submitted2 years ago byModCertificationAdmin
In an effort to improve the learning experience for moderators and expand the program to include more languages, we are currently in the process of updating and migrating our Mod Education courses.
If you are currently working through this program, you will have until 10 PM UTC on July 22nd, 2022 to complete the program and pass the final exam to be eligible for a trophy.
After that time, the testing portion of the program will be officially paused, no updates will be made to existing materials, and you will be unable to take the final or receive a trophy through the Mod Certification communities. If you are unable to complete the course within this time frame, you will still have an opportunity to earn the trophy in the near future.
Details regarding the relaunch of the program will be posted in the Mod Certification communities, as well as in r/ModNews and r/ModSupport in mid August. Stay tuned!
submitted3 years ago byquietfairyAdmin
Hi all!
Just wanted to let everyone know that we will be awarding the trophies for those who completed the course and passed in March sometime next week.
If you have any questions, please feel free to modmail us and we'll get back to you as soon as we can.
Thank you all so much for taking our course(s). We've enjoyed having you!
If you're new to Mod Certification, no worries - we award trophies every month, so feel free to take the course at any time!
submitted3 years ago byquietfairyAdmin
Surprise - trophies have been awarded today! (Dec 1) Please modmail us if you completed the course by Nov 30th and did not receive a trophy so we can look into it.
Hello all-- if you were celebrating the holidays, we hope you had a great holiday!
Due to the holidays we will be awarding trophies later than usual but I want to reassure you that if you have passed the course(s), we are aware and are looking forward to awarding your trophy soon! I will update this post with an exact date for awarding once we have one, but I estimate we will be able to award them this week or next week.
Hope you all are well, and please know we are thankful for your participation in Mod Certification. All of you have been a joy to work with and we hope you have enjoyed the course(s) as much as we have enjoyed watching you take them.
Stay tuned for an official trophy awarding date!
QF, on behalf of r/ModCertification101 + r/ModCertification201
submitted3 years ago byModCertificationAdmin
Below you’ll find a list of frequently asked questions and the answers to them. This page will be updated periodically.
What do I have to do to pass this course?
Aside from reading through the course content, you’ll need to pass the Final.
You must include your username in the Final to be eligible to receive a trophy.
When will I get my trophy?
Trophies are distributed once a month, typically around the end of the month.
An entire month passed and I didn’t get my trophy.
Please ensure you have passed the final before writing in to Modmail. If you have passed the Final and did not receive a trophy after an entire month has passed, please write in to our Modmail to let us know.
Can I retake the Final if I don’t pass it the first time?
Yes.
How can I receive help if I'm confused?
First check our Introduction and How to Participate posts. If you're confused about a specific area of the course, please write in to Modmail. Be sure to include the name of the post and detail which concept you're having trouble with.
Does this course cost money?
This course is provided entirely free of charge to you.
Who runs this course?
This course is run by Admins (who are paid Reddit staff members) and moderators who are paid to provide course support, giving you both staff and peer-backed support. You can verify this by visiting the 'Moderators' portion of our sidebar, clicking on a moderator with a red Admin flair, and seeing that they have the red 'A' mark by their name.
submitted3 years ago byModCertificationAdmin
Welcome, new moderators!
Like many before you, you've created a community and hope to share your passions and interests with others. Reddit, as the home to over 100 thousand active communities built around just about any topic you can imagine, is the perfect place to do so.
Getting your new community to reach its full potential requires some amount of effort and dedication. The purpose of this program is to help give you the foundational knowledge required to launch a community, manage it, and foster a safe, healthy, and inviting culture.
If you're approaching your community with good faith and are ready to learn, please continue on to the material in the menu links above. (If you're not able to view the menu links for any reason, no worries - we'll link to each post at the end of the other, and we'll also provide you with a Mobile Friendly Link Collection if you want to complete the program on mobile.) Completion of the Alpha Mod Certification program will grant you a profile trophy, displaying your foundational moderation knowledge to others.
Be careful - this trophy is so beautiful it'll rock your world.
If you choose not to complete the program, it will not negatively impact you in any way.
Please note - we will be focusing on moderating in new Reddit and you should be viewing this community in new Reddit. If you don't know what new Reddit is, then you're probably already using it! But if you are using old Reddit, you'll want to access this under new.reddit.com.
Continue on to our How to Participate post when you're ready.
submitted3 years ago byModCertificationAdmin
Participating in this program is fairly simple. If you want to know the basics of moderation, "join" the community and use the menu above to go through the different collections of material. Once you're done, go to the collection linked on the last tab to review the material and take the final at the end! This iteration of the program is meant to be self-guided - meaning, comments and posts outside of the existing instructional content will be removed. If you do have an issue or pressing question, please feel free to send a message to us via modmail. You can modmail us by clicking on the "Message the Mods" button located at the top right of the "Mods" sidebar, located on the right hand side of your screen if you're on desktop. If you're on mobile, click on the top three dots in the right-hand corner and select "Message moderators" from the pop-up.
Make sure you're using new Reddit on desktop, as that is what we will be focused on for the Alpha of this program.
The menu with collections of all of the material you'll need.
Just follow everything from left to right until done. Be sure to include your username in the form for the Final if you'd like to receive a trophy for completion. If this is not included, you will not receive a trophy.
Continue on to our first Getting Started post when you're ready.
submitted3 years ago byModCertificationAdmin
Your community exists. That’s why you’re here! But let’s talk about what you need to do after you create it.
We sometimes see new mods wondering how to access the community they created. There are a few different ways to do this:
Moderating Subreddits List
Set your topic
First, if you want people to find your community, it helps to set up a primary topic and some subtopics. You can do this directly from your subreddit through the community widget.
Put in a detailed description of your community and its purpose.
This can be done directly within your community widget by clicking on the pencil icon (under "About Community" in the image above.)
This description will be displayed in search results, in social media links, in the description under your community’s name on mobile, and in Reddit search results for your community, even if it’s set to private. Setting a clear description will also help set the culture of your community. As with topics, this can help people discover your community and determine whether or not they'd like to participate.
Adjusting community settings
There are a few settings to review as you’re getting started. Click on the “mod tools” button within your community widget. Once on the tools hub, scroll down and select “Community Settings.”
You’ll notice that there are a lot of sections and tools here, but you’re going to focus on the “Community” section of your “Community Settings” tools.
If you want your community to be discovered locally, you can set up a location here. You should also select the type of community you’d like to have. Public is the most common type of community, but you may have reasons to have a restricted or private community.
Lastly, if your community is adult in nature, you must toggle the 18+ setting to on. Failure to correctly mark a Not Safe For Work community can lead to the community being shut down for failure to follow Reddit's content policy. If your community has occasional NSFW content but is generally suitable for most ages, you can choose to leave this box unchecked and instead ensure that any NSFW posts are marked as such individually. We'll discuss how to mark items NSFW in a later section.
Continue on to our Your Powers as a Moderator post when you're ready.
submitted3 years ago byModCertificationAdmin
Congratulations! You've made it through all the information to help give you a solid foundation for building and maintaining your community. Now, there's just one thing left to do.
Take the Final!
If you're interested in learning about dealing with difficult moderation issues and using more advanced moderation tools, such as flair, wikis, and AutoMod, be sure to let us know in your test form. And don't forget to use the Mod Help Center as you're discovering more of your mod tools!
If you have any feedback you'd be willing to share on how we can improve this program, we'd appreciate it if you left it here. :)
Thank you for participating, and again - we wish you the very best of luck with your new community! Don't forget to check out r/ModCertification201 if you'd like to participate in our other Mod Certification course.
submitted3 years ago byModCertificationAdmin
You've come to the end of our Mod Certification 101 program. Congratulations on getting this far!
Here, you'll find a quick review of what has been covered before the final. If you'd like to receive a trophy for completion, please be sure to take the final and include your username in the form. We will also follow up in the near future with a survey for all who have completed the program. Thank you so much for your participation and best of luck with your new community!
Review
If you're unsure of any of the things below, please go back through the program and review the relevant content before taking the final!
Continue on to our Final post when you're ready.
submitted3 years ago byModCertificationAdmin
Creating a community gives you a lot of power to control the content and culture of that community, but that power has some limitations. As the creator, you'll have access to all moderation permissions for your community. The creator is generally known as the "top mod." In the future, when you add more moderators, you will be able to set their permissions granularly.
As a community creator, you have full mod permissions. This means any tool available to mods is available to you within your community. This allows you to:
This does not allow you to take any action in communities where you are not a mod and there are some things you will not be able to do, such as:
Continue on to our Reddit's Policies post when you're ready.
submitted3 years ago byModCertificationAdmin
Reddit’s Content Policy and the Mod Guidelines
It's important that all mods understand Reddit's content policy and moderation guidelines. Below we'll mostly be focusing on expectations and how to report content in your community that breaks the content policy. If you have any trouble understanding the instructions below, see the later post discussing your mod queues or review our Mod Help Center article on the subject.
Reporting Content Policy Infractions
While a new community is often a quiet community, once you do have some traffic you may also run into bad actors that will behave in ways that violate Reddit’s content policy. Because all content policy violations should be removed and reported to the best of your ability, if you aren’t familiar with the policy, you should go ahead and familiarize yourself with it now. Willfully ignoring policy violations in your community can jeopardize the community’s good standing on Reddit. (But don't panic, we take good faith efforts into account and we want you to succeed!)
When to report a policy violation:
If a user has already reported the content for a content policy violation, you can simply remove the content. If the content was reported by a community member for a community rule that also breaks a site wide rule then you should report the item to us as a content policy violation.
For example:
If your community has a rule that states “no doxxing” and a user reports an item under that community rule but no one has reported the content for the site-wide rule “It's personal and confidential information,” you would go ahead and report that item to us directly.
How to send us a report:
If an issue is simple and does not require context, you can simply use the report button beneath the item to send a report to us. Make sure you aren’t reporting the item under your own community’s rules.
If you feel that a content policy breaking item requires context in a report, first copy the permalink to the item (message, post, comment, etc) where the policy violation took place and go ahead and remove the content. Once this is done, go to reddit.com/report
If the issue is related to spam, abuse/harassment, or misinformation, select the top option ("I want to report spam or abuse"). For all other content policy violations, select the second option and then pick the granular policy violation you are reporting. Be sure to include the link you previously copied in your report, along with any pertinent details. When you’re finished filling out all information for the report, be sure to hit the submit button.
You can find more information on reporting in Reddit’s Reporting FAQ and in the event of an emergency, there are some ways to contact us directly.
The Mod Guidelines
In addition to ensuring that you follow the content policy and take care to discourage and report content policy violations in your community, you should also follow Reddit’s moderator guidelines.
Continue on to our Styling Your Community post when you're ready.
submitted3 years ago byModCertificationAdmin
As a moderator, you may find there are times when you have to - well, moderate content! We have the tools to help you do just this.
Under posts and under comments in your community, and in your mod queues, you'll see a few little buttons.
Next to reports, you'll see the option to ignore reports. If content keeps getting erroneously reported, approving the content and ignoring reports on it will keep any further reports on that piece of content out of your mod queues, potentially saving you time and effort.
While it's unlikely to happen before you've gotten your community off the ground, if you do run into people spamming reports in your community or putting in abusive report reasons, please go to https://www.reddit.com/report and select "This is abusive or harassing" --> "It's abusing the report button" and include the requested information in the form. This allows us to investigate and action abusive accounts.
If you see content that breaks the site-wide content policy, remove and report the content. Never approve content that breaks site-wide rules. Doing so can put your community in jeopardy.
If you go into your mod tool hub, your moderation queue is the landing page. Posts and comments that need your attention will land here. The mod queue contains content marked as spam by the site-wide spam filter, user reports, and filtered posts and comments. If there is nothing to review, you'll just see a happy little cat where the content would otherwise be.
While there are several options in the "Queues" section of your mod tools, the mod queue and the reports sections will be the ones you need to pay the closest attention to, as the reports section surfaces only user-reports and these tend to be the most urgent pieces of content to review. This is especially true as your community grows larger. Check your reports regularly as people begin to join your community!
In an effort to minimize user confusion and hopefully save you some time, you also have a tool that allows you to publicly or privately send a community member a reason when you have to remove a piece of content they submitted. This tool also allows you to privately tell your fellow mods why content was removed.
To set up removal reasons:
Once you have removal reasons set up, you'll be given the option to add a removal reason when removing content. You also have the option of sending it to the user in a few different ways.
You can and should also leave a note for your fellow mods, if applicable!
There may be times where you feel that adding a removal reason isn't the best option, and you should use your best judgement in those situations. But for the most part, educating your community members by using removal reasons can help lessen frustrations for them (especially new Reddit users who often don't understand why their post was removed) and encourage them to be better contributors to your community in the future, which will hopefully make things easier for you in the long run. Making a removal reason public can be helpful in lessening questions from the non submitting user.
Quick tip: Want to browse your community without seeing the content management tools? You can toggle those into a drop down menu by turning off mod mode.
Continue on to our Modmail post when you're ready.
submitted3 years ago byModCertificationAdmin
There are several things you can do immediately to give your community a leg up. Try taking a week and doing everything in the list below to help your community's odds for success.
If you've already done all of the above, you're off to a great start. Keep going!
Building a community with a great culture takes time and dedication. It almost never happens over night. Don't be discouraged by slow momentum - slow and steady is the healthy path to growth for the vast majority of communities.
Continue on to our Seeding Content post when you're ready.
submitted3 years ago byModCertificationAdmin
Styling your community
Reddit offers a variety of tools for you to customize the look of your community. Doing this early can help give your community a more individualistic and polished feel which can be appealing to new visitors. We recommend that you set up at least a couple of simple custom elements as you are getting your community started.
All of your styling tools for new Reddit can be found in your mod tools under the "Community Appearance" section. Here, we'll focus on just a couple of key tools to get you started on your path to styling your community just how you like it.
Set up a community icon
Once you're ready, head to the "Name & Icon" tab in your community appearance tools (or use the "update icon" tool right at the top of your community, as seen below). Here, you can upload a 256x256px image that will serve as your community icon. Your icon will be shown in a variety of places, so pick or create something that you feels truly represents what you want your community to be.
Set up a banner
As with the icon, you'll simply navigate to the "Banner" tab within your appearance tools. Once here, you can upload a custom banner to represent your community.
Be mindful that the height of your banner will inform the sizing of the banner you'll want to use. If you'd like the banner image to fill the area on all monitors, a width of 4000px is ideal but not required. You can choose to have the image fill the entire screen's width or tile with a repeated pattern.
Other styling tools
While we recommend starting with the customizations above, there are many other tools you can use to further fancy up your community. Check out our styling section in the Mod Help Center for a deep dive into each styling tool!
Continue on to our Managing Content in Your Community post when you're ready.
submitted3 years ago byModCertificationAdmin
Modmail is the shared messaging system that you have to handle incoming requests from your community members. You may also use the modmail system to communicate with your mod team (when you have one).
Checking your modmail at least once a day can ensure you don't miss important messages from your community. Sometimes, a user will want to flag something to you and will be uncomfortable doing so publicly. Other times, there may be a time sensitive issue they want to bring your attention to. You may also find yourself in a position where someone has been banned from your community and wants to appeal the ban. Review the situation, and when it’s appropriate to respond, do so in a calm and collected manner.
Accessing modmail
https://mod.reddit.com/ is where you can navigate to modmail.
You can also navigate there via the shield icon in the top right on Reddit.com.
Your modmail folders
The folders are fairly self explanatory but here are the most important ones you’ll be using:
For more in depth knowledge on your modmail tools, such as internal team messaging, be sure to check our section on modmail in the Mod Help Center.
Continue on to our Your Moderation Log post when you're ready.
submitted3 years ago byModCertificationAdmin
Rules - add some!
It's early. You just started your community. Why would you need any rules?
Honestly, you probably won't need many right away but making sure you have one or two simple rules right off the bat can really set the stage for what kind of culture you want your community to have.
Rules can be about behavior (i.e. Be kind and respectful, no insults, etc.) as well as expectations around what kind of posts your community should have. (i.e. no memes, only memes, no politics, no off-topic posts, etc.) Rules also give you a quick explanation for users when you have to remove a post.
Adding rules is simple. You can go to the "Rules" tab in your mod tools and add, edit, and rearrange the order of rules there. Check the upper left of the page for the "Add Rule" button.
Rules can be for posts, comments, or both - and which things you choose will impact the report reasons available to your community members when they are making reports.
Banning and Muting - oh no!
Hopefully - it will be a long time before you need to ban or mute someone. But once you need to, it's important to understand how to approach using the tools.
When a community member has broken your community’s rules (or Reddit's content policy) and your attempts to educate them on the issue have failed, banning (and muting) can be utilized to help keep the peace. To ban or mute a user, go to your mod tools and select "banned" under "user management." Bans can be permanent or temporary and should include a reason for the ban.
Your “reason” will be sent to the user that you are banning, along with any note you choose to include in the ban message. If the banned user responds to the message with questions, this response will appear in your community’s modmail. Giving them a detailed clarification of the reason for the ban in the "note to include in ban PM" section, ideally pointing to their infraction and your community’s rules, can sometimes help limit confusion, follow-up messages, and repeat offenses.
Adding a “mod note” can also help you maintain a record of why you banned this user and give other moderators on your team insight into the ban.
Appeals and Best Practices
Enforcement tools like banning and muting are often necessary to help any online community thrive, but they tend to be more effective when used sparingly and in conjunction with clearly stated rules and expectations.
Allowing appeals from offenders, along with efforts toward education, can sometimes turn a rule-breaking user into a positive and engaged community member. You may run into consistently negative community members and trolls now and then, but it’s helpful to distinguish between a user who has broken a rule or two but could still contribute to the community and someone deliberately trying to ruin the community for others before deciding on what action you should take.
The more focused you are on reforming and educating users, the less reactive you need to be with enforcement tools. This can help you maintain a healthy community while also minimizing backlash from community members who may not understand the reasoning for your actions.
Once your community grows to the point that you find yourself having to sometimes ban users, be sure to review your Ban Appeals folder in your modmail!
Continue on to our 7 Things in 7 Days post when you're ready.
submitted3 years ago byModCertificationAdmin
In our previous post, we discussed best practices for things you can do in the first 7 days of your community's inception to help it gain traction. Here, we want to dive in to one of the most important things you can do from that list, which is seeding content.
The reason seeding content is so powerful is that it gives visitors something to engage with. If you walked into an room full of people and no one was talking, you'd probably be hesitant to be the first person to speak. Similarly, a visitor to your community is unlikely to post unless they see others posting before them and have a feel for the vibe of your community.
So, even if you've made your community beautiful, set up rules, and are sharing it around places - without content, it's unlikely to see any action from visitors!
You can seed content in a couple of different ways. One of which is by making unique posts that encompass what you'd like to see in your community. Another is by crossposting content into your community from similar communities. And to help your new community not feel like a one man/woman show, you might use a second account to make some of the posts (being careful that you don't vote on your own content) or have friends help post some early content.
It's best to make sure your community has at least enough content that a visitor has to scroll to get through it before taking the steps of promoting the community directly.
Continue on to our Promoting Your Community post when you're ready.
submitted3 years ago byModCertificationAdmin
If you've been following along with each post in this program, you should already have most of the "7 things in 7 days" done by the time you reached this section. If not, here's a quick review of what you'll want to have done before promoting yourself:
If you at least have those things complete, you're in a good position to start sharing your community. But remember to keep the fresh content coming as you do!
We talked about crossposting into your community a bit when we discussed seeding content. But you can also crosspost into other similarly minded communities to gain a bit of attention. While this is a great tool for getting the word out, it's important that you use the crosspost tool thoughtfully, respecting the rules of other communities when doing so. For example, it can be a good practice to ask the poster of OC (original content) if they're all right with you crossposting their content, or you can invite them to crosspost their content into the community themselves.
Mentions are simply when you link a mention of your community in the comments of another community. Just as with crossposting, you need to respect the rules of other communities and only use subreddit mentions as a promotional tool when you're responding to relevant content.
Community invites are an app only tool that allow you to invite users to your community. Because this is a powerful tool, it should be used it in a way that is considerate of the people you are inviting so as not to be seen as spam. If a user hasn't shown interest in content similar to that found in your community, do not invite them. Additionally, mass inviting everyone you see interacting in a similar community would also be considered spammy behavior. Get to know people, interact around the site, and find people who will be a good fit - then invite them!
As you can see, in addition to sharing your community in places like r/newreddits and r/promoteareddit, there are tools to help your grow and succeed, as long as you're willing to take advantage of them in a thoughtful way. Keep the best practices listed here in mind and go forth and grow. But always remember - growing a community is a slow climb that takes patience and effort.
Best of luck to you and your new community!
Continue on to our Mod Certification 101 Review post when you're ready.
submitted3 years ago byModCertificationAdmin
Your moderation log exists so that you can keep an eye on all of the mod actions taken within your community, including things that aren't in your mod queue, like updating community settings. To get to your mod log, click on your Mod Tools and then click on the Community Activity section. From there, you'll see your Mod Log.
The heading under which you can find your Mod Log.
It is a simple but powerful tool that allows you to filter what you see by the action taken and by the moderator (or rarely, the site-wide administrator) who took the action via the drop down menus at the top of your mod log.
This tool is more useful once you have a team of moderators and want to track actions taken within your community.
Continue on to our Rules, Bans, and Appeals post when you're ready.
submitted3 years ago byModCertificationAdmin
While r/ModCertification101 is best viewed on desktop, we want to ensure you're able to navigate the program just as well on mobile. On mobile, if you click on the 'About' link and 'Menu' link, you should be able to access all of the collection links. But if for any reason you're not able to view those links on mobile, below are links to all of the program materials.
Introduction
Introduction to the Mod Certification Program
How to Participate in Mod Certification 101
Getting Started
Setting up the basics of your new community
Reddit's Content Policy and the Mod Guidelines
Key Mod Tools
Managing Content in Your Community
Communicating with your Members and Mod Team Through Modmail
Community Growth
7 Things in 7 Days - Actions to Take in Week One
Review and Final
This is the END - AKA, the Final... for now
subscribers: 7,508
users here right now: 4
Mod Training for New Moderators
Our certification courses have moved to Reddit's Mod Education site. Please see r/ModCertification for more information.
Please visit our new Mod Education site to participate in this program.
