Reddit Launches Moderator Rewards Program Amid Sitewide Discontent

Amid growing discontent among Reddit's moderators, the company has launched a "Mod Helper Program" to reward moderators who offer helpful advice to other moderators. TechCrunch reports: The Mod Helper Program is a tiered system that awards helpful moderators with trophies and flairs. Reddit users accrue karma by receiving upvotes and awards, and lose karma if they receive downvotes. The program rewards moderators who receive upvotes on comments in r/ModSupport. Comment karma earned in r/ModSupport will be rewarded with trophies that will "signal to other mods that you are a source of valuable information," the moderator support team announced on Thursday. Each rank awards unique trophies and flairs, ranging from "Helper" to "Expert Helper." Reddit launched a similar program in r/help earlier this year, which rewards users who accrue karma by responding to other users' requests.

Reddit also launched the Modmail Answer Bot, which automatically responds with relevant links to the site's Help Center. If the recommended articles don't answer a specific request, it will create a ticket that will be handled by a human admin. The bot is designed to streamline moderator requests so the admin team can focus on more complex issues. Additionally, Reddit is merging the moderator-specific Help Center with its sitewide one to ensure that support resources are "easy to find and accessible from the same location."

Abusive Relationship

[Anonymous Coward]

At this point their moderators are in an abusive relationship and can't get a TRO before the IPO.

Re:

[NomDeAlias]

Users have been in an abusive relationship with moderators for years now and the site has suffered drastically.

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[linzeal]

Like my mom said to my dad when he came home drunk for the umpteenth time, "Flowers ain't going to cut it this time chief."

Reddit should pay moderators

[jsepeta]

Reddit benefits from free labor. Fuck that. Pay moderators a living wage instead.

Re:Reddit should pay moderators

[Fly Swatter]

Did someone force you to be a moderator? This should be something a person wants to do.. if you have to be paid maybe you aren't in it to benefit the community.

This is like spending your time helping at a soup kitchen and then asking for a paycheck.

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[RitchCraft]

Comparing Reddit to a soup kitchen made me LOL

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[Opportunist]

Well, in both cases you have people getting something for free. Though there is way less bitching about it in the average soup kitchen.

Re:Reddit should pay moderators

[pipegeek]

They just banned all the moderators who are actually invested in their communities. Now they've got whoever was willing to sign up, for prestige or the chance to control people. Moderation is hard work, and if they want people to actually do it well then they need to either court back the people they fired or make it a paid position.

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[Opportunist]

There were two reasons why someone signed up to be a mod. The first, the "good", reason was because they really believed in whatever the topic of the sub was (or because the person who paid them believed in their product and they were employed as moderators of the sub for that product) and they wanted to promote it and help people who needed help with it.

The bad reason was because the person wanted the feeling of power and control of the narrative regarding a particular subject.

Now a third reason entered th

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[Baron_Yam]

Conversely, if you don't have to be paid you might just be A) a useful fool for the people trying to profit off you and B) motivated by perceived status and power over others.

Paid moderation would be better for the communities, but it would cost infinitely more than Reddit is willing to pay.

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[misexistentialist]

Pretty sure people whose livelihoods depend on benefiting the community will want to benefit the community more than someone who volunteers for some other reason. Obviously hiring needs to be selective and performance reviewed like any job. Soup kitchens operate mostly with paid staff

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[NG-Buddhist]

"Pay moderators a living wage for their volunteer labor" Thank you, I needed a good laugh today.

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[Local ID10T]

Why would I pay one when someone else will do the job for free?

I have Soviet times flashbacks

[Opportunist]

You know, during Soviet times, they handed out orders, decorations and other worthless trinkets to those that worked harder to further the Soviet goal. People tried really, really hard to avoid getting these honors. Not only did you have to wear them to official events, they also showed everyone who the asshole is that sides with The Party and who you can't trust to open your mouth to.

There was no faster way to become a total pariah.

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[Anonymous Coward]

You know, during Soviet times, they handed out orders, decorations and other worthless trinkets to those that worked harder to further the Soviet goal.

Reminds me of the Microsoft VIP program.

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[HBI]

I am pretty sure they are aware of this internally, also. Interesting discussions at times about hiring people from the outside that ran along those lines. They hire in, milk someone for what value they can get out of them in terms of credibility and a foot in the door with particular customers, and then get rid of them.

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[tlhIngan]

Sort of like the blue checks on Twitter - er .. X these days?

Funny how now they have the option to hide it. And there are browser extensions that can unhide it.

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[dinfinity]

Yeah, the Soviets weren't the only ones handing out essentially worthless decorations and trinkets.
Do you think a Purple Heart really buys you anything?

The reality is that human psychology is easily exploited with shit like this, whether it be for nefarious or benevolent means.

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[Opportunist]

We are not talking about military medals. Military medals were, even in the Soviet Union, pretty well respected, and they sure are very well respected in the USA. These were actually "civilian" medals that were handed out with much pomp and fanfare, the whole factory was assembled to watch someone get a medal.

Ponder this: How would you feel if there was someone at your company who makes you look bad by performing over-the-top, so now the expectation of what's going to be demanded from you goes up, and that

Et tu, Slashdot?

[CmdrPorno]

Coming soon to a Slashdot near you...

Re: Et tu, Slashdot?

[alexgieg]

I discovered a while ago that the absolute best way to use and navigate Slashdot is to completely disregard its moderation system.

I disabled emails and notifications about someone upvoting or downvoting me, disabled showing votes on the site, and set it to browse at -1, and even added a little uBlock rule that hides any remaining span showing voting counts, such as on user pages. The only emails I receive are about replies, nothing more.

It's such an immensely calmer site when all traces of gamification are

Advice for a Reddit moderator:

[greytree]

Never ever ban people for saying something that you disagree with.

Advice for Reddit:
Fix the appeal process so shitty moderation can be appealed against and shitty moderators can be removed.

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[Anonymous Coward]

tl;dr

election stolen
everything is too woke
my unpopular beliefs make me a martyr

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[Neuroelectronic]

Doubleplusgood, comrade! Your post was pure duckspeak. All citizens should strive for goodthink and follow the Party with crimethink-free obedience.

Big Brother is doublepluswise. The Party's iron grip shall lead us to victories doubleplusungood for any enemies. Let's collectively doublepluscommit to the latest directives from the Inner Party. BB is watching us, so we best doublepluscomply. You must be a good candidate for the Ministry of Truth!

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[smooth wombat]

Never ever ban people for saying something that you disagree with.

Elon, is that [yahoo.com] you [businessinsider.com]?

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[greytree]

I like what Musk does, but the first link does indeed appear to show him being a dick. Again.

But I think the second link is reasonable behavior from an employer - Blog about your job without permission means risking losing that job.

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[sizzlinkitty]

and this is why I have over 196 reddit accounts, half of which have been banned from r/denver, r/askcarsales, r/miami. I've been banned for so many different reasons, mostly for calling out censorship of mods deleting opinions they don't agree with. I ran a bot before the great API depression that would repost things deleted by moderators. All of that stopped working when pushshift.io was kicked off reddit.

I don't reddit anymore and have heard aged reddit accounts go for a couple bucks each, so hit me up if

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[greytree]

I left it when I got banned ( from the whole site! ) the first time, then found one group too useful to ignore, made an account for that, had a comment blocked by an another idiot mod, so left again, then I just made an account so I could sort comments by date ( yes, they disable that for visitors FFS ) and never posted again.

Don't the owners of Reddit realize that shit moderation - and no appeal - pisses people off and drives posters away?

( Don't the owners of Slashdot realize that shit editing... )

Watching Rome burn

[wecnal]

It's amazing to me, as someone with a Reddit account that's 15 years old, to watch this all unfold. Until the API bullshit, I honestly had no idea what the "Reddit User Experience" was, as I was only using a third-party app and RES. It's amazing to be forced to see how much it's declined and to watch it continue to decline. It's amazing what happens when outside money gets too involved.

Low cost high value

[byronivs]

Have you had enough of being treated like children yet? Or more likely the shoe fits just fine.

Power Trippers

[SmaryJerry]

The entire site is based around 'free' rewards like karma. Most Reddit moderators do so free because they are interested on the topic and want power to control the conversation and community. These other 'free' rewards to reddit are just an extension of that, but totally miss the mark on what moderators want, or wanted I should say, since Reddit has already kicked out moderators they don't like and replaced them with ones that tow the Reddit corporate line. Doesn't matter if it was a community you built, i

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[Opportunist]

The only thing Reddit really works for is to get answers to questions someone else already had. If you have a very common question, someone on Reddit will already have asked it and there will already have been some answer(s) to it, and they are also usually fairly good.

That's it.

News from Reddit? Please. It's as up to date as Slashdot and as reliable as the Pravda.

Still misses the mark...

[sizzlinkitty]

Want to reward moderators for the free labor? Pay them money and give them a job.

Sounds stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

The most rewarded moderators will be those with the most bot accounts, like u/spez.

Reddit Mods are the problem.

[Mirnotoriety]

Reddit Mods are the problem. Ten year old accounts with hundreds of subs. That they consider their own private fiefdom. such mentality leading to an instant ban if you contradict them. There's also a global ban on criticising paedophilia, very strange that :o