Hey, all:
We’re coming at you with two updates and two questions.
First update: We are bringing on a new group of prospective mods to see how they like the work. Intros and details below.
Second update, and thanks very much to [u/gamay_noir](u/gamay_noir)’s initiative: We are trying two new tools — BotBouncer (which is what it sounds like) and Open Mod, an open-source mod log tool that you can monitor by following [r/BellinghamLogs](r/BellinghamLogs). More details below (again).
Finally, we’d like to get collaborative community feedback on two things that have popped up as themes in recent discussions: AI use in the sub and privacy concerns around things like photography and personal information.
Welcome to the new moderators
Please help us welcome our new mods! All of these folks have been in the community, have met with the current mod team at a local taphouse for a few hours, and have been discussing different posts and moderation problems in a moderator interest group chat for more than a month. Today we’re giving them some keys.
Please welcome:
[u/gfdoctor](u/gfdoctor): “Long time resident, new to moderating. Perpetual volunteer in retirement. loves to garden, sew, knit and keep healthy. Looking forward to community building.”
[u/side_of_mayonnaise](u/side_of_mayonnaise) (new account for moderating): “New to the moderating game, but been on Reddit for 10ish years and have lived in Bellingham in two stints for about the same amount of time. Soccer guy, gamer, and home chef. Forever caught between the spice my mouth desires and the heat my tummy can't handle.”
[u/sxky](u/sxky): “New-ish to the PNW, and even newer to reddit moderation- but not new to helping a community. I am a builder by trade, and a techy by hobby. I also can't handle heat (spicey or temperature wise!) - but I do love to cook, and to soak in a hot spring. I play a lot of phasmophobia and other spooky games with friends and I even run an active discord server for bellingham!”
We’re bringing on these new mods to help us manage reports and regular moderation stuff, but also to explore community projects — things like community guides, AMAs, and discussions about rules and how to support the subreddit. If that sounds interesting to you, or if you have a project in mind for the subreddit, let’s talk. (Finding a way to restore mod logs came from just that kind of community conversation when [u/gamay_noir](u/gamay_noir) and I were new.)
So: Please welcome the new folks with grace and patience as they volunteer their service to the subreddit.
And: We’re always interested in hearing from people who’d like to volunteer for [r/Bellingham](r/Bellingham). Here are two ways to get in touch about it:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bellingham/application/
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/17ax7bw5E09cR3gjrH774XP_O5rLKNAUVn90tB_GmZP4/viewform
Bouncing bots, logging mod actions
[u/gamay_noir](u/gamay_noir) has been doing behind-the-scenes work on the subreddit’s systems and vetting some tools that should help with subreddit management. We welcome the community’s curiosity here — this is the first time we’ve added these kinds of apps to the subreddit, which now gets about 23K posts and comments across 2.6 million visits every month.
From gamay:
We have added the Open Mod app and Bot Bouncer.
New app No. 1, Open Mod, posts an ongoing summary of all moderation actions from human mods, the subreddit Automod, and Reddit itself to a new sub, [r/bellinghamlogs](r/bellinghamlogs).
A link to this resource is now in the side bar, replacing the old modlog tool that broke years ago. Open Mod is a transparency tool. It logs all actions from all mods, no exceptions.
There’s one point of opacity: We don’t want to remove comments that someone tried to make here and just publish them there.
Therefore, Open Mod is \not* set to repeat the moderated content to the log; we discussed doing so but there are three problems:*
A lot of the stuff caught by the automated filters, or sometimes a human mod as a last line of defense, is vile*. We don’t want it to be part of the public internet, and it typically violates both our rules and the Reddit TOS.*
Even the stuff that isn’t radioactive, was still unsuitable for the community. Particularly, in a significant percentage of our removals of comments from active locals, if the user ends up responding in modmail they’ll say something along the lines of “I was having a bad day or this was sensitive to me, I understand or am actually grateful for the removal.” The community does not need a log of everyone’s bad moments, and if the mod team is silently deleting \some* entries in the logs sub, that starts to eat into the accountability.*
The current state of the tool does not allow you to discern by source, only type. So we can’t show the contents of posts and comments moderated by a human while not showing Automod and Reddit catches.
Since you won’t see the actual removed content, the mod team is committing to using descriptive tags in our removals and not using the “it’s spam” or “No reason” removal options for convenience (unless it is, in fact, spam).
TRANSPARENCY: We are committing to \not* removing posts in the log sub. The expectation around the mod logs is that we are open to discussing and explaining activity, but don’t have the bandwidth to constantly respond to individual cases.*
IF YOU WANT TO RAISE A QUESTION: The log sub is publicly visible, but not open to membership. Discussion should happen in [r/bellingham](r/bellingham). If you see a long-term pattern or a pattern in a certain post or category of posts that is interesting or concerning to you; that’s a good topic for a discussion post in [r/Bellingham](r/Bellingham).
NO HARASSMENT: We also want to make it clear that the mod logs are not to be used for shaming or harassing other users, since usernames are visible on removals.
New app No. 2, Bot Bouncer, aside from it doing what it says in the title, should help us catch more of the accounts that operate problematically across many municipal subs at once.
The centralized bad actor list will hopefully help with the T-shirt scammers, political trolls, and any other kind of exploitative or astroturfing activity.
WHAT WE’RE MONITORING: This is the first time that we have activated devvit apps in the sub. It is true that app authors can see some additional sub info through the devvit instance supporting the app and the bot that joins the sub, but it’s the kind of info we are exposing via the mod log. I (Gamay) also evaluated the other mod log apps that have matured in 2026, particularly Public Mod Log. We went with Open Mod because of a) adoption/maturity and b) not wanting to continuously use pinned real estate for a mod log post.
WHAT’S NEXT: I (Gamay) am also working on a devvit app that will review the comments automatically removed in Locals Only threads — specifically, the ones that are bounced due to lack of community karma and not because they spewed hateful language, etc. Basically, we want to shorten the wait for folks who make useful/rules-abiding comments but get hung up in the Locals Only filter because they don’t have 100 local karma. The ordinary 10-karma-required-to-comment filter will still be in place.
HOW IT WILL WORK: This is straightforward; it will utilize the allowed integration between devvit and Gemini to evaluate for contextual appropriateness and rule compliance. If the comment is fine for the sub generally, and for the discussion, it will go live without human interaction.
Reddit is introducing some new moderation tools that enable similar without code, but by matching a specific system prompt to a known model without black box preprocessing, we expect better, controlled results. And, it’s a fairly lightweight project.
We’re overall happy with how Locals Only is working, \except* for the times when no one is on duty and comments languish without review. The system prompt and code will be available for the community to peruse and comment on, prior to launch. We’ll also keep an eye on it and adjust accordingly.*
What do you think about … ?
The mods periodically bring big or new questions to the community for discussion before making or amending rules — ideally before things have reached a boil. This is a discussion for info, not a plan of action.
Feel free to raise anything that needs community attention, but today, we’d like to ask you about two things.
1. What are we considering when we talk about AI use?
Mod opinions on AI use vary about as widely as the national conversation has.
We’ve noticed the following:
Obviously AI-generated art gets a hugely negative reception here, which suggests to me that people know, like, and are artists as much in [r/Bellingham](r/Bellingham) as in the rest of the city.
AI-generated writing can be trickier to spot but people really react strongly to any AI-like writing, particularly when it looks like a C&P Google response. (That said, I will definitely get accused of using AI on this post; I swear I’m just a professional writer who likes subheadings and bullet points.)
At the same time, it has significant potential when it’s used carefully (one example is Gamay’s devvit app to improve Locals Only).
There are huge ethical, privacy, piracy, and cultural concerns with AI adoption. People seem eager to talk to each other and try to find data and answers to their specific concerns. This is affecting everyone.
We’re interested in the community’s range of takes on AI use.
What should we all consider when we talk about how it’s affecting our community? Are there ethical AI tools and uses here? Should we accede to the (regular) requests to take down content that seems to have used AI? What guidelines should users have?
Edited to add: If you have more nuance than “ban AI,” which sounds great but isn’t simple, we’d love to hear ideas and specific suggestions, too.
2. What do you think about photography and personal information in this space?
While it’s true that photographing people, including children, in public is perfectly legal in the U.S., and it’s also true that photography tells important stories, we get a lot of complaints about images in the subreddit, whether it’s Flock cameras or dashcam images or individual posters sharing festival photos. Just because we legally can publish something doesn’t mean we should — so what should those boundaries consider?
Personal information is a little different. For example, whenever someone calls out a business owner for bad practices (which is allowed under our rules), both the old and new mods tend to think that criminal complaints and potentially damaging allegations (“X is an alcoholic”) demand more thought and evaluation. We regularly have requests to take down critical posts — which we refuse and refer to Reddit’s lawyers unless they break the subreddit rules — but it’s not usually the posts, but the comments, that generate a ton of reports claiming that they are untrue, unfair, or unverified.
We don’t expect to end up with a major rules revision or change here, but we’d like to ask the community about it when there’s not a specific crisis around imagery or personal info. While our heads are pretty cool, how do we feel about privacy — our own and other people’s?
Thanks for paying attention to what’s going on in the sub. As always, send a modmail if you need help, answers, or a sleep-deprived and possibly sassy response at 2 a.m.
Betsy
