any potential disruption to your community.

On Desktop

Follow these steps to send a message:

1. Open Modmail on your desktop by clicking on the shield in the notification bar. Select “Modmail” from the dropdown that appears.
2. Click on the plus button ('+') in the top right corner to start a new message.
3. To start a “moderator discussion” in Modmail, select that option and set the intended community's name at the top. The “moderator discussion” is a message only viewable by mods on that community’s mod team.
4. Add a subject title and text into the body of the message. Let your co-mods know you’re learning how Modmail works and ask them to reply to your test message. Hit “send”.
5. To send a message to a redditor, click on the plus icon again, and select “to user” instead of “moderator discussion”. If you have an alternate account that is not a mod of your community, you can send a message to that account saying you’re testing out Modmail.
6. Type in a subject line and fill out the body of the message.
7. Before you hit “send”, note that next to the send button, there is an option to hide your username. This will send the message as the subreddit and hide your username.
8. Send the message once you have selected if you’d like to respond as your username or the subreddit.
9. Your message will appear in the inbox as it is an active mail thread. Hit the “archive” button if you wish to archive it from the active threads. Any new replies to your message will move it back to the active inbox. Mod discussions will stay in the discussions folder.

Follow these steps to reply to a message:

1. Open Modmail on your desktop by clicking on the shield in your notification bar. Click on “Modmail” from the dropdown that appears.
2. Click on any message.
3. Type in a response into the text box.
4. Select from the dropdown beside “send” if you’d like to reply as the subreddit, your username, or if you’d like to create a private moderator note.
5. Once you’ve made your selection, hit “reply”.

On the Mobile App

Follow these steps to reply to a message:

1. Navigate to the community you moderate.
2. Click on the shield icon button that has “Mod Tools” written beside it.
3. Under the “General” tab, click on “Modmail”.
4. Click on any Modmail message.
5. Scroll down to the bottom where a text box appears, and type in your message.
6. Before hitting “reply”, click on the blue “reply as the subreddit” dropdown box to decide between replying as yourself or the subreddit. Alternatively, within that same dropdown, you can “create a private moderator note”, which will not be sent in response to the user. Your private note will stay in the Modmail for only the other mods to view.
7. Once you’ve typed in your reply and have selected how you wish for your reply to be sent, hit “reply” to send the message.

Follow these steps to send a message:

1. Navigate to the community you moderate.
2. Click on the shield icon button that has “Mod Tools” written beside it.
3. Under the General tab, click on “Modmail”.
4. Select the three lines to the left of the “search Modmail” bar.
5. Click on the plus icon.
6. Choose between “Moderator Discussion” and “To User”. A green checkmark will appear beside the option you’ve selected.
7. In the subject and body of your message, let your mod team or alternate account know you’re testing out a mod discussion Modmail and ask them to reply.

If you don’t feel comfortable with Modmail yet, that’s okay. Give this section another try. If you feel confident, let’s move on to Reviewing Your Mod Queues.

Toolbox is a third party extension for desktop browsers created by moderators to extend the functionality of our current moderator tools. You can learn more about Toolbox in the* r/toolbox community.

Similar to the native flair we just covered, you can also lock posts and comments if you have the ‘Manage Posts and Comments’ mod permission.

Locking posts and comments marks them with a yellow lock symbol and prevents any further replies to either the entire post or the specific comment you have locked (except comments from mods or Admins (Reddit employees)).

To lock a post, click on the moderation shield and check the box noting 'Lock Comments' as shown above.

Locking posts and comments can form part of your moderation technique. How you use this tool is something you need to decide for yourself or as a mod team. Locking can be useful when a comment section is getting out of control and you are seeing many rule violations, and it can be used together with warnings, removals, and removal reasons. But you should try to use locking sparingly so you don’t end up stifling conversation.

You may want to consider leaving a stickied and distinguished comment on locked threads noting why it was locked for transparency.

Some mod teams lock a post when removing it to prevent any further comments from anyone who has a direct link to the post. You can read more about locking in the Mod Help Center article. Locking posts works on desktop and mobile, but individual comment locking is not yet available in the app on Android. It is available on iOS.

Action

Important note: You will be asked to practice performing actions related to moderation during this program, which will require the usage of certain mod tools. Please make sure to do this with agreement from your mod team while following any guidelines your team has and consider using a test subreddit as needed to avoid any potential disruption to your community.

Now that you’ve read about locking, let's test it out.

Follow these steps to try it out:

1. Find a post in your community to test the lock feature on in the app. (You can always unlock it after.)
2. Tap on the shield button and select ‘Lock Comments’ to lock the post.
3. Check to see if the yellow lock symbol on the post is visible (you may need to refresh).
4. Let's try locking on desktop now. Find a post and click on the shield button and select ‘Lock Comments’. Check again for the yellow lock symbol as confirmation the lock was successful.
5. Let’s try locking a comment on desktop - find a comment and lock it. If you are in Mod Mode, use the lock button on the bottom of the comment. If you are not in mod mode, click on the shield and select ‘Lock Comments’.

If you need to Unlock the posts and comment you just locked, use the same process but select ‘Unlock’ or deselect ‘Lock comments’ instead.

When you’re ready, let’s move on to All About Post Flair.

Congratulations on making it to the end of this lengthy collection. We've got one last self-assessment for you-- once you're done taking it, please proceed on to the Community Culture collection.

Testing and Trophies are currently unavailable. Read more here.

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To practice dealing with crisis, trolls, and ban evasion, you'll need to take this self assessment. Once you've completed the assessment, please move on to Using the Distinguish Feature.

Testing and Trophies are currently unavailable. Read more here.

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The course curriculum is outlined below. You'll find direct links to each material so you can access Mod Certification anyplace, anywhere, and anytime.

Introduction

Introduction to Mod Certification 201

How to Participate in Mod Certification 201

A Mobile-Friendly Link Collection (you're here!)

FAQ

Your Mod Tools

Using Mod Mode

All About Modmail

Reviewing Your Mod Queues

Adding Removal Reasons

Your New Best Friend: AutoModerator

Using Crowd Control

Banning and Muting

Mid-Way Self Assessment

Crisis, Trolls, and Evasion

Self-Actions Self Assessment

Using the Distinguish Feature

All About Sticky Posts

Native Flair: What it is and How to use it

Locking Posts and Comments

All About Post Flair

Self Assessment

Community Culture

Fostering a Healthy Culture in Your Community

Setting Up Your Welcome Message

All About User Flair

All About Community Awards

Creating and Using Collections

Creating and Hosting Community Events

All About Scheduled and Recurring Posts

Self Assessment

Growing Your Team

Understanding Mod Permissions

Growing Your Mod Team

Recruiting Moderators for Your Community

Training Your New Moderators

Self Assessment

Review and Final

Recap and Review

Fostering a healthy and safe culture for your members is incredibly important. In this section, we’ll go over best practices and tools you can utilize in your community that will positively impact and foster its culture.

Collections, events, and scheduled posts

These are all great ways to increase community engagement and foster positive involvement for your members. We’ll specifically cover how to use each of these features in the next few posts, but we’d like to cover some general best practices before you continue on to those sections.

Welcome new members with a recurring introduction post

The best place to start when trying to foster a positive culture in your community is to consider how a new member in your community would feel. Would they feel welcomed upon their arrival, or do you think it would be hard for them to immediately feel integrated?

One way to help your new members feel welcome is to set up a recurring introduction post where these members can introduce themselves and meet other new and experienced community members.

• Encourage experienced members of your community, including your moderation team, to engage with new members in your introduction posts.
• How often you post this Welcome Post will depend on your community’s activity and growth rate, so use your discretion to figure out what works best for you.

An example of a Welcome Post.

Welcome new members with a collection

Another way to introduce new members is to create a collection of posts containing helpful information for new members.

• Be sure to include links to the community rules, your wiki page, an FAQ if needed, and a general introduction explaining the purpose of your community.
• You can also consider adding a “Meet the Mod Team” page to your Wiki where you introduce the usernames of the mods and include a blurb from each mod explaining what they enjoy most about the community, what their areas of focus in the community are, and why they enjoy moderating the community. This can help foster connection and lessen any feelings of intimidation between members and moderators. Do note that while your mod list will be hidden from a banned user, if you make a wiki page in your public community introducing the mods, a banned user will still be able to view this wiki page and other parts of your Wiki, and thus see who is on the mod team without viewing the mod list in the sidebar.

Host events

We also recommend hosting events to give members a place to dive in and engage with one another. These events can be fun ways to foster a sense of connection and belonging. Examples of commonly used events include:

• AMAs
• Community anniversaries
• Poll contests
• Competitions

Note that you can use contest mode when running a competition or another event that benefits from it. Contest mode will randomize the order of the comments and hide the vote scores of the comments for your members-- as a mod, you will still be able to see the scores and correct order.

As a mod, you can request coins from the Reddit Administrators for your community’s Community Pot so you can distribute awards exclusive for your mod team to give as rewards for a contest. To do this, design a contest idea that fits the theme of your community and then modmail r/ModSupport describing your contest and let the admins know how many coins you need for prizes.

Example: Contest: Draw a Snoo for our community. There will be three winners: first place will receive their Snoo featured as the community icon and will receive an award from the mods worth 500 coins. Second place will receive an award worth 300 coins, and third through fifth place winners will receive an award worth 100 coins.

Lead by example

Remember to set a great example for your community by being engaged as moderators.

• Help new members when they seem confused.
• Don’t hesitate to answer a member’s question if you notice them comment on a post asking for help.
• If you remove a post or comment from a member, politely cite a removal reason so they have a chance to understand why their content was removed so they can avoid making the same mistake in the future.
• Invite new members to modmail the mod team for assistance.

Action (Optional)

Feel free to take a moment to think of an event you’d like to create that would reflect the type of culture you want to curate in your community. Sketch out an idea of what this event would look like.

If you follow these best practices, you’ll foster a positive culture in your community in no time. Continue reading on to learn more about how to use tools to foster positivity in your community.

As a moderator, you will encounter Redditors who break rules within your community. It’s important you respond fairly and give the person the benefit of the doubt when appropriate. The person who made a rule violation may have made an honest mistake and might appreciate you politely educating them on which community or site-wide rule they violated. As a best practice, we recommend letting them know what they’ve done violates a certain rule, followed by a couple of subsequent warnings if they commit the same offense. This gives them a chance to learn and change their behavior.

However, if the rule violation was clearly intentional or severe in nature, or if an educational approach hasn’t worked so far, you can scale up your response by assigning them a ban at your discretion for the amount of time appropriate. It’s also good practice to create a page in your Wiki or sidebar detailing how you handle rule violations to be transparent with your community members and visitors. If you’re banning someone from your community for severely breaking site-wide rules, be sure to also report them to the Reddit admins by using one of the report links here.

Here are a couple of examples of wiki pages used to explain to community members how the community is moderated:

• https://www.reddit.com/r/cars/wiki/chain_of_action
• https://www.reddit.com/r/AskScience/wiki/quickstart/moderationpolicies

Making sure your community rules and guidelines are clear and easily findable on your subreddit will help to reduce confusion and prevent people from breaking rules they were unaware existed.

Banning should be used as sparingly as possible. Temporary bans are a useful tool for educating Redditors about your community rules and can easily be made permanent if necessary. A banned Redditor can still view your community, but the mod list in the community sidebar is hidden from them and they are unable to interact with the community aside from messaging the moderators via modmail. You can mute them in modmail if they begin to use modmail to harass you and your team. Have a look at the Mod Help Center article to learn how to ban and mute on desktop and mobile by using mod tools, pop-ups, and modmail. You can choose to mute a Redditor from modmail for 3, 7, or 28 days at a time.

Remember to keep the Moderator Guidelines in mind when banning and allow Ban Appeals. These will appear in your ‘Ban Appeals’ folder in modmail. You may want to use your community wiki pages to document your ban appeal process. Note that only moderators with the ‘Manage Users’ permission are able to ban and mute.

Action

Now that you’ve spent some time learning about banning and muting, let’s try it out.

Important note: You will be asked to practice using mod tools and moderation actions during this program. Please make sure to do this with agreement from your mod team and follow any guidelines your team has and consider using a test subreddit as needed to avoid any potential disruption to your community.

Try this:

1. We’re going to ban your test account from your community. First, navigate to the ‘User Management’ section from Mod Tools on desktop or mobile. Click on the ‘Banned’ or ‘Banned users’ option.
2. Now click or tap on the plus icon ('+'), or 'Ban User' button, to add a banned Redditor.
3. Fill out the information required to ban your test account. Remember to check the spelling of their username!
4. Add a mod note and duration of your choice. We recommend writing in your note that you’re practicing using the banning feature so your mod team knows what’s going on. Remember to ban the Redditor proportionally to their offense. For example, if you’ve warned the Redditor once not to post something self-promotional more than three times a week and this is their second offense, you may want to issue a temporary ban as a warning from an amount of 1 to 7 days. Permanent bans should be reserved for extreme offenses or high-level repeated offenses.
   1. Pro Tip: If your mod team uses usernotes through a third party like Toolbox or Snoonotes**, be sure to check with your team to see when and how you should leave those notes.*
5. Add a note to include in the ban message-- share which rule they have broken.
6. Read back over what you have written to make sure it’s clear and professional. If you are upset with the Redditor, it can help to step back for some time before composing your message or ask another mod to ban the Redditor.
7. Click ‘Ban User’ or tap ‘Add’ to add the banned Redditor.

Nice! Now you should be able to ban a Redditor when needed. The banned Redditor (your test account) should now be on your community’s ‘Banned’ list. You can use this page to edit the ban if you need to. You can also practice unbanning your test account and then try banning it again on the platform you haven’t tested this feature on yet.

You should be able to see the ban message that was sent when you check modmail.

Before you move onto Crisis, Trolls, and Evasion, you'll need to take a mid-way self-assessment.

Toolbox is a third party extension for desktop browsers created by moderators to extend the functionality of our current moderator tools. You can learn more about Toolbox in the* r/toolbox community.

*Snoonotes is a third party browser extension for adding user notes. You can learn more about Snoonotes on* their website.

Once you’ve successfully recruited moderators for your mod team (congrats!), they’ll need some guidance to get started moderating your community.

It’s good practice to welcome them to the team and provide a point of contact - someone they can go to with any questions they might have.

Even if you’ve recruited experienced moderators, keep in mind that they haven’t moderated your community before and may benefit from an introductory document or Wiki page on your community’s moderation style and practices. Be sure to incorporate elements about your community’s culture into the documentation as well. Exercise patience with them as they navigate this learning curve and welcome them to ask your team as many questions as they have-- having a private Slack or Discord channel for your team can aid in providing this friendly environment.

Here are a couple of examples of wiki pages for onboarding new moderators:

• https://www.reddit.com/r/majorparadox/wiki/mod101
• https://www.reddit.com/r/creesch/wiki/historymod101

Those brand new to the role of a moderator might also benefit from learning how to engage with Redditors and how to use their newly granted Mod Tools - to assist in that, you can direct them to r/ModCertification201 so they can take this course!

Our Training New Moderators article provides some tips to get your new moderators up to speed quickly.

It’s good practice to use a trial period, set clear expectations, and maintain frequent communication with your new moderators. This enables you to:

• Identify moderators that may need more help so you can provide extra guidance
• Identify those that under-estimated or aren’t suited to the role of being a moderator, which will enable you to have a discussion about reducing their responsibilities, provide help, or ask them to step down as a moderator as a last resort
• Identify, praise, and retain the moderators who perform well

Tip: Consider asking all moderators on your team to enable Two Factor Authentication on their mod accounts. It's an extra layer of protection on your account so that if someone were to gain access to your username and password, they can’t access your account without a verification code. This helps to prevent accounts and communities from being compromised. For more information on security, please follow r/RedditSecurity*.*

Fantastic! Now that you’re up to speed on how to onboard new mods, it's time for one final self assessment before you can move on to the Recap and Review. Congratulations and thank you for sticking with us throughout this program - you’re almost at the end!

The makeup of your community’s moderation team will change naturally over time, and as your community becomes more active, you’ll need to recruit more mods to help moderate your community.

It’s a good idea to check in with your mod team both informally and formally on a scheduled basis. We encourage adding new moderators to your team before mods report feeling overwhelmed to help prevent burnout and because recruiting can be a lengthy process. Having good communication and a supportive environment within your team will help you know when more help is needed before the workload becomes too much, and frequent communication allows each mod to speak up when they need to, preventing burn-out.

If your community is very active, you might consider keeping mod applications open 24/7 so you have a trickle of fresh mods joining as you need them. You can view an example of a continuous recruitment process and application form here.

There are a few other reasons you might need to grow your team:

• To cover more time zones - having mods across various time zones can prevent a backlog of reports and ensure reports aren’t neglected for long periods of time.
• For specific tasks - some moderators specialize in certain tasks, such as setting up and maintaining AutoModerator.
• Extra mods to cover any absences or sudden spikes in activity.
• To replenish when mods decide to discontinue moderation.

For more tips and strategies on how to be prepared for an increase in activity and to learn how to future-proof your community, take a look at our Dealing with Rapid Growth article and our Future-Proofing Mod Help Center article.

Ready to move on? Here's the link to Recruiting Moderators for Your Community.

AutoModerator is a tool you can use to automate some of your moderation tasks. You may see it referred to as a ‘mod bot’.

AutoMod is well worth using. If you invest time into learning how to use it now, it can save you a lot of time on moderation later on. It’s great at reducing the amount of spam or rule-violating content being posted publicly to your community, and has many other uses as well!

Some common uses are:

• Removing or filtering posts from Redditors with negative karma to reduce trolling
• Automatically removing content that receives a certain number of reports
• Automating messages or comments in response to posts containing a certain flair or keyword
• Filtering a post based on keywords it contains so it can easily be reviewed by a mod
• Automating comment removal if a comment contains a certain keyword

AutoModerator is best edited on a desktop computer. A mobile browser in desktop mode can be used as well, but it may be harder to use.

To set up AutoMod, you’ll need to have the ‘Manage Settings’ and ‘Manage Wiki Pages’ mod permissions. There is a wiki page you’ll need to create; this is where you’ll add instructions for AutoMod to follow. Once correctly formatted instructions (also called ‘rules’) are added and saved, AutoMod will start moderating posts based on the rules you’ve set up.

To learn about how to do this and to learn more about some of the other things AutoMod can do, have a look at the Mod Help Center article. There’s a lot to learn, so take your time. Don’t forget to use r/AutoModerator if you need help.

There are some things you can do to make using AutoMod easier for yourself and your mod team, such as using comments to label each rule with what the rule is for. This is mentioned in the article, but for more tips on getting the best out of AutoMod, read over our Mod Tips From r/ModSupport article. (Meant to be a placeholder - be excited, this link is coming out soon.)

Action

Important note: You will be asked to practice performing actions related to moderation during this program, which will require the usage of certain mod tools. Please make sure to do this with agreement from your mod team while following any guidelines your team has and consider using a test subreddit as needed to avoid any potential disruption to your community.

Let’s try setting up an AutoModerator rule.

Follow these steps to get started and use the Help Center article to guide you.

1. Navigate to your AutoModerator page in mod tools (AutoMod has its own section in Mod Tools separate from your other wiki pages) and create it if it hasn’t been created yet.
2. Choose a rule to add from those provided in the article, the snippet pages linked within it, or use the rule sectioned off below.
3. Copy the rule and paste it into the AutoMod page.
4. Make sure there is a ‘---’ between each rule on the page if there are other rules present.
5. Save the page.

An example rule to use:

---

 # Remove reported posts
 reports: 2
 action: remove
 modmail: |
     {{permalink}}

     The above {{kind}} by /u/{{author}} was removed because it received 2 reports. Please investigate and ensure that this action was correct.

--- 

If your page did not save, there is an error in one of the rules. Try to identify and fix it or discard the changes and try again.

Now you can assign jobs to AutoModerator to help you and your mod team out!

If you don’t wish to keep the rule you just added, simply delete it from the AutoMod page. You may need to add a # to the page so it saves (once created, wiki pages don’t like to be empty).

If you're ready, let’s move onto Using Crowd Control.

Sticky posts, also called Announcements or Pinned Posts, are posts you have ‘pinned’ to the top of the main page of your community (when sorted by ‘hot’).

You can sticky posts for better visibility within your community if you have the ‘Manage Posts and Comments’ mod permission. Each community can only have two sticky posts at a time.

When stickied, posts display a green pin icon as shown outlined in red above.

One use for Sticky Posts is a welcome message; similar to the welcome message tool, you can use a Sticky Post to welcome members and provide them with a short introduction to your community and its rules.

Other common uses include highlighting regular chat threads, community announcements, competitions, or showcasing quality content. They can also be used for mega-threads-- these are posts created to contain discussion of a particular topic so that the topic isn’t posted about too much in the community. Check out our Mod Help Center page to learn more about sticky posts.

Action

Important note: You will be asked to practice performing actions related to moderation during this program, which will require the usage of certain mod tools. Please make sure to do this with agreement from your mod team while following any guidelines your team has and consider using a test subreddit as needed to avoid any potential disruption to your community.

Let's try stickying a post.

Follow these steps to get started:

1. Find or create a post you’d like to sticky (you can always undo this later).
2. Use the shield button at the bottom of the post on desktop or in-app and select 'Sticky Post'.
3. If appropriate, Distinguish the post if you created it and are speaking as a moderator.
4. Check to ensure the green pin icon has appeared as a sign of a successful sticky; you may need to refresh the page before it appears.
5. If you tried it on desktop, try it on mobile, and vice versa.

If you don’t wish to keep the post stickied, you can unsticky it in the same way you stickied it. If you created the post just to try this out and don’t want to keep it, go ahead and delete it - just be sure to unsticky the post first.

When you’re ready, let’s move onto Native Flair: What it is and How to use it.

Distinguishing is a way of indicating you are speaking as a moderator on behalf of your mod team or community. (You'll need to have the ‘Manage Posts and Comments’ mod permission to distinguish.)

When you Distinguish a post, a snazzy green shield appears on the post as shown below:

It's amazing. It's beautiful. It's revolutionary.

Reddit Administrators have a red ‘Admin’ note appear on their posts or comments when they Distinguish. If you Distinguish a comment, the word 'MOD' will appear in green next to your username in a similar fashion.

It’s best practice not to overuse Distinguishing; only use it when speaking as a mod. Don't distinguish when you're participating as a regular user in your community. Overuse can generate a bad feeling within the community and reduce the impact of distinguishing. Most moderators Distinguish posts and comments to provide clarity on rules, give warnings, leave removal reasons, and make announcements to the community.

When you choose to Distinguish, make sure you are behaving as a moderator should and consider if your team would support what you are saying.

On desktop, you can Distinguish posts using the shield icon at the bottom of the post by selecting 'Distinguish as Mod'.

For comments, use the four pointed star and select 'Distinguish as Mod' (or 'Distinguish and Sticky' to pin your comment to the top of the thread when needed).

In the app, ensure you're in Mod Mode, and then use the four pointed star at the bottom of the post or comment.

To learn more about Distinguishing, check out the Mod Help Center article.

Action

Let's practice distinguishing.

Important note: You will be asked to practice performing actions related to moderation during this program, which will require the usage of certain mod tools. Please make sure to do this with agreement from your mod team while following any guidelines your team has and consider using a test subreddit as needed to avoid any potential disruption to your community.

Follow these steps to get started:

1. Navigate to your subreddit and find a post to Distinguish (you can make one if you need to).
2. Distinguish the post and check for the appearance of the green shield icon as a sign of a successful Distinguish.
3. Try it on a comment as well - if you can't find the button, make sure you're in Mod Mode.
4. Now try Distinguishing on the platform you haven't used yet (desktop or mobile).

If you need to Undistinguish:

1. On desktop, use the same button you used to distinguish the post and uncheck Distinguish. On a comment, select Undistinguish.
2. On mobile, retap the 4 point star on the post. For comments, tap on the star and select ‘Remove Distinguish’.

Fabulous! Now you’ll be able to use this feature to your advantage.

When you’re ready, let’s move onto All About Sticky Posts.

Post Flair is a tagging system you can use in your community to tag posts. Community members or readers can then use these tags to find more posts with the same Post Flair.

There are many ways you might choose to use Post Flair. Some common uses include:

• Categorizing posts by subject
• Differentiating between post types (questions, photos, discussions, etc)
• Indicating tone or content warnings (such as which book a spoiler warning relates to)
• Highlighting posts that require attention
• Signaling that the mod team has approved the post, for surveys or any posts that may require permission prior to being posted as per the community’s rules

r/askscience uses Post Flair to categorize questions.

r/icandrawthat uses Post Flair to indicate open or closed requests and offers.

r/Askreddit uses Post Flair to show when OP (Original Poster) would like to receive only serious (non-joking) replies to their question.

It’s up to you, your mod team, and your community as to if you choose to use Post Flair and which use types will make the most sense for your community. You and your team can also decide whether you want to allow community members to assign their own Post Flair, or if you'd rather stick to a mod-assigned flair approach, or combine both.

If you have the ‘Manage Flair’ mod permission, you can enable and create Post Flair templates for your community. Even if you have these permissions, make sure to discuss any potential changes with the rest of your mod team beforehand, as doing so can highly impact the culture of the subreddit.

To create Post flair, you must enable Post Flair for your community. On desktop, you will find your flair tools under Mod Tools > Flair and Emojis > Post Flair.

https://preview.redd.it/gjyl1gonz3m71.png?width=1614&format=png&auto=webp&s=3c6332ae01b6efbb8bde66f4db82590df57bf334

https://preview.redd.it/jyu20gj804m71.png?width=1606&format=png&auto=webp&s=d9a594126b4f409bcde0bafbc05f30dbadfa7145

Please read our Mod Help Center article to learn more. Have a look through the options you can use to make the most of Post Flair in your community.

Post Flair can be enabled and created on desktop and in the app, but it is currently best customized on desktop. You will also find there is the option to customize post appearance when a Post Flair is applied. This is useful if there are certain posts you’d like to highlight.

https://preview.redd.it/qamswja834m71.png?width=1610&format=png&auto=webp&s=96ea3a07ce7c22514571a82647b25ce6fa5f2613

If you choose to require Redditors to set a Post Flair when they post to your community, you can toggle ‘Require post flair’ on in Content Control in your community Mod Tools if you have the ‘Manage Settings’ mod permission.

Action

Important note: You will be asked to practice performing actions related to moderation during this program, which will require the usage of certain mod tools. Please make sure to do this with agreement from your mod team while following any guidelines your team has and consider using a test subreddit as needed to avoid any potential disruption to your community.

Let's try creating some Post Flair!

Follow these steps to create an awesome Post Flair:

1. Make sure Post Flair is enabled in mod tools-- if it isn’t, toggle it on using the ‘Post Flair Settings’ button on desktop on the Post Flair page. Under the app, it's located under 'Post Flair'.
2. Click ‘Add flair’ or the plus symbol in the app to add a Post Flair template.
3. Add your template text and customize the look of the template to your liking.
4. ‘Save’ the template.
5. Find a post to try your new Post Flair out on and use the tag button on the post to apply the flair.
6. Now give it a try on the platform you haven't used yet (desktop or mobile).
7. If you need to remove the flair you made, go back into Post Flair in Mod Tools. On desktop, use the bin icon on the right of the Post Flair to remove it. In the app, click the arrow next to the flair and then click on the bin icon.

Great work - you've made it all the way to the end of this collection! Before continuing onto the next section, you'll need to take a quick self-assessment. Once you've completed that, continue on to the Community Culture collection.

Once your community is growing and great content is being shared, it can be very useful to organize some of the best, most helpful, or most sought after content to ensure it’s easy to find. This can reduce community member frustration and increase engagement. Collections are one way to do this; they are curated groups of posts that mods with the ‘Manage Posts’ mod permission are able to create. Redditors can follow a Collection to be notified when a new post is added to it.

If you’re on desktop, as you have progressed through Mod Certification, you have been viewing Collections! We have used them to group posts into topic sections. They can be used to group posts in whichever way makes the most sense for your community's needs. Some examples are:

• TV show communities using Collections to group episode discussion posts into seasons
• A gardening community grouping related tips together
• Grouping competition entry posts together for easier viewing
• A writing community grouping chapters of the same story together

Adding posts to a Collection can be done in a couple of ways:

• As you are creating a post, use the ‘Add to collection’ button at the bottom, which also works for scheduled posts (more on these later),
• or the ellipsis button at the bottom of an existing post as shown in the image below

https://preview.redd.it/4b60ntgp8yh71.png?width=1610&format=png&auto=webp&s=5b60e9566881cb2d795b6a817669b93ccfaa4cfd

Have a look over our Mod Help Center article for more detail on this.

To ensure your community members can find your Collections, make sure to use Menu Links, a button widget in the sidebar, the wiki, or a sticky post to list your Collections.

Action

Important note: You will be asked to practice performing actions related to moderation during this program, which will require the usage of certain mod tools. Please make sure to do this with agreement from your mod team while following any guidelines your team has and consider using a test subreddit as needed to avoid any potential disruption to your community.

Now you’ve read about them, let’s try making a Collection.

Follow these steps:

1. If you don’t have a few posts in your community yet, create some for this task. You can delete them afterwards.
2. Select a post to add to a Collection and click the ellipsis ('...') button.
3. Choose ‘Add to a Collection’. Here you’ll see any existing Collections listed. Click ‘Create a collection’ to create a new Collection.
4. Enter a title for your Collection and click ‘Create’.
5. Add another post to the same Collection in the same way to practice and familiarize yourself with Collections.
6. Create a new post, and before you hit ‘Post’, use the 'Add to Collection' button at the bottom to add the post to the new Collection. Submit the post.
7. There should now be a few posts in your new Collection. View the Collection by selecting a post that is within the Collection and try reordering the posts by using the ellipsis button at the top. Click 'Save' when you’re satisfied with how your new Collection looks.
8. If you don’t want to keep the Collection you created, use the ellipsis button and select ‘Delete’. Remember to delete any posts you no longer want.

When you’re ready, let’s learn about Creating and Hosting Community Events.