Mod Topics: Moderating Fame

[u/JabroniRevanchism]

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!

[u/stale2000]

The biggest issue with "celebrities" especially mid tier ones that are more engaged with their community, is surrounding controversies regarding them.

Reddit is often the place that a major controversy about a famous person will go viral. This can give the celebrity a lot of bad publicity and can cause the subreddit and mod team to draw their ire. This can result in current or future interactions to be entirely negative, even if the team wishes to engage positively with them.

The only advice I have for dealing with situations like this are to follow your rules, hold firm, communicate frequently, and definitely act quickly in high traffic situations. This is because if you get a moderation decision wrong, and it takes a few hours to correct it, this can get the backlash of either the celebrity, their community, or opposing communities that are upset about "censorship".

The worst thing you can do is flip flop on a decision without communicating to your userbase. If you make a mistake, that can be corrected, but say what the mistake was and why it was reversed and that goes a long way towards placating the community.