Where do I begin?

Up until now, I've mostly just stayed in my own little corners of social media. The only subreddits I've moderated here have been my own. People come from all over the world to see me and my content; nothing more, nothing less.

How I wound up here

Recently, though, I noticed that one of my favorite communities, r/HotwifeCaptions, had been banned. I figured that I've been around Reddit long enough that I could probably get it unbanned. More importantly, though, I believed that I would be a good moderator for it, and that I would be able to do good things in and for the community. after all, I took Reddit's official moderator certification courses a while back and earned my Mod 101 and Mod 201 badges, so I was at least qualified for the position. There's also the fact that I've built my own personal subreddit, r/iwmwlt, which today has over 8,000 satisfied members.

That said, my request was approved, and r/HotwifeCaptions was unbanned. I am now the new top moderator, and it's my first time ever moderating such a large, public community. There are over 60,000 members, and I have no idea how many of them contribute, but anyone is welcome to. Needless to say, I quickly realized what a big responsibility this would be, and that I would need help. So, the first and most important thing I felt I could do is add another moderator.

What I did next

I chose my wife because she's someone I trust and respect. She's smart, funny, even-tempered, and an all-around good person who I just absolutely adore. Aside from that, she's usually a pretty good judge of character, and she has a lot more compassion and empathy than I could ever fathom. She took Reddit's moderator certification courses at the same time I did and also passed, so I also knew she was just as qualified as I was. She hasn't done bad either, having built up her own personal subreddit, r/mhwmlt, which also has over 8,000 happy members.

Next, I made a post to let everyone know the subreddit was back online, and another post to thank everyone who supported me and my request. After that, it was time to get to work. The subreddit hadn't been moderated in over eight months, and there was a lot that needed to be done. I started by posting the current ban list, offering to right any wrongs if anyone had been wrongly banned. So far, nobody has suggested anyone or asked to be unbanned, so that's stayed in place.

Transparency in moderation... a bad idea?

The next thing I did was make this post asking for suggestions/input from the community. While I waited for feedback, I discussed a few things with my wife, and we started going through the mod queues, reviewing all the reports, feedback community members had left on posts over time, etc. We documented all the things that stood out and seemed important to the community, and with that information, we came up with a short set of rules based on the community's apparent wants and needs.

I posted the new rules here so everyone could review them and let us know if they had any feedback, and the very first comment was from a contributor who said, "Finally a dev that understands.. lets make this space great again 👍", so it seemed we were at least on the right track. Aside from the rules, we made some other changes that seemed helpful or necessary, and I made this post to document those changes and ask anyone who had questions, comments, or concerns to reply to the post or send us a message to let us know.

So far, those last two posts have been downvoted a few times, but nobody has replied with anything negative or sent us any kind of message explaining why they might disagree with them, so we're guessing the downvotes came from people who probably weren't doing the right things and are now just mad that they won't be able to anymore.

Setting some goals

The next morning, I felt inspired to write something, so I spent a few hours typing up my thoughts and observations on the relationship between the "Hotwife Caption Communities" and the greater overall "Hotwife Lifestyle Communities". I also wanted to let everyone know that, as the new moderators of one of the largest hotwife caption communities on Reddit, our first goal would be to eradicate all non-consensual content posted in the r/HotwifeCaptions community and to make a stand against it moving forward.

I posted it here on my profile, but only a few people seem to have actually read it. It's been up for a little over two days now, and it's only gotten nine upvotes, anyway. I'm just grateful it hasn't been downvoted at all so far. That tells me those who did read it know where I'm coming from and probably share the same sentiments. Either way, that's our goal and we're sticking to it.

Expanding our horizons

The next thing we did was come up with a way for people to make legitimate requests for custom captions. We know that there are good people out there who actually want their content captioned and shared, and by supporting them and providing a clear path for them to make those requests, we knew that we could perhaps help cut down on people using content without people's permission. We made this post letting people know they could now make requests, and to help keep things organized, we set up some post flairs that people could use to help differentiate between the different types of posts in the community, and we posted a list of the new flairs here.

Maintaining accountability

The next day, we wanted to let everyone know that we are serious, and that we have every intention of keeping our word. So, we created and posted an Accountability Statement in the Community Wiki to let everyone know where we stand on non-consensual content, as well as copyright infringement, and to offer resources to help victims of either. We want people to know that we stand ready to help anyone who is wronged the best we can by responding to any request for the removal of content from our community. It's not much, but it's the most we can do.

We know that some people don't and never will take these issues seriously, but we figured it might also help if we pointed out that it is illegal by documenting all the relevant laws across the United States that make it a crime to use people's sexually explicit content without consent. If nothing else, it would help victims learn about various legal remedies that might be available to them in their jurisdiction. So, we went through and researched all the relevant laws and posted links to all the ones we could find.

I then spent some time looking at how some of the more reputable adult websites handle copyright infringement, and I posted a DMCA page in our Community Wiki to offer people a way to request the removal of any content from our community which may infringe their copyright. Again, it's not much, but it's the most we can do. Unfortunately, as moderators, we have no ability to delete content, but we do have the ability to remove it from our community and be sure that we're not contributing to the problem.

An eye-opening realization

After that, I made this post to let people know about our new Accountability Statement and the fact that sharing of non-consensual pornography, or any material that infringes anyone's copyrights, will not be tolerated in the r/HotwifeCaptions community. Sadly, over 3,600 people saw it, and it only got 7 upvotes. Worse, several people downvoted it. It's not really hard for me to imagine that people would be against protecting other people's rights, but it was definitely eye-opening nonetheless.

Moving forward

At this point, it seemed like things could only get better from here, so after all the posts about changes, new rules, and other administrative stuff were out of the way, we figured it would be nice to just do something fun.

So, last night, we decided to hold a caption contest and posted a photo inviting everyone to join in. So far, I've spent my day today creating a Reddit bot that monitors everyone's contest submissions and posts the rankings in a live leaderboard. I thought that was pretty cool. Currently, there's just about five hours before the winner of our first contest is announced. As of right now, my wife's in second place, and I'm third place, but I'm okay with that. As long as we're all having fun, I think we're all winning.

Over the coming weeks, I'm going to be spending some time building out some really cool features into our new community bot to make it do more fun things like today's live contest. Admittedly, I'm a little concerned about the general lack of participation. Aside from the five people who have posted a contest submission, nobody's really been posting anything.

Miscellaneous

I think that the community just coming back from a ban has something to do with it, but I also think all the posts we've been making about the new rules and such made people feel a little weary or hesitant. We are just doing our best to keep things above board and show some integrity by maintaining transparency and accountability in our actions as the new mod team, and we hope people will understand that. Honestly, we're good people, and we're pretty cool too.

Just today, two people that posted contest submissions didn't meet the community's account age/karma requirements, and having noticed that Automoderator removed them, I went and manually reviewed their accounts and approved their posts. I then reached out to let them know and even [posted this to show everyone that we intend to be as welcoming as possible][ L16] and not push people away or make them feel rejected over petty, small things.

On that note, just to be clear: as long as you follow the rules, play nicely, and contribute good things that are meaningful, valuable, and welcomed by the community, you are more than welcome to call r/HotwifeCaptions your home. We are not ban-happy, and you are safe here. We don't want to remove anything, and we will do everything in our power to encourage, inspire, and support our fellow creators who do the right things. We love this art, we appreciate you, and we want you here with us.

So, with all that said, we are hopeful that the dust will settle, the bad actors will find their way out, and that all the good people of Reddit will start to find their way in. We're excited to see some new captions, requests, and comments, and we hope you will join us!

– IWMWLT ❤️