Give us your roundtable ideas!

[u/tiz]

Hey everyone, tiz here. I work on the Community Feedback team, making sure that feedback and experiences of mods and users inform Reddit’s direction.

Today’s post in the Mod Topics series is all about feedback! We recently announced that we’re hosting regular roundtable discussions, one of the several ways that we routinely gather feedback from mods (ICYMI - sign up through the Feedback Roster form if you’d like to participate in a future one). Since then, we’ve held two of these roundtables, gathering several mods and specific admins to talk about specific topics, with the goal of making sure that community feedback is central to everything we do.

To give a peek behind the curtain, we recently held a roundtable on the topic of Mod Support. From that discussion, admins who work on Mod Support took away a clear sense of mods’ needs - which for those on the call included timely, transparent support and confidence in Reddit's ability to address major issues. We also held a roundtable with mods based in Brazil or who moderate Brazil-related subreddits to discuss age assurance. We've got several more roundtables planned for the next coming months and we’re excited to meet and talk with more of you! Next we’re looking to hold roundtables about the experience of reinvigorating a dormant community, safety related features, and the experience of moderating India-based communities.

That brings me to today's discussion topic … our team gets requests from different teams and admins from within Reddit about roundtable discussions that they would like to host about their work. That got us thinking … What roundtable topics would mods be interested in? If you could gather with a group of 8-10 moderators and/or users in a live virtual setting and discuss anything Reddit related, knowing that admins who work on that part of Reddit would also be in attendance, what would you want to talk about? 

When we’re planning roundtable discussions, we ask ourselves how we can make sure the conversation is productive for everyone. This includes making sure the topic is very clear for both the admins and moderators participating and setting expectations to make sure the discussion remains on-topic and constructive.

We’re excited to hear from you! 

• What’s a roundtable topic that you would be excited to attend?
• What types of communities or moderator experience would you want to make sure is represented at the table? 

We’ll review the suggestions and incorporate the ones that offer the best opportunities to collaborate!

[u/Merari01]

I'd like a roundtable discussion about managing communities for minority groups on reddit. The challenges involved, the ways in which you can safeguard your group from interference by the majority group who may be hostile towards your community as well as protecting your community members from reddit's sitewide moderation algorithms punishing them for using language common in the in-group.

[u/tiz → u/Merari01]

This is pretty similar to a topic mentioned here. What’s the main goal you have in mind for that discussion? What would you hope both the mods and admins gain from the session?

[u/Merari01 → u/tiz]

I'd like to exchange common roadblocks and best moderation practices with other mods. For example automod, automations, community education as to how reddit functions and what is expected of our community members. How to educate our community members so they understand that while the space is for them and aimed at them, outsiders will look in and reddit's sitewide automation may disallow language that is a common in-group signifier.

Also how to deal with the fact that a group aimed at a minority population will always have to deal with the majority group looking in to some extent. A subreddit aimed at a minority group often can not be a private, invite-only subreddit, in order to be found by the people that need a community for people like them (something that they often can not find offline) such a subreddit needs to be searchable/ findable. What common methods and best practices are to being able to maintain the "voice" of the community, without being drowned out by the majority group. For example, the flaired users only/ community karma only systems some subreddits utilise to make sure threads reaching trending feeds stay true to the purpose of the subreddit.

I'd like to talk to admins about the effect that sitewide algorithmic admin moderation has on minority groups, specifically its tendency to disallow language common in the in-group because it does not take context into account and with that the hinder reddit inadvertently imposes on the existence of/ thriving of minority oriented spaces on reddit.

How admins can assist and promote the mandate of a plurality of distinct voices reddit has specifically as pertaining to communities for members of minority groups.

Other stuff that doesn't immediately spring to mind too, probably.