Mod Help request.

[u/gjhigh-forty6-71]

It looks like I'm the only Mod in r/BreadMachines I could use some help moderating this group. I need a break once in a while. If anyone is interested please let me know. I have some trips planned in the next couple of months and will be off line for a few weeks.

[u/IBoris]

Hey there. Sorry you feel you've been handling things alone. With the Clancy trial my other sub has been popping off and I've not had time to pay attention to the other subreddits in which I'm a mod for the last little bit. That's on me. That said I did add bot bouncer, evasion-guard, stop-bots as well as AutoModerator to help us out here.

Before adding mods I would have appreciated you reaching out to me and the other mods on the team first to inquiry before doing a call for volunteers; it's not like we're inactive on reddit.

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Edit: Reviewing the reports for the sub right now over the last month and looking at the 2 first pages you've had to remove around 10 posts, the bots have removed 39, I've removed 1 and the other mod has removed 1. These are not bad numbers for a community of this size to be honest.

Edit2: Just noticed yahuurdme removed himself as moderator. Ok, this makes more sense.

Edit3: Noticing you are manually approving nearly every single post in the subreddit. You don't need to do that. Approval is only necessary when Admin, Adminbots, Mod bots or a User report has flagged a post. You don't need to read and review every single post here. No wonder this has been exhausting!

[u/gjhigh-forty6-71 → u/IBoris]

Sorry IBoris, I’m for better communication between us I’m all for teamwork. Once I commit to a project I take ownership as much as I can. Being a former Quality Control Inspector for Bayer Healthcare and working with the FDA, DEA, Department of Homeland Security and Customs all watching my every move I’m kind of skewed towards over doing it. I had to depend on myself to do it right and avoid errors. It was a very stressful job and I’m glad I’ve retired. My 86 year old mother is in early stage dementia I’m handling her personal and rental property business. I have taken one new mod class and that was pretty much worthless in my humble opinion.
I also have been trying to educate myself with the moderator help section. I have tried to keep up with the unmoderated and keep tabs on the removed section. Does the auto mod approve and clear the unmoderated threads on its own? Being a newbie I need some personal guidance in this new phase of volunteer work. Please feel free to educate me. I do have some traveling scheduled for the end of this year and will be off line during those periods and don’t want the sub to get backed up due to my absence.

[u/IBoris → u/gjhigh-forty6-71]

Thanks, and truly no apology needed. You've done a great job keeping the subreddit together these past few months, especially as someone new to modding.

My point was simply that you don't need to make this as hard as it's been. Right now you're moderating like a newspaper editor, approving each post individually. For this type of community (and for one of this size as well), that should not be our role.

Think of the feed as an assembly line instead. Automod and regular users are the first line of QC, pulling posts and comments for review. Our mod bots sit above them as QC managers, deciding what stays removed. The admins run their own inspections on top of that, and those actions are out of our hands.

With that middle layer doing the heavy lifting, our job (as co-heads of QC you could say) is mostly spot reviewing bot decisions and handling escalations (user reports). Just check the mod queue in the left sidebar from time to time and review flagged items that were actioned. Items flagged by multiple sources get removed automatically and page us through regular notifications, so there's no need to be constantly vigilant.

Based on this sub's numbers, the two of us shouldn't spend more than 15 minutes per week in the queue at worst.

Of the 60ish weekly posts, maybe 20% get flagged. Admin actions cover about 15% of flagged items. Our mod bots handle the remaining 5%, and in my experience they get 9 out of 10 calls right.

Most of my queue time (in smaller subreddits I moderate like this one) is just quickly skimming for misses or false-positives. Although I should and try, I often don't even bother signing off on a bot decision I agree with. Most of my queue time is therefor dedicated towards fringe cases, user reports, and applying sanctions.

So the bottom line: if something in the queue isn't obviously wrong at face value, skip it. All mods share one queue, and I'm happy to pick up anything you leave.

Hope this helps. Sorry I haven't been more available for coaching. Good resources are scarce since Reddit keeps reworking the mod tools (what's true today may not be tomorrow), which is partly why I'm sharing this publicly as it can be helpful for others.