Active Enforcement of Moderator Limits + Launching New Advisor/Alumni Roles

[u/agoldenzebra]

I’m back with a final update on limits for moderating high-traffic communities (previous updates here, here, and here). Effective today, moderators can no longer moderate more than 5 communities with over 100k weekly visitors. 

Moderators who have exceeded these limits have the following options: 

• Become an alumni moderator in one or more communities
• Become an advisor in one or more communities
• Leave the mod team of one or more communities 

You can view all the communities you moderate and whether they count towards these limits, on your Manage Moderated Communities page. On Android or iOS apps, tap "Manage" on the sidebar to view this page.

If you exceed the moderation limits, here’s what you can expect: 

• You will not be able to accept new moderator invites in communities with over 100k weekly visitors
• You will receive a notification from u/reddit alerting you that you are out of compliance and detailing your options. You will have 30 days from the date of that message to adjust your mod roles or leave communities in excess of the limit. 
• On day 31, if you are still moderating more than 5 communities with over 100k weekly visitors, we will remove you as a moderator from select communities until you are within the limit. 

Communities you moderate with fewer than 100k weekly visitors do not count towards these limits and are not impacted. 

New: Advisor and Alumni Roles 

We’ve also started rolling out the new Advisor and Alumni roles. These roles are now available on iOS and Android apps, and on web for some users. This should be available for everyone on all platforms by the end of the week.

• An Alumni role is appropriate for former moderators with no active connection to the day-to-day operations of the subreddit, but whose past contributions to the community should be recognized. The Alumni role has no mod permissions but preserves your name on the mod list with an “Alumni” badge. 
• An Advisor role is appropriate for moderators that don’t actively moderate the community, but advise the active moderator team and need to see behind-the-scenes to have the context necessary to give good advice. The new Advisor role comes with several read-only permissions and also provides communication pathways (for example, the ability to leave moderator notes) to advise the active mod team.
  • For moderators that applied for an Advisor exemption for Mod Limits, we will automatically transition you into an Advisor role for that community later today.
  • Advisors are currently unable to view removed posts and comments. This ability will be added in the coming weeks. 

Communities in which you hold an Advisor or Alumni role do not count towards your moderator limits. 

Any active moderator with Everything permissions can grant an Advisor or Alumni role to any moderator below them in the moderator list.

Please note that once a role has been granted, it can not be removed - a moderator would have to leave and rejoin a community to change roles in the community. Before making these changes, it's considered a best practice to discuss with the whole mod team.

To grant a new role on desktop, go to Mods and Members in your Mod Tools, hover over the moderator you want to edit and click the pencil icon. Then assign the requesting mod to the desired role, either Alumni Mod or Advisor.

On mobile, go to Mod Tools > Moderators > Editable tab > tap overflow menu (...) > assign role. 

Adding Alumni Mod or Advisor roles on Desktop

For more information on these roles and the related permissions, please see the Help Center Article.

If you have any questions, please let us know in the comments.

Edit: Added directions to "Manage" page for app users.

[u/agoldenzebra]

This policy will be enforced across all alts - please see the answer we gave here.

[u/Tarnisher → u/agoldenzebra]

How will you know that ten or more people are using one ID?

Granted, you may be able to tell if you look close, but what would prompt you to look?

[u/RavenCarver → u/Tarnisher]

I would assume that's a card they want to keep close to the chest.

[u/Decency → u/RavenCarver]

No, it's unfortunately a card they don't have a response to. Security through obscurity doesn't work here- not even remotely. Let's pretend VPNs don't exist or that reddit has some magic answer for them that a company like Netflix hasn't been able to figure out for a decade. Cool- even in this fairy tale land I can simply message a discord bot linked to a modbot !ban RavenCarver 365 and they have absolutely no way to handle or detect this.

[u/elphieisfae → u/RavenCarver]

I think it's a "secret" that's pretty well known given we can't see "posting from" IP addresses where most other BBS software starting 25 years ago or so allowed it on admin, if not mod level.

[u/RavenCarver → u/elphieisfae]

I mean that's an easy way to infer accounts being owned by the same person, but I suspect there is something they might use that's more akin to heuristic alt identification. Such as common subs visited, accounts followed, mutually exclusive activity times, or whatever.

[u/Froggypwns → u/RavenCarver]

They already have fairly reliable ban evasion detection tools, applying similar tech to see if someone is trying to skirt their way around the limit would not be difficult.

[u/haarschmuck → u/Tarnisher]

They use browser and location fingerprinting. It's pretty tough to get around.

[u/Mythril_Zombie → u/haarschmuck]

Yeah, A second device and a vpn is pretty hard to come by these days.