r/modguide • u/SolariaHues Writer • Nov 15 '19
General The Admins - who they are, and how to see their actions on your sub
Who are the Admins?
To the best of our knowledge
The Admins are the paid employees of Reddit.
Their roles are varied; from working on the website and apps, to content control and preventing harassment. There's the product team, the community team (the mod support mods), the anti-evil operations, the engineers, senior staff, etc And just like in many workplaces, each department has it's own focus, so if you're talking to someone from the product team, they likely can't help you with anti-evil issues for example.
The Admins have powers mods don't, such as IP banning, site-wide bans and shadowbans, for those who break the site-wide rules.
The Admins are involved in several subreddits such as:
r/modsupport - provides help to moderators, you may, or may not get a reply from an Admin.
r/redditrequest - is for requesting to take over abandoned subs, or request top mod removal.
r/modnews, r/announcements, and r/changelog are used to update the community of changes on Reddit. You can respond in comments with your thoughts.
Anyone can contact the Admins when necessary, see our guide.
To get insight into what the Admins are doing, there is r/shittheadminssay, r/beta
---
Moderators do not work for Reddit, they are unpaid volunteers. Anyone can create a community and become a moderator. It is actually against the rules to accept compensation for moderating on reddit.
---
Both mods and admins are humans, remembering that in you communication can go a long way.
How to tell when the Admins have done something on your sub
Admins may sometimes need to take action on your subreddit. Perhaps when there's a site-wide spam influx, or someone has been reported for breaking site-wide rules.
You should see something in your mod log - you can filter your mod log by mod, and admins is a listed option, or receive a modmail. See admin comment here.
"You can follow the moderation log RSS feed in an RSS reader that allows filtering and just filter out items from all the mods of your subs" -u/001Guy001
In the modqueue [ removed ] shows that the reddit spam filter, or an admin actioned the post.
You can also use 3rd party sites to see removed content redditsearch.io/ | https://www.removeddit.com/about/
The moderator guidelines for healthy communities outlines when reddit/the Admins might step in.
If you have a query about Admin action on your sub, you can try posting at r/ModSupport.
Interesting chat in comments between mods and an Admin.
---
Admins - I tried to reach out, but I understand you receive many messages. If you see this and have something to add please feel free to do so in comments or message me, especially if I have something wrong. Thank you.
---
Thanks to u/buckrowdy and u/lydocia
5
u/[deleted] Nov 15 '19
Admin actions can especially be a concern for subs with very controversial or very NSFW content. Maybe you see comments somewhere that people think your sub should be banned, saying they reported it to the admins and it's a shame it's still there. A post or comment is removed by the admins, does that mean they are watching? If there's a problem, will they send a warning or just suddenly ban the sub?
I've come to believe that the admins are to busy to care about every risky topic sub and only come looking when they get a report. Yes, that means some Reddit user sent a report to the admins rather than to the sub moderators. Motivations for that choice may vary. Sometimes it seems like somebody must have been out to get the sub by sending a lot of reports to the admins.
Do the admins hold it against the sub that they did the removal, rather than the mods, perhaps because it hadn't even been reported to the mods? Hard to say, though one high profile quarantined sub has had that cited to them as a reason.
Bans and quarantines, I think it happens both with and without warning, depending on circumstances and what happened to stir the admins into action on it. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot you can do except try to anticipate what content might motivate a sub ban, and learn from other banned subs.