New changes to Reddit mod tools (some features we already have, some we should avoid, and some we can consider incorporating)

Reason for posting

• this is the reddit community, so updates about the platform are relevant
• some of these changes could be good for the people who find value in the communities there and are waiting for alternatives here (ex. niche subreddits / those that require a larger userbase, such as medical career communities)
• We can learn from what they did well, talk about what they did bad, and improve our own platforms

The original post quoted below:

Greetings, mods

During numerous calls with mods last year, we consistently heard about the difficulties in informing and educating redditors about a community’s rules, culture, FAQs, and other important information during key moments. This challenge is particularly pronounced on mobile platforms, where user engagement is high but community identity is less visible. Today, we’re thrilled to unveil a suite of new mod tools designed to address this issue by effectively conveying information to users across various areas on Reddit.

Community Status

This week we’re launching Community Status, a new feature that will allow mods to set an editable status that shows up next to your subreddit’s name. This status will be visible to all redditors, and they’ll be able to click or tap on the status to view more information.

Mods can use this status for a variety of reasons, like highlighting live events associated with the community, commemorating cultural moments, incorporating memes and easter eggs, or showcasing specific posts from the community. This status will be visible across the popular/home feeds, post detail pages, and the community page.

Community Status User Interface

Community Highlights

In a call with moderators last year regarding community uniqueness and customization, a significant concern raised was the limited visibility of stickied posts.

• Stickied posts, especially on mobile, are less visible due to changes that have reduced how clearly they appear in a community.
• Only having the ability to sticky two posts is quite restrictive, and ends up placing mods in difficult compromises on what types of posts to sticky.

We understand that this has hindered moderators’ ability to efficiently communicate and disseminate information within their community. To help remedy this, we’re excited to launch Community Highlights, a new supercharged pinned post experience. Next week mods will be able to do the following with Community Highlights:

• Pin up to 6 posts.
• Add a ‘label’ that shows up on the highlighted card, depending on what the type of post is.
• Set an ‘expiry timer’ for how long a highlight will stay on the page.
• Highlighted posts show up in this carousel format at the top of the page.

Used together, we intend for Community Status and Highlights to be a powerful new toolset notifying users about ongoing events within a community and assisting moderators in spotlighting posts they want to emphasize.

Community Highlights in Compact Mode

Community Highlights in Card Mode

Community Highlights Management

Post Guidance

After months of trialing Post Guidance, we’re beyond excited to drop the rope, pull the curtain back, and make this feature available to all communities, everywhere. For those unfamiliar with the feature, Post Guidance serves as a more intuitive tool where moderators can migrate and set up their subreddit rules and automoderator configurations. Users will then be preemptively alerted with a custom message that they are breaking a specific direction when trying to craft a post.

A heartfelt thank you to the 200+ mod teams who took the time to experiment with this new tool, provide us feedback and partner with us on this journey.

We’re currently building Comment Guidance (Post Guidance, but for Comments), with the goal of testing and launching it in the next couple of months.

Community Welcome Message

This July, we look forward to launching The Community Welcome Message. This feature will appear immediately after any user clicks the join button from a subreddit page. After the message is dismissed, it will be discoverable as an easy-to-use community guide on a subreddit’s About page. Mods will be able to add unique community assets and easygoing call-to-actions:

• Community image
• Short, custom welcome message
• User flair selection
• Resource links such as wiki links, join this welcome thread, and check out this funny post!

The Community Welcome Message is meant to convey the character of the community by quickly serving up the most relevant and important information to new community members while encouraging engagement.

Welcome Message User Interface

Temporary Events

Occasionally, certain events lead to significant spikes in traffic for communities, posing challenges for moderators to maintain quality and enforce rules. To manage this, moderators may switch their community’s status to “Private” or “Restricted” until traffic normalizes. This not only presents challenges for moderators but also restricts and confuses well-intentioned users from participating in the community.

This July, we’ll introduce a new feature called Temporary Events to address these situations. This feature empowers mods to create “temporary events” for both anticipated and unexpected scenarios. When a mod initiates an event, they can choose from various settings to efficiently manage community involvement, inform users about the event, and alert the mod team. Mods will have the flexibility to activate the temporary event as needed or schedule it in advance. Once activated, the specified settings will take effect, overriding the current community settings if necessary. When done, the subreddit will return to its standard settings

Temporary Event Mod Interface

If you have any questions, feedback, or suggestions about the features mentioned today, don’t hesitate to let us know in the comments below or via our support channels.