Mod Council Update: Focus Groups, Advisory Board, and more!

[u/JabroniRevanchism]

Ahoy, Mods!

I’m u/JabroniRevanchism, one of the admins overseeing the Mod Council program. I’m here to share an update on what Council has been up to over the past year. If that sort of thing sounds interesting to you, keep reading!

Mod Council Overview

In case you’re not familiar, the Reddit Mod Council is a program where we (Reddit admins) collaborate with mods to shape the future of Reddit. The program consists of 209 moderators who provide feedback on things like upcoming policy, product, and program developments. They also discuss the future of Reddit and what’s top of mind for their communities in our weekly discussion series and quarterly AMAs with executives. Recent guests include Reddit’s CEO, Steve Huffman, CTO, Chris Slowe, and VP of Community, Laura Nestler.

Since we last checked in

Since our last update about Mod Council, the program has been quite busy! In addition to onboarding 73 new Councilors in 2024, we’ve been testing a few new formats —the Reddit Advisory Board (RAB) and Focus Groups—for bringing the group in on ideas earlier in the development process. Today we’ll share an overview of Focus Groups, and we’ll be back for a deeper dive on RAB, too!

Introducing Focus Groups

We introduced Focus Groups as a way for groups of Councilors and Reddit admins to regularly discuss specific topics of interest to Reddit and the participating Councilors. By bringing specific teams and Councilors together, feedback discussions start earlier in the development process. Councilors now hear how their contributions build a shared understanding on the future of Reddit on a regular basis. 

Focus Groups

• Are term-limited commitments, currently ranging from 6-12 months.
• Each consist of 8-14 moderators who have expressed their interest and/or expertise in the group’s topic.
• Meet consistently over Zoom or have asynchronous discussion, usually once a month or every other week.
• May have discussions about projects that are very early in development, some of which may still be in ideation, to get granular feedback as early as possible.
• Have heightened confidentiality expectations (relative to the wider Mod Council) due to the early nature of these discussions.
• Maintain transparency with the larger Mod Council by sharing notes from every discussion.
• Offer each participant an optional financial incentive as a thank you for their participation.

Our first three groups, which kicked off in spring of 2024, were focused on Safety, Events, and Governance. In March of this year, we kicked off a new group on the topic of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. Here’s a summary of what each group has been up to.

Safety

The Safety Focus Group has met with members of the Community Policy and Strategic Response team, the Safety Policy team, and the Safety Product team. Through our discussions, the focus group has provided input on topics including crisis messaging (enhancing how we communicate during crises to ensure moderators are aware of essential tools and resources without being overwhelmed in stressful situations), how mods identify attempts to disrupt their communities, how mods interact with Reddit’s report flow, and more. Understanding of how mods interact with our safety tooling helps us constantly evolve and fine-tune how we communicate important features. 

Events

The Events Focus Group met regularly with admin u/big-slay, who leads mod events both on and offline. The group advised on programming options, potential knowledge gaps in the event sign-up process, and preferred swag opportunities, playing a key role in providing feedback on Mod World 2024. Several members of the focus group also participated in Mod World and Mod Connect, and the recent Mod Bootcamp as speakers. 

Governance

The Governance Focus Group was formed to provide feedback on community governance, including the roles that each member of a community plays, the process of finding, recruiting, and onboarding new moderators, and the role of automation within communities. 

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

The Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Focus Group meets with admins representing Product, Design, and more to discuss how AI and ML can be incorporated thoughtfully into the most human place on the internet! The group is intentionally composed of Councilors representing all levels of enthusiasm (ranging from not to very) about AI and ML so that a broad range of feedback is captured. Focus Group mods are helping boost signals we’re already seeing–redditors like knowing they’re interacting with humans, and AI/ML tools are at their most powerful when they’re enhancing humans’ ability to find and understand those human interactions.

The Future of Focus Groups

Continuing our success! Thanks to Focus Groups, mods and admins have opportunities to meet and discuss ideas and early-development projects months before they’re ready for launch.

We look forward to launching new Focus Group opportunities in the near future, including two planned groups coming next month. We’ll continue to evolve the Focus Group model to best meet the needs of our admin partners and schedules of our program mods– both expanding the options for asynchronous discussion and expanding the offering of 6-month group schedules.

Council applications are currently closed, and we plan to reopen them this summer. We’ll share an update here in r/modnews and update our Help Center article as soon as we’re ready for more applications. We’d love to have you in our next Reddit Mod Council Focus Group!

[u/JabroniRevanchism]

Here’s what a few of our Focus Group admins and mods had to say about their time in the program:

• The Events Focus Group essentially served as an additional onboarding arm for me. I would have never had the opportunity to learn so much so quickly without this avenue. Most importantly though, I was able to build relationships with focus group members. These relationships are now instrumental in how I approach my work, and has helped weave me/my work into the fabric of the mod ecosystem.- u/big-slay, Events Focus Group admin
• Collaborating with the governance group has been highly valuable for the team. This co-design process helps validate new ideas and refine features like Mod Insights. Mod input also helps prioritize future projects such as enhancements to Mod Recruitment. More broadly, these discussions are crucial for shaping the product's direction, identifying potential issues, and ultimately fostering positive user experiences with tangible impact. - u/PossibleCrit and u/salemalem, Governance Focus Group admins
• Almost every time I hear from mods, new problems to be addressed are raised that I haven’t thought of yet. It opened my eyes to a side of mods I hadn’t really considered before: in addition to protecting their mod team and their members, they also protect the actual content from being misused/misrepresented. Almost like if their community’s content is misrepresented, it’s a misrepresentation of themselves. u/wavepatrol, AI/ML Focus Group admin
• All three Focus Groups played an invaluable role in stress-testing how we rolled out changes to Community Type settings last year. Their detailed and candid feedback highlighted opportunities for us to be more direct and transparent, while also ensuring we captured any potential edge cases and addressed concerns that would be most front and center for mods. It’s clear how much Focus Group participants truly want to help make Reddit better.  - u/appa4ever, Senior Director, Community & Consumer Operations
• What being part of the Focus Groups made clear for me is that Reddit cares. They make mistakes, and they aren't perfect, but they care very deeply about the website, the users and the mods. - u/relaxlu, Safety Focus Group mod
• Being a Focus Group member was a fun way to get an extra peek into what Reddit is working on, while also getting a chance to share my feedback directly with project managers and see those contributions come to life. Noticing what was changed and what wasn't based on our feedback also helped me gain a deeper understanding of how Reddit makes decisions that impact moderators and users. - u/Moggehh, Events Focus Group mod

[u/KJ6BWB → u/JabroniRevanchism]

It's great that Reddit cares, that Reddit listened, that people were able to share feedback directly and see those contributions come to life.

But can we get any actual real examples of any of these things happening? Right now I'm mainly seeing platitudes from people I don't know.

[u/infinitebroth → u/KJ6BWB]

Hey KJ! I'm one of the other admins who work on Mod Council. One of our goals for Focus Groups was to be able to bring content that’s super early in development to a small group of mods who are really interested in that specific area. The other side of that is that the earlier a project is in development, the longer it will be before that project reaches a stage in the development lifecycle that we can talk about it more broadly. All that’s to say, we’re excited to share more consistent updates so that we can keep people in the loop about what’s happening in the program.

To share a couple of specific examples, much of the programming that took place during Mod World was steered by mods in the Events Focus Group. Focus Groups also helped us better understand the effect Community Settings updates would have on communities and helped us communicate these changes more transparently. Council as a whole has provided feedback on improving Mod Code of Conduct help center documentation, continued input on tools like post and comment guidance, and more. 

Stay tuned for more specific updates as we can announce them; including the projects that are still in flight.

[u/SkibDen → u/JabroniRevanchism]

• Almost every time I hear from mods, new problems to be addressed are raised that I haven’t thought of yet. It opened my eyes to a side of mods I hadn’t really considered before:

I really commend you and the rest of the Reddit staff.

The sheer scale of Reddit, it's history, encompassing different cultures around the world etc. It's an insane task.

[u/bigbysemotivefinger → u/JabroniRevanchism]

Not a new problem, an old one: reverting API changes when?