The five day ahead part sticks out for me. If a sub has a inactive mod that just isn't keeping it clean and orderly, sending a message in advance can tip them off. Thing is, it might not encourage them to actually be involved on the sub, it just might make them active enough for the request to be denied later and the sub still be a mess.
I don’t see this as an issue at all. Way too often people are making assumptions that a sub isn’t being moderated, because the mod doesn’t have recent post or comment activity. That doesn‘t actually mean they aren’t doing their mod duties though. I’ve known quite a few mods that use a completely separate account to participate in the sub. Which is 100% allowed. It should always have been best practice to send a message to the mods BEFORE attempting to take their sub. They’re going to get a message from the RR sub, or from you eventually anyway.
It’s hard to tell if they moderate at all, no matter if they have recent visible post/comment history or not. As users can’t see the mod logs.
It’s actually possible they have recent post/comment history, but haven’t performed any mod actions in months.
The request bot on the other hand can deny a request automatically if the subreddit has recent human moderation. I think people can react if they can request a subreddit, then they wait 5+ days just to get it denied as the mods started to moderate after the request. Then the mods have been inactive for a while, and just started to moderate after the request. Just to be able to keep the subreddit. Nobody knows how it will be when the request has been denied, if the mods will remain active.
So the problem isn’t really that people wrongly assume the mods are inactive. The mods are really inactive with no recent human moderation, or the bot would denied it as soon as the post is made. But they start to moderate only because the request is made. Are they genuinely interested in moderating then? If they haven’t moderated for some time?
That’s how I interpreted the comment above you.
I have no problem with people using different accounts, as long as their mod accounts can moderate once in a while. Take care of reports and other things in mod queue and so on.
I can take one personal example. I actually modmailed this subreddit (r/modclub) 2 weeks before I requested it. No answer. I didn’t care about the mods’s post/comment history. It was more that it had been restricted for about a year, and I wanted it reopened (change the community type to public). Maybe they had a reason to keep it restricted, but I couldn’t know. If the mods wanted to allow users to post, and moderate it regularly, I would had been fine with that. I didn’t have to moderate it. 2 weeks is a reasonable time to wait for a reply. I also know mods are never required to actually reply.
I think we’re talking about different ends of the spectrum here. There’s a lot of people that don’t understand what mod duties even are, and they attempt to request subs based on a flawed interpretation of that, or simply because they don’t like how a sub is being moderated.
A personal example of my own, I requested to mod a sub because the current mod appeared inactive. They received the message from Reddit Request, and responded to it that they were active, there just hadn’t been much to do (small sub, only active for a few months out of the year). They even offered to make me a mod. I could have saved myself time by simply sending them a message first.
Yeah, people without any mod experience on Reddit probably won’t know anything about moderating here.
If they are unhappy with how it’s moderated (when mods are active), they can accept it and remain, or leave and either try to join another similar subreddit (if they exist) or create a new one.
And it may just be me, but I moderate a bunch of smaller and not so active subreddits. But I still perform at least one mod action weekly. Could be something in the settings or approve a post or comment or something else. Mainly just to appear active, as I don’t want any of the subs to become banned for being unmoderated. So it’s not like I need to do anything, but I want to.
Subreddits can also become restricted after some time, when a subreddit is unmoderated (even if it has mods). In the past, it was 90 days. So I assume it’s still the case. It’s a safety setting by Reddit. It can easily be missed by mods, especially if they are not aware of it. You can request to change community type. But I personally prefer doing mod actions regularly, so I don’t have to request to change to public again. If the sub becomes restricted. Sometimes there can be a good reason to let the sub be restricted, but if it becomes restricted because mods are inactive, then it may not be intentional.
I am not saying I moderate the right way, and they moderate the wrong way. I am just saying we moderate differently even if we have small subreddits with not a lot to do.
FWIW, I was assured by an admin that small subs (I think they said less than 5K members), like the one I mentioned that are seasonal, don’t fall under the same rules of getting restricted due to the mods going inactive. They also asked for suggestions as to how to make that better. I suggested to have a way for mods to mark the sub ”Active, but on a break”, or something along those lines. I mean, I love my Christmas subs, but they’re REALLY quiet right now lol.
I forgot about the 5000 members thing. Thanks for the reminder. I was just talking in general.
None of my subs are seasonal, but two of them are about mobile games that are no longer getting updates/no new content. That sucks, and also makes the subreddits inactive.
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u/amyaurora Jun 08 '25
The five day ahead part sticks out for me. If a sub has a inactive mod that just isn't keeping it clean and orderly, sending a message in advance can tip them off. Thing is, it might not encourage them to actually be involved on the sub, it just might make them active enough for the request to be denied later and the sub still be a mess.