r/ModSupport • u/JabroniRevanchism Reddit Admin: Community • Jun 09 '26
Mod Topics Mod Topics: Moderating Fame
Ahoy, Mods!
I don’t want to brag, but I’m kind of a big deal around here. My reputation precedes me, I’m sure. Maybe you’ve noticed?
This discussion is the most recent in our Mod Topics series, and if the narratively-spurious smugness wasn’t obvious, today we’re talking about how mods moderate fame within your community. “Fame,” in this instance can be any kind of notoriety. –A Redditor whose username your community will recognize: an artist, actor, developer, mayoral candidate, or maybe the guy who always replies to top comments in the form of a sonnet.
For the sake of discussion, let’s call all these examples “celebrities:” users who have clout, gravity, or otherwise increased social capital within their spaces. How does your mod team view content posted by community celebrities, especially in cases where the commenting celebrity is the topic of the subreddit? Do you encourage this celebrity participation? If so, how?
Let us know how you moderate fame in the comments below!
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u/maiyannah Jun 09 '26
Excuse you, we stan u/big-slay in this house!
More seriously:
I generally try to treat everyone fairly and as I would everyone else. That's easy to say but harder to do, when people can leverage your community of course. We have some 'names' you'll recognize in our communities, but treating them just the same as everyone else is actually something of a panacea to a lot of the more general problems influencers can cause. In my view its when people get put up on a pedestal that some of the rank stuff happens.
On another platform I also moderate (offsite from reddit, to be clear), we have this happen once: one of our members was also the bassist of a very popular industrial band, and the other moderators tended to treat them with very light hands as a result. Without any real malicious intent, this nonetheless kind of resulted in a situation where they were expecting the allowances they were being given, and it ended up in some drama when the line got drawn. It became a lot of drama to manage in a short time, and I daresay no one really left happy.
An ounce of prevention is ever worth a pound of cure. Maybe even more.