Native Flairs are helpful labels you can add to posts in your community. They each have a specific use. You need the ‘Manage Posts and Comments’ mod permission to use them.

NSFW Native Flair

If your community is set up as an NSFW 18+ (Not Safe For Work/adult content) community, each post will automatically be marked with this flair.

If your community is SFW (Safe For Work - by default, your community will be set as ‘safe for work’ and open for all unless you or Reddit have changed it), but may occasionally have a NSFW post, you should mark those as NSFW using the Native Flair if the Original Poster hasn’t. You should also include any gore or other potentially upsetting or startling content under this Native Flair too.

Adding this flair to a post blurs the images and text for Redditors with safe browsing turned on in their user settings so these readers may choose whether to view the content or not.

The NSFW flair is ready to use and works on desktop and mobile. It is shown above in action.

Spoiler Native Flair

The spoiler flair allows you and your community members to mark their posts as containing a spoiler. This is handy if your community focuses on TV shows, books, or other current media. If you’re looking forward to watching the next episode of your favorite show, you probably don’t want to stumble upon juicy details before you get the chance to enjoy it!

It can be a matter of opinion as to what spoilers are considered to be, so use your best judgment and consider consulting with your community to agree on a time frame for how long something is considered a spoiler. Be sure to document this clearly in your rules and utilize your community wiki pages. Different communities do this differently-- here are a few examples:

r/rupaulsdragrace considers anything about past episodes fair game, but only if the episode has been out for 24 hours, and spoilers for future episodes are forbidden. There are also rules for leaked content. Their Spoiler Wiki Page is viewable here.
r/gameofthrones has a very detailed spoiler guide which includes requesting community members add their own tags to titles using square brackets. (Such as [SPOILERS] or [LEAKS].) Here's their wiki page.
r/dresdenfiles uses Post Flair in addition to Native Flair to include which book the spoilers are for. Spoilers up to and including the flaired book are then allowed, but no spoilers are allowed for any books that come after the flaired book. Here's their rule page.
r/batman rules clearly list how long something is considered a spoiler for each media type and request comment spoilers be hidden.

Please note that the titles of posts marked as spoilers will still be visible, so it’s common for communities to include a rule banning spoilers in titles.

To enable the Spoiler flair, toggle the feature on in your community’s Post and Comment settings. This flair can only be enabled on desktop at the moment, but it works on desktop and mobile once you have configured it.

Expert Tips:

Spoilers can also be hidden in text using markdown; you may wish to include a rule on this type of usage as well.
AutoModerator can be used to spot and mark spoilers using keywords.

An example of the Spoiler flair in action - but no worries, we'll never actually spoil anything for you. <3

OC Native Flair

The OC flair allows mods and posters to mark posts as containing Original Content, which is content the original poster has created. Any community can use this flair, but you’ll see it used most often in communities based around creation and design.

At the moment, this flair is in Beta, meaning that it's currently being tested and isn't a feature available for all to use yet. It only works in New Reddit. To enable it, you’ll need to visit your Community Settings in legacy or old Reddit. When visiting our Help Center article, be sure to click on the 'Old Reddit' tab to view instructions. You can also visit this page using this link - remember to add in your subreddit’s name - https://old.reddit.com/r/SUBNAMEHERE/about/edit/ and scroll down to find the check box for the OC tag.

Please read the Mod Help Center article here to learn how to add Native Flair to posts and see what it looks like when applied.

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’re up to speed on Native Flair, let's try using them.

Follow these steps to get started:

Select a Native Flair to test out and enable it if it needs to be enabled.
Find a post in your community to test it on - the flair can be removed after.
Click on the shield button to add the Native Flair.
Check to see if the flair has appeared on the post.
Now give it a try on the platform you haven't yet used (desktop or mobile).
If you need to remove the flair you just tested, use the mod shield again to deselect it.

Great job! Now you're ready to flair posts whenever you need to. When you’re ready, let’s move on to Locking Posts and Comments.

1 comment

r/ModCertification201 • u/ModCertification • Aug 13 '21

All About User Flair

26 Upvotes

It can be helpful and fun to be able to tag members within your community and/or fun for members to be able to tag themselves. User Flair is the tagging system for community members that you can use to do this. It can be used in a number of creative and useful ways. Some examples are:

To show status or achievement: you can grant flair to community members as a reward, or to highlight moderators, helpers, or those with expert knowledge.
To inform: for example, skill-based subreddits may ask community members to add their skill-level to their flair, or a computer science based help community may ask for community members to tag their operating system version.

You can set up flair if you have the ‘Manage Flair’ permission. 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 user flair, you must enable User Flair for your community. On desktop, you will find your flair tools under mod tools > Flair and Emojis section > User Flair.

You can learn more about User Flair Settings in the Help Center. Have a look through the options you can use to make the most of User Flair in your community.

Whether you allow community members to set their own flair or not, you always have the option as a moderator to Grant User Flair to community members. This is especially useful if you’re using flair as a reward or to tag experts relevant to your community's topic.

On desktop you can grant flair through this process: Mod Tools > User Management > Grant User Flair. You can also hover over a community member’s username in your community and choose the ‘Edit User Flair’ option. On mobile, tap a user’s username in your community and select the ‘Change User Flair’ option.

Action

Now that you’ve seen flair in action and know the steps required to create and grant flair to users in your own community, let's give it a try! Practicing using flair will help you feel more comfortable with the process and will have little or no effect on your community as you can remove the flairs you make when you’re done if you don’t wish to keep them.

Note: If you are a mod of an established community, please gain approval from your co-mods before testing your User Flair so they will know why you’re creating, granting, and removing flairs. To practice, we recommend creating a test subreddit so you can learn how to do this.

Follow these steps to get started:

Enable User Flair.
Create a User Flair template using the Mod Help Center article as a guide.
Assign the template to yourself or another community member (it will save automatically).
If you assigned it to yourself, find one of your recent comments or posts in the community to check if the flair applied successfully and see how it looks.

Want to remove your test flair? Here's how you can remove it.

To remove User Flair from a user:

On the 'Grant User Flair' page, locate the community member (using the search bar if needed) and use the bin icon on the far right.
Or hover over their username in your community, choose the 'Edit User Flair' option, and select 'Clear Flair'.
On mobile, tap on their username, select 'Change User Flair', tap 'Edit', select 'None', and tap 'Done'.

To remove a User Flair template:

Go back to your User Flair page in mod tools and use the bin icon to the right of the flair you wish to remove.
On mobile, go back to the User Flair option in Mod Tools, tap on the arrow next to the flair you wish to remove, and then tap on the bin icon.
There will be a check before the flair is deleted to ensure you want to remove it.

When you're ready, let’s move on to All About Community Awards.

1 comment

r/ModCertification201 • u/ModCertification • Aug 13 '21

Using the Distinguish Feature

32 Upvotes

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 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.

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

Action

Let's practice distinguishing.

Follow these steps to get started:

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

If you need to Undistinguish:

On desktop, use the same button you used to distinguish the post and uncheck Distinguish. On a comment, select Undistinguish.
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.

1 comment

r/ModCertification201 • u/ModCertification • Sep 09 '21

r/ModCertification201 Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

40 Upvotes

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.

0 comments

r/ModCertification201 • u/ModCertification • Aug 16 '21

Banning and Muting

40 Upvotes

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:

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:

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.
Now click or tap on the plus icon ('+'), or 'Ban User' button, to add a banned Redditor.
Fill out the information required to ban your test account. Remember to check the spelling of their username!
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.
Add a note to include in the ban message-- share which rule they have broken.
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.
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.

1 comment

r/ModCertification201 • u/ModCertification • Aug 13 '21

Understanding Mod Permissions

26 Upvotes

Before you begin to grow your mod team, you’ll need to understand what duties you need fulfilled within your community, which has an impact on which permissions you'll need to grant each new mod so they have the right tools they need. We’ll touch on what the main Mod Permissions are so you’ll know how to grow your mod team while having a better idea of what permissions your new mods need.

When you add new moderators to your mod team, you’ll have the choice of which permissions to grant each new moderator. Each permission allows your new moderator access to certain tools within your community. For example, a few of the permissions are:

For full details on each permission and the tools they provide access to, please read the Mod Help Center article.

If your new moderator is someone you already know and trust, you can consider granting them the ‘Everything’ permission. But sometimes it might be wise to grant only the required permissions for the tasks you’d like that moderator to do so you can then add permissions as they learn the ropes and prove themselves. We’ll go into more detail about onboarding on new moderators in the next few sections.

Action

Now that you know what the moderator permissions are, let’s have a go at using them.

Follow these steps on the mobile app to invite a moderator to your team and assign their mod permissions:

Navigate to the community you moderate. Tap on the Mod Tools button.
Under “User Management”, select “Moderators”.
Click on the plus icon ('+') to invite a moderator. Type in your test account’s username and select which permissions you’d like to give it by checking or unchecking the boxes beside each permission. Remember to check your spelling when entering the username!
Click “Invite”.
Log-in to your test account to accept the moderation invitation.
Returning to your original moderation account, you can remove the test account from the community by returning to the “Moderators” section, which is located under “User Management”, and clicking on the “Editable” tab.
Click on the three dots beside the test account’s username, and click “Remove”.

Follow these steps on desktop to invite a moderator to your team and assign their mod permissions:

Navigate to the community you moderate. Click on the Mod Tools icon. This is located in the sidebar of your community.
Under “User Management”, select “Moderators”.
Click on the “Invite User as Mod” button in the top right corner.
Enter your test account into the username field and check or uncheck which permissions you’d like to assign it. Remember to check your spelling when entering the username!
Click “Invite”.
Log-in to your test account to accept the moderator invitation.
To remove the new moderator from your community using your original moderation account, click on the pencil icon beside the moderator under the “You can edit these moderators" section. This section can be found on the “Moderators” page under “User Management”.
Click on “Remove” beside the “Cancel” and “Save” buttons.

Awesome - you’re now able to add and edit moderators while understanding which permissions you’re granting them.

If you feel confident in your understanding of mod permissions, let’s move on to Growing Your Mod Team. If you want to practice again, feel free to review this section before continuing.

1 comment

r/ModCertification201 • u/ModCertification • Aug 13 '21

Creating and Hosting Community Events

25 Upvotes

Please note that the info listed here is generalized; each community has a different culture, so please consider the topic of your community and consider asking your members for input before implementing any suggestions.

Creating and hosting events can foster a strong community culture between your members and the mod team, which can cultivate higher rates of engagement and a shared feeling of belonging. Examples of events communities often host are AMAs, community milestone threads, and contests.

If you have the ‘Manage Posts and Comments’ mod permission, you can use the Event post feature. Note that Events can only be created on desktop.

An Event post will allow you to add a start and end date to your Event, as well as allow users to “follow” the Event to receive a notification when it starts. This is great for preparing events. You can also make a regular post and distinguish and sticky it so it is pinned to the top of the community if you don’t wish to use the Event feature.

There are some best practices to be aware of when hosting events. Generally, it’s a good idea to consult with your community through a stickied post or poll to see what events they’re interested in. You’ll also want to clearly define the purpose of the event and use teamwork to advertise and execute the event. If you are hosting an event involving another person, such as an AMA guest, guide them through the process and ensure they feel comfortable with the platform. Finally, letting your community know they are welcome to gain mod-approval to host their own events is also a great way to collectively build community culture. You can read more about best practices for events here in the Mod Help Center.

Action

Now that we’ve covered the best practices for events, let’s try creating one. We’re going to combine the Event feature and the Scheduled Posts feature to celebrate the one-year anniversary of your community!

Follow these steps to create an event:

Click on the “Create Post” button located in your community sidebar.
Type in a subject and post body describing the celebration of your community’s anniversary. Remember to define the event’s purpose and welcome members to discuss their favorite things about the community, or ask them to share their favorite posts from the past year.
Click on the “event” button and set a time period for the Event.
In the same box, schedule the post for the one-year anniversary date. Try to select a starting time that is good for your members’ schedules to ensure more eyes are on the post when it submits. Alternatively, you can schedule a post without using the “event” button by clicking on the calendar button beside “post”.
Click “post”. Note that if you scheduled your post, it will only post during that scheduled time. You can still edit the scheduled post before the date and time it goes live.
Go back and delete the post if you do not wish to keep it.

Do note that you can also toggle the “live chat” button to create a live stream of comments rather than the regular comment chain. This option is often best for events requiring interactive participation.

When you’re ready to proceed, move on to All About Scheduled and Recurring Posts.

1 comment

r/ModCertification201 • u/ModCertification • Aug 17 '21

The Last Self Assessment of Your Mod Tools

25 Upvotes

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.

1 comment

r/ModCertification201 • u/quietfairy • Mar 31 '22

Trophies for the month of March will be awarded soon

40 Upvotes

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!

0 comments

r/ModCertification201 • u/ModCertification • Aug 17 '21

Community Culture Self Assessment

31 Upvotes

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.

1 comment

r/ModCertification201 • u/ModCertification • Aug 13 '21

Creating and Using Collections

30 Upvotes

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

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

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

Follow these steps:

If you don’t have a few posts in your community yet, create some for this task. You can delete them afterwards.
Select a post to add to a Collection and click the ellipsis ('...') button.
Choose ‘Add to a Collection’. Here you’ll see any existing Collections listed. Click ‘Create a collection’ to create a new Collection.
Enter a title for your Collection and click ‘Create’.
Add another post to the same Collection in the same way to practice and familiarize yourself with Collections.
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.
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.
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.

1 comment

r/ModCertification201 • u/ModCertification • Aug 13 '21

All About Sticky Posts

34 Upvotes

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.

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

Let's try stickying a post.

Follow these steps to get started:

Find or create a post you’d like to sticky (you can always undo this later).
Use the shield button at the bottom of the post on desktop or in-app and select 'Sticky Post'.
If appropriate, Distinguish the post if you created it and are speaking as a moderator.
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.
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.

1 comment

r/ModCertification201 • u/ModCertification • Aug 12 '21

Setting Up Your Welcome Message

28 Upvotes

It’s always nice to receive a welcome, and whenever you enter a new space it can help to have someone greet you and point you in the right direction. You can do that for your new members with a welcome message.

A welcome message is a custom message that is sent to Redditors who join your community about an hour after they press the join button (unless they leave within that time). This message is a good opportunity to point out any important information the new member needs to know to engage with your community, such as your rules, and to set the scene - what is your community about? Try to keep it brief and friendly by using links to your advantage. We'll discuss how you can create this message below.

Here are a few examples to give you an idea of what you might like to include:

Setting Up a Welcome Message

This tool is not currently available to configure in the app, but the welcome message will be sent to community members who are using the app.

To set a welcome message (if you have the ‘Manage Settings’ permission), go to Mod Tools on desktop and then select 'Community Settings'. Ensure 'Community' is selected in the menu on the left.

You'll then see a header toward the middle of the page labeled \"Send welcome message to new members\"-- write your welcome message into the text box and then click the toggle button on it to turn it on. The toggle button is currently toggled to the 'on' switch, as evidenced by its blue color.

You can format your message using markdown just as you might do with your posts and comments, wiki pages, or text widgets.

Review your message and remember to save it. You can send yourself a test message to check how the message looks when received by using the ‘Send me a test message’ button located below the right of the text box.

You can read more about welcoming members and setting up the welcome message in our Welcoming New Members article.

Action

Now that you’ve learned about how to set up your community's welcome message, why not try setting one up?

Follow these steps to get started:

On desktop, navigate to the 'Community' page and toggle the welcome message setting on.
Type your welcome message into the box.
Proofread your message for typos and clarity. Does it sound welcoming?
Send a test message using the button to the bottom right of the box and preview your message.
Make any changes needed and remember to save the message using the button located at the top right of the page.

Great work! Now your members will receive a nice welcome when they join.

If you need to stop the message from sending for any reason, you can come back to this page and toggle it off. You can also edit and test your message whenever you need to.

Now that you know how to set up a welcome message, continue onto User Flair.

1 comment

r/ModCertification201 • u/ModCertification • Aug 16 '21

All About Modmail

58 Upvotes

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.

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!

On Desktop

Follow these steps to send a message:

Open Modmail on your desktop by clicking on the shield in the notification bar. Select “Modmail” from the dropdown that appears.
Click on the plus button ('+') in the top right corner to start a new message.
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.
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”.
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.
Type in a subject line and fill out the body of the message.
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.
Send the message once you have selected if you’d like to respond as your username or the subreddit.
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:

Open Modmail on your desktop by clicking on the shield in your notification bar. Click on “Modmail” from the dropdown that appears.
Click on any message.
Type in a response into the text box.
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.
Once you’ve made your selection, hit “reply”.

On the Mobile App

Follow these steps to reply to a message:

Navigate to the community you moderate.
Click on the shield icon button that has “Mod Tools” written beside it.
Under the “General” tab, click on “Modmail”.
Click on any Modmail message.
Scroll down to the bottom where a text box appears, and type in your message.
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.
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:

Navigate to the community you moderate.
Click on the shield icon button that has “Mod Tools” written beside it.
Under the General tab, click on “Modmail”.
Select the three lines to the left of the “search Modmail” bar.
Click on the plus icon.
Choose between “Moderator Discussion” and “To User”. A green checkmark will appear beside the option you’ve selected.
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.

1 comment

r/ModCertification201 • u/ModCertification • Aug 17 '21

Locking Posts and Comments

33 Upvotes

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)).

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

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

Follow these steps to try it out:

Find a post in your community to test the lock feature on in the app. (You can always unlock it after.)
Tap on the shield button and select ‘Lock Comments’ to lock the post.
Check to see if the yellow lock symbol on the post is visible (you may need to refresh).
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.
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.

1 comment

r/ModCertification201 • u/ModCertification • Aug 17 '21

Growing Your Mod Team Self Assessment

33 Upvotes

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.

1 comment

r/ModCertification201 • u/ModCertification • Aug 17 '21

Crisis, Trolls, and Evasion

44 Upvotes

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.

1 comment

r/ModCertification201 • u/ModCertification • Aug 16 '21

Growing Your Mod Team

26 Upvotes

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.

1 comment

r/ModCertification201 • u/ModCertification • Aug 13 '21

All About Scheduled and Recurring Posts

26 Upvotes

Scheduled posts are super useful! You can schedule posts to automatically post at a future time so you don’t have to remember or rush to do it at the right time.

Recurring posts are similar-- they’re Scheduled posts, but they repeat in a pattern. These are great for any repeating posts you’d like to set up in your community.

Some examples are:

Daily discussion topics
Weekly chat threads
Welcome threads to welcome new members
Episode discussions for TV show communities

You can set these up if you have the ‘Manage Posts and Comments’ moderator permission.

Scheduled and Recurring posts can be edited by other mods with the right mod permission until they’ve reached their post date, and posts can also be configured to be posted by AutoModerator. You can configure them to post as sticky posts too! These can only be set up on a desktop at the moment, but you can view and edit them in the app. Read over the Mod Help Center article to learn how to set up Scheduled and Recurring posts.

When you set up your first Scheduled or Recurring post that will be posted by AutoMod, u/AutoModerator will automatically be added as a moderator of your community with the mod permissions it requires to work, so you don’t need to do anything more than schedule the posts.

Action

Let’s try setting up a Scheduled post.

Follow these steps to set up your first Scheduled or Recurring post:

On a desktop, either using the usual posting feature or your Mod Tools, begin a new post.
Add a title and, if necessary, add some body text and flair.
Click the ‘Schedule’ button.
If you haven’t before, click around all of the settings to familiarize yourself with them.
If you set a ‘Repeat’ option (for Recurring posts), you may see further options appear.
Choose the settings you need and apply them.
Hit ‘Schedule’ - now you’re done!
If you’d like to sticky, distinguish, or use native flair on the post, you’ll need to add that from the ‘Scheduled Posts’ section in Mod Tools by locating the post you want to add it to and use the ellipsis (...) button.
Open your community on mobile. Navigate to Mod Tools and then find ‘Scheduled Posts’. You can view and edit your post from here. Have a look around the settings to familiarize yourself with them.
If you don’t wish to keep the post you made, you can delete it within the ‘Scheduled Posts’ section. For Recurring posts, you’ll need to click the ‘Edit’ button, and then the ‘Delete’ button.

Great work!

Look at that - you're already at the end of our third collection. We have another self-assessment for you to take-- once you've completed it, feel free to proceed onto our fourth collection's first post, Understanding Mod Permissions.

1 comment

r/ModCertification201 • u/ModCertification • Aug 16 '21

A Mobile-Friendly Link Collection

40 Upvotes

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