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Hey everyone, itâs u/Go_JasonWaterfalls, Redditâs VP of Community here to share a decision that weâve made. Iâll give it to you straight and stick around for comments afterward.
Whatâs changing
Starting today, updating Community Type settings requires a moderator to submit a request.
- This applies to Public/Restricted/Private and SFW/NSFW changes
- Temporarily going restricted is exempt: mods can continue to instantly restrict posts and/or comments for up to 7 days using Temporary Events without submitting a request
- Requests will be automatically approved for communities with fewer than 5000 members or under 30 days old
- An admin will respond to the request in under 24 hours, 7 days a week, 365 days a year
community settings request flow
Why we made this change
When a public community goes private, all redditors (even members of that community) lose access to the community and its content. Outside of extenuating circumstances (see the table below), communities should honor the expectations they set â public communities should remain accessible to all; private communities should remain private. The same principle applies to SFW and NSFW spaces.
Historically, moderators have been able to change Community Type at will. But the ability to instantly change Community Type settings has been used to break the platform and violate our rules. We have a responsibility to protect Reddit and ensure its long-term health, and we cannot allow actions that deliberately cause harm.
How weâre supporting mods who use this setting
We understand there are valid reasons for changing your community type. Based on our data and conversations with mods, these needs are better met with improved tools and readily available admin support. Here's a breakdown of the main reasons communities change type:
| Use Case | Description | Solution |
|---|---|---|
| Episodic Events | Temporarily restricting a community for a few hours during a live event or episode, to concentrate communication in a discussion thread. When the live event ends, the community reopens for normal use. | Temporary Events: Temporary Events allows mods to instantly restrict posting and/or commenting for up to 7 days without submitting a request. This feature can be configured ahead of time and scheduled to start and end at a specified time. |
| Crisis Scenarios & Safety Issues | A crisis, safety issue, or sudden influx of traffic leads mods to restrict contributions (by changing the community to Restricted) or restrict visibility (by changing the community to Private). | Tools & Admin Assistance: We have tools to help mods in this situation, including Temporary Events (which allows mods to instantly restrict posting and/or commenting), Mod Reserves, Crowd Control, Ban Evasion Filter, Reputation Filter, Harassment Filter, and Mature Content Filter. If these tools are insufficient and a change to Private is necessary, admin assistance is always available to help keep communities safe. Weâve revamped our internal processes and resourcing to ensure support is available 24/7/365 for this scenario. |
| Public Recruiting for a Private Community | Communities start as Public to allow new members to find the community, then switch to Private to continue as closed spaces for community and support (e.g. monthly baby bump communities). | âNew & Emerging Communitiesâ Exception: Based on data showing baby bump communities switch to Private well before 5000 members, the overwhelming majority will fall within the âNew & Emerging Communitiesâ exception and submitted requests will be automatically approved. If a community larger than 5000 members meets this use case, an admin will approve the request in under 24 hours. |
| Mods Want to Quit / Take An Indefinite Break | Mods restrict a healthy, active community when the entire team decides they no longer want to moderate. | Admin Assistance: Admins will source a new mod team from within the community. In the interim, the community will be restricted (the best course of action for a public community without mods), then become public again when new mods are in place. Temporary Events can be used to provide mod teams with a short break, though we recommend recruiting new mods to ensure that individual mods are able to take breaks without impacting the community as a whole. |
| Obsolete or Policy-Violating Community Topic | Mods âarchiveâ the community because it was tied to a now-deprecated feature (e.g. RPAN), or mods âcloseâ a community where the topic makes it difficult to moderate within our policies. | Admin Assistance: These scenarios are not common in the data, but are examples of the types of requests we would help facilitate. |
| Misconduct | Changing the community type to hide or pull off transgressive, illicit, or otherwise policy-breaking activities (e.g. spamming or uploading NSFW video content). | Requests Declined: This is an invalid use (using Community Type settings changes to break Reddit or Redditâs rules). Requests along these lines will be declined. |
Addressing concerns (the elephant in the room)
Community Type settings have historically been used to protest Redditâs decisions. While we are making this change to ensure usersâ expectations regarding a communityâs access do not suddenly change, protest is allowed on Reddit. We want to hear from you when you think Reddit is making decisions that are not in your communities' best interests. But if a protest crosses the line into harming redditors and Reddit, we'll step in.
Your dialogue, dissent, and perspectives make Reddit better. Over the past year, we've focused on building relationships and fostering transparent communication with mods. We've expanded opportunities for you to get involved, influence decisions, and directly speak your minds. And it's made a real difference â weâve changed how we do things because of your feedback. To all the mods actively participating, thank you. And to anyone interested, check out the stickied comment to get involved. Finally, special thanks to the many moderators who gave us candid feedback about this decision and announcement; we sincerely appreciate your time and guidance.
And if you've made it this far, thank you! We're here in the comments to answer questions.
edit: formatting & adding translations
Site rule #8 - Don't break Reddit https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043512931-Don-t-break-the-site
I think they added some language here about what 'breaking reddit' means to them
you could probably redditrequest it if you want it that badly
File a mod code of conduct violation maybe? Might get more eyes on it.
Subreddit
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- 1 month ago
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Absolutely not, we saw that with the last blackout. The people striking will simply be replaced.