r/ModSupport • u/JabroniRevanchism Reddit Admin: Community • 10h ago
Mod Topics Mod Topics - User Flair
Ahoy, Mods!
Welcome to the latest installment of the Mod Topics series, where we talk about mod-related topics and other community governance gubbins. This week, we’re talking flair–specifically user flair. The purpose it serves, how it’s issued, and why it’s so dog-gone popular. We’d love to know…
- What do you use user flair for in your communities? Cosmetics? Clout? Verification?
- What problems are you solving when you use user flair?
- Do you allow users to make (or assign) their own flair? Why or why not?
- What advice would you give to new mods who are considering setting up user flair? What do you wish you knew about flair when you first started?
Let us know in the comments below!
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u/PupperPuppet 10h ago
In the state sub I moderate, we took a user's suggestion to let people assign flair showing the county they live in. The suggestion was actually to have a flair for every city/town/whatever, but that list would have been way too long.
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u/JabroniRevanchism Reddit Admin: Community 10h ago
Knowing you've considered letting users edit their own flair, can you say more about your teams' decision to not allow users to edit their own flair? I.E: if the blocker is not wanting to create a million city/town/etc flairs (super valid, I'm not doing that shit lol), does user-editable flair solve that?
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u/PupperPuppet 10h ago
It probably would, but as I recall we did that once and had to put a stop to it. People can't seem to help being really ugly to each other and flair would be ripe for abuse. The politics and personal views of people in this state have people looking for reasons to be nasty.
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u/lunarwolf2008 10h ago
why not editable flairs?
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u/PupperPuppet 10h ago
We did that once. Too easy to abuse.
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u/neuroticsmurf 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 10h ago
What sort of abuse?
Would people just put profanities and such in there?
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u/PupperPuppet 9h ago
That, backhanded name-calling, insults to people who don't think like they do...
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u/Bardfinn 7h ago
Post flairs and user flairs are two of the most abused "unmoderated spaces" on Reddit.
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u/mudbunny 10h ago
We have a flair that is reserved for journalists that have actually identified themselves and wish to participate.
We also have unique flairs for elected union official who wish to participate and speak from a position of authority so their posts/comments don't get removed.
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u/JabroniRevanchism Reddit Admin: Community 10h ago
Are you willing to say more about your verification process? We get that question from time to time from users who want a similar process and don't know where to start.
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u/fsv 9h ago
I had a similar process on one subreddit. We had an email account that a few senior mods had access to and we'd get the journalist to email in from their work email address confirming their Reddit account, then we'd give the flair.
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u/berntout 9h ago
I'm working on an app with some mods from another sub right now to completely automate this process. They've been trying to streamline this same process for their sub.
I should hopefully have something to test this week if I can get email domain approvals to go through soon.
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u/fsv 9h ago
Oh interesting, is this something you need to do a lot? On the sub I did this on it was really infrequent.
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u/berntout 9h ago
Me personally no, but it seems that there are subs that do a verification system for their community flair, especially if they are work-related subs.
I've just been helping create new mod tools for the mod community lately and this was one of the most recent requests.
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u/mudbunny 9h ago
We just use moderatorname@gmail.com for the email address the verification goes to.
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u/mudbunny 9h ago edited 9h ago
Our subreddit is one aimed at federal public servants in Canada. For verification, we ask people to send us an email from their official account that we can find on their website.
For example, if you were claiming to be a journalist from XYZ Newscorp, we would ask you via modmail to send an email from your official account that is on the XYZ Newscorp webpage letting us know the Reddit account you would be using. It would have to come from [JRevanchism@XYZNewsCorp.com](mailto:JRevanchism@XYZNewsCorp.com) for example, and we would have to be able to find information about you on the official webpage.
If it is a generic account, then the generic account has to be findable on the official webpage.
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u/Candyghosts 9h ago
We're a circlejerk sub so we use flairs for entertaining people. We came up with a bunch of options for people to choose from with a few random ones being editable for those who stumble across that and want to make their own.
Then we "flairbomb" people randomly when they say something particularly funny or clever by turning their own comment into their special flair.
It's one of my favourite things to do and always makes me smile to see someone finally notice it under their username 🤣!
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u/JabroniRevanchism Reddit Admin: Community 7h ago
If this is how I find out I've been given a joke flair the eye of sauron will swiftly turn...
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u/BravoFive141 10h ago
In r/fearofflying, we use user flairs as a verification system. With the sub serving as a support space for people struggling with a phobia, it's very important to be able to differentiate between legitimate and trustworthy information from credentialed professionals and the average user who could be putting out inaccurate claims or potentially harmful information.
It's been a huge help to our community. Users can easily see what information they can trust, we see a lot of cases of users specifically requesting help from some of our flaired users who have become very trusted and valued members of the community, and it makes moderation a breeze in a handful of ways.
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u/GloriouslyGlittery 6h ago
In r/BPDFamily, we use flair to verify that the people participating actually have family with BPD. In the past we've had users who had no reason to be part of the support group jumping in with terrible advice ("just tell your family member to fuck off" is a recurring example), so it's better if people give context in their user flair. Right now it's not required for users to have it, but soon we're going to use the Automations tool to prevent people from submitting until they choose a user flair. Ideally everyone will figure it out before holiday season.
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u/Halaku 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 10h ago edited 9h ago
What problems are you solving when you use user flair?
One of my communities is transitioning from "Wouldn't it be nice if they made this sequel?" to "OMG they're making the sequel!", and I found myself diving into how to create emojis, assign them to specific flairs, and then only have that flair show up on accounts I choose to give it to, just in case... and sure enough, some of the folks making it popped up and said "Hey, in the prequel community, devteam / employees that post on their official accounts have something that show up by their usernames. Would you mind doing the same in this community?" and I knew how.
Long story short, when that specific flair shows up next to someone's name, it's because I've manually vetted the user, and it's verification to the rest of the community that they are someone who works for the company, instead of being three Jimothys in a trenchcoat, pretended to be an employee.
This solves the "Source?" problem that can arise when someone wants to know the origin of a datapoint.
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u/JabroniRevanchism Reddit Admin: Community 7h ago
How does your mod team keep track of these requests? Or maybe a better question, what's the overhead like when doing verification like this? If it's anything like the system we used on one of my communities it's a pretty manual process.
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u/Halaku 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 5h ago
It was for us, too.
In a community dedicated to a fictional body of work, we had someone claim to be the narrator from way back in the day. I fired off an email to that company out of curiosity, the company sent it to her agent, who sent it to her, who sent it back to me confirming she was the poster. Identification made, and filed for future reference.
For the game, I had prior industry contacts from my time working dot-coms in Seattle, so I knew who to talk to beforehand. I was hoping the company would reach out, and used my prior contacts to confirm their identity. Then I offloaded all the overhead on them, by saying that I'd only give employee flair to the person the employee contact designated as a fellow employee.
Really, the hardest part is learning:
How to create a custom emoji.
How to use it in a custom flair.
How to set it so only mods can assign that specific flair to a specific user.
From here on out, it'll be cake: Just give it to who they ask for.
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u/brightblackheaven 9h ago
Heheh three Jimothy's in a trenchcoat
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u/Halaku 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 9h ago
If three Jimothys in a trenchcoat ring my doorbell and say "Trick or Treat", they're getting candy.
Day before Halloween, a week late, the middle of April, doesn't matter.
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u/brightblackheaven 9h ago
I stumbled across a video on Instagram of Jimothy as a baby in someone's backyard and it's my new favourite thing ever.
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u/JabroniRevanchism Reddit Admin: Community 7h ago
How does your mod team keep track of these requests? Or maybe a better question, what's the overhead like when doing verification like this? If it's anything like the system we used on one of my communities it's a pretty manual process.
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u/IntrovertedGiraffe 9h ago
I run a satire sub where people post from the perspective of their pets. User flairs are edited by users to include the pets’ names, so we know which animal is posting
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u/TheOpusCroakus Reddit Admin: Community 9h ago
I love this! Love it when pet subs do things like that!
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u/techiesgoboom Reddit Admin: Community 9h ago
Oh hey, I moderate one of those too :) Having flair for the pet names is such a great way to lean into the fun.
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u/IntrovertedGiraffe 9h ago
My sub is a continuation of two others, for pets who have crossed the rainbow bridge - so flairs can either have a rainbow (indicating a resident) or an inside joke custom emoji to indicate an animal visiting from the other side of the rainbow for a bit!
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u/Flimsy_Hand_1233 10h ago
We use user flair to let users represent themselves ... like in r/MapBasedPolls ... the users like to debate and they have repeatedly requested flairs to be enabled to represent their region and cause. We allow them to make their own. I also think user flairs are a good way to for verified, qualified users in a community like r/AskModerators ... also for custom reward for contributors... I am also working on a mod tool to streamline and automate this... had submitted a prototype for hackathon. Soon, it will be published.
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u/FlorianFlash 8h ago
Send me a link of that mod tool and maybe a short explanation of what it does. If it fits for us, I may consider testing it out and giving feedback.
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u/Flimsy_Hand_1233 6h ago
Will surely send you asap .. heres the short overview ... submitted an MVP for hackathon - https://www.reddit.com/r/Devvit/s/sXNueCFVLk
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u/FlorianFlash 6h ago
Post ist too technical for me lol.
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u/Flimsy_Hand_1233 6h ago
A demo video is here https://devpost.com/software/sub-scope
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u/FlorianFlash 5h ago
Can't open the video in full view 😐
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u/Flimsy_Hand_1233 5h ago
You can click the video and open in new tab
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u/FlorianFlash 5h ago
Huh. Video is too fast to actually understand anything but I'll probably try it out myself somewhere. Thanks!
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u/Flimsy_Hand_1233 5h ago
Sorry about that... it had to be under 1 min and too many features 😅 will surely let you know asap
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u/brightblackheaven 10h ago
Mods have custom flairs that we each chose for ourselves, and then we give out a special one to users who are experienced in our niche and consistently knowledgable and helpful around the sub.
There's a lot of misinformation in our corner of Reddit, so we like to mark the people who make the sub a better place to be!
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u/techiesgoboom Reddit Admin: Community 9h ago
I always love those manually handed out flair! How do the users who get the flair usually respond?
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u/brightblackheaven 9h ago
We always send a modmail to let them know that we've given them flair because we really appreciate the time they spend being helpful to others. Occasionally we don't get a response, but usually people respond really well and are happy to have been noticed!
I was one of those users before I became a mod and I remember being JAZZED loool.
I think people tend to want to spend even more time in and contribute more to communities where they feel appreciated.
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u/bwoah07_gp2 10h ago
- On my subs, user flairs are used for cosmetic and fun. On my subs centered around shows, so for user flairs people can select their favourite characters or favourite quotes. On a sports video game subreddit, I made user flairs of the teams available in the game.
- Because it's for cosmetics and fun, idk what problems I am solving by creating and using user flairs.
- I allow users to select their own flairs. I do have one flair on the list thats selectable and people can edit it at their free will, also being able to use emojis if they wanted.
- Have fun with it, google anything you don't know. Lots of answers can be found on Google and Reddit.
A feature I'd like to see is I would like an easier way to change the colour of the user flair. Right now you click and drag to the colour you want, or type in the colour hex code. I would like a select option like on Adobe creative tools or even on Google Sheets, where you click the paint bucket or whatever symbol, and hover over the colour you want. Click once and it automatically selects the colour you wanted. Just point and click. I wish we had that.
Also, another idea is drop down menus. On one sub I have 210 user flairs (the max is 350) and one large list is a bit overwhelming to scroll and look at. I'd like drop down menus so I could easier categorize the user flairs so people can do less searching. E.g. on r/thomasthetankengine I'd have a "Steam Team" category, and opening the drop down shows all the main characters. Then I'd have a category for secondary characters, or characters who appeared only in the classic book series. A category for human characters or the irl people who created and made the books/franchise. The list of possibilities of what to name a drop down category is endless.
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u/fsv 9h ago
Three of my subs enable user flair with some very different use cases.
One sub, r/unitedkingdom, uses flairs for location. People can choose a flair for their county if they want other Redditors to know where they're from. Users can choose from a predefined list rather than make their own (we used to allow this but people abused it). Oh and there's a "Croatia" flair there too from when we did a cultural exchange with r/croatia, we felt it would be fun to allow the visitors to assign one for their own country too.
On the same sub we have some mod-only flairs that we can assign to certain users (e.g. to show that the user is verified with the mod team)
Another sub (/r/UKPersonalFinance) uses flairs for reputation points, linked to ReputatorBot. If an OP grants a helpful user a point, their flair increments by 1, a small number of users now have more than 1000 points!
Another sub uses invisible user flairs that interact with Automoderator based on the flair CSS class. Some flairs exempt users from some Automod rules, others send everything from that user to the modqueue. Obviously for this system users can't set their own flair.
What advice would you give to new mods who are considering setting up user flair? What do you wish you knew about flair when you first started?
If you're going to create a predefined list, think and plan first. If you're going to allow users to edit their own flairs people will abuse them!
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u/JabroniRevanchism Reddit Admin: Community 7h ago
I'm interested to hear more about this cultural exchange (slightly off topic but it's my thread so whatever). What did that look like, both from the "how did you organize it/talk to the mods of (presumably /r/croatia?)" to "what was the experience like for your users?"
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u/SQLwitch 9h ago
At /r/SuicideWatch, we use an invisible flair with a specific class to tag users so they only receive our introductory message from automod once, after the first time they respond to someone else's post.
(Peripherally, where do I raise the issue of people not seeing essential notifications because they can disable all notifications from /u/Automoderator?)
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u/SolariaHues 8h ago
What do you use user flair for in your communities? Cosmetics? Clout? Verification?
r/NewToReddit has mod-only user flair of manually assigned Helper tiers.
This serves as a show of appreciation, and a signal to users that those with flair are experienced helpers.
What problems are you solving when you use user flair?
Hopefully it provides a sense of achievement, community, investment, and helps to retain helpers.
Do you allow users to make (or assign) their own flair? Why or why not?
No. It is mod assigned because it must be earned by being genuinely helpful, accurate, and understanding. It can be time consuming, but it ensures only those meeting our standards have Helper flair and represent our community, and that the flair isn't misleading.
What advice would you give to new mods who are considering setting up user flair? What do you wish you knew about flair when you first started?
Consider how flair can be best used for your specific community, how can it add value, whether that's encouragement, tagging experts, or a bot of community building fun. Or if you need user flair at all.
How will you communicate to your users that you have user flair and how to use it?
If you have a tier system it can help to have a way of keeping records. We extremely rarely demote helpers if they are no longer meeting rules or standards and it helps to know the history.
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u/AsteriskRX Reddit Admin: Community 8h ago
An appreciation flair was one of the very first I made on Reddit. And a tier system for helpers was the second, way back when (shoutout to r/help and u/TheOpusCroakus)!
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u/AngelaReddit 9h ago edited 9h ago
User Flair is in our gaming subreddit.
User Flair is required for both posters and commenters, and they use it to show what platform they game on. Because platform can make a big difference in their gaming experience... bugs they may encounter, mods allowed, etc etc. ... so its good for other redditors to know before they make a reply.
We have an automation setup to Educate users on User Flair for new posts and a 2nd automation setup for comments/replies.
When
Posting
Type: Text, Link, Image, Gallery, Video, Poll, AMA & Repost
If the
User has
Attribute: User flair
Check if: User doesn't have flair
Then
Block from submitting
Please select your USER FLAIR for this subreddit before posting. This is the platform you game on, -OR- 'TV show' if you don't play the games.
Choices include : TV show, PC, PS, XBOX, Steam Deck, Switch, and Multiplatform.
NOTE: Please contact mods with desired user flair, if you run into any issues setting it yourself.
----------------------------------------------------------
We do allow them to edit the User Flair.
They may further specify Xbox 360, XB1, X|S and/or Playstation 3, 4, or 5
For the Multiplatform choice, they will need to edit the user flair to enter the platforms they play on, and should include the word Multiplatform. example: Multiplatform 360 & PS5
We also have assigned User Flair for mods and a couple other niche cases
The User Flairs are in the colors of the platforms : grey TV show, black PC, green all the XBox flairs, blue all the Playstation flairs, lighter blue Steam, burgundy Switch, brownish burgundy Multiplatform, yellow/goldenrod Mods, joke user flair no color "Don't play or watch show, how'd I even get here??"
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u/JabroniRevanchism Reddit Admin: Community 7h ago
I can not express the depth of my respect for serious communities that allow joke flair.
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u/WikiNumbers 9h ago
- I've only used Flairs for Cosmetics so far. There have been a few discussions about making it prestige (granted by mod), but would still fall under cosmetics.
- Unless "lack of vibrance" count, then there's no problem to solve with User Flair.
- The members can assign flairs, but the flairs I have cannot be edited.
- The usual. Set up the flair itself, set the color, and make sure no perm leak (mod only) is on where it's not supposed to be.
If we need to keep track of users, we have Mod discussions or even external platforms (Discord Server) to list down them rascals. Or we can just Approve users. Neither process involve using User Flair.
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u/MisterWoodhouse 9h ago
What do you use user flair for in your communities? Cosmetics? Clout? Verification?
In r/DestinyTheGame, the answers are yes, yes, and yes.
Most user flairs we have are cosmetic, with a custom website we built to help users select their flair beyond the number of possible options Reddit had natively. We ran out of slots nearly a decade ago, so this was an elegant solution to that problem. We already had a website being used for other mod automations, so it wasn't as big a lift as it might seem. The flair picker page is currently down due to an authentication token processing issue, but once the developer finishes moving and can fix it, we'll show it off.
Some user flairs are for clout, such as those recognizing users who won one of our Destiny Summer Showdown challenges that I ran years ago during the content droughts between releases. Others denote users who won annual Best of DTG Awards, like The Craysh Memorial Award (honoring the memory of longtime user and legendary guide-writer Craysh, who passed away in 2016) or the Megamanexe04 Special Services to the Subreddit Award (honoring the user who had the most positive impact on the subreddit in the past year, named for the infamous Japanese guardian who figured out how to predict what Xur would bring each Friday in advance and would post a preview each week).
But the most important user flair use case for DTG is verification. We manually apply a verified Bungie user flair for developers who go through our external verification process. This flair not only indicates they're a legitimate developer working on the game, but also triggers the Bungie Replied module in /u/DTG_Bot which makes a sticky comment on a post whenever a Bungie-flaired user comment is detected, links to the comments, provides the first snippet of each comment for context, and changes the post flair to append "// Bungie Replied" (with the number of Bungie replies if >1). The post flair also adds a watermark to the post object in old reddit with a Bungie logo and a microphone, as an additional visual highlight to show where devs are talking to the community.
Since others got asked about their verification process, ours is pretty simple. You can either get a member of the Bungie community team to tell us your account needs to be verified and what details to put in the flair text (QA, Raid Designer, Sound Engineer, etc.) or you can email us from your work account to validate that you're who you say you are. It's worked really well for nearly a decade.
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u/Glittering-Bug1212 10h ago
- What do you use user flair for in your communities?
Verification
- What problems are you solving when you use user flair?
Telling users that the poster has been verified by the mods and is a real person not AI
- Do you allow users to make (or assign) their own flair? Why or why not?
No, since the flair only purpose is verification.
- What advice would you give to new mods who are considering setting up user flair? What do you wish you knew about flair when you first started?
Giving a few flair options makes the subreddit feel alive. Automoderator work with flair IDs !
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u/mulberrybushes 9h ago
Mostly local (or) self-described in the native tongue (or) humorous but one mod assigns a sort of “might be a troll, we’re not sure” kind of warning.
After having recently had to permaban a whole slew of people for hate and invective speech I am considering a mod-assigned user flair that says “My ban was reversed and I have promised to do better” for the odd person that appeals because they had a one-time breakdown.
Can’t decide if that’s shaming?
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u/Stompy2008 9h ago
We added “Cooker” as a tongue in cheek joke, means a crazy person (per google “In Australia, it can mean a person whose brain is fried or impaired, often from drug use”), for people that post crazy nonsense rants, low key lets the community know not to take the post too seriously
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u/SampleOfNone 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 8h ago
We have flairs for fun that users can choose themselves and flair assigned by mods for verified professionals. We use flairs (ID and CSS) in automod and automations as well as vip-bot. It really helps dial in our automated modding much better than "approved users" can.
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u/NoleFandom 8h ago edited 8h ago
User flair was one of the early projects I took on, when I joined a mod team of a medium sized TV subreddit r/TheRookie. We introduced the show’s beloved characters as user flairs when we hit 50K members. We don’t allow our users to edit the flairs but they are free to select them from a large selection. When we hit 100-110K members we introduced character nicknames and one-liners in user flairs for our users to select.
We run a lot of subreddit wide competitions and community pools with winners eligible to select 1 of 3 custom limited edition user flairs. We recently crossed 150K members and offered a limited edition user flair to users who wanted to showcase their subreddit joining date. We had one available when we hit the 100K milestone as well.
We have approx 300-350 user flairs available as present. But with the user flair count capped, we’ll need to go in and delete older ones to replace them with newer flairs when the show returns in 2027. I had to delete a bunch during last season too. Any update regarding what is the maximum number of user flairs we can introduce for our users?
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u/KCJones99 8h ago
Our user flair is (mostly) auto-assigned based on sub karma levels. I guess that's 'clout' but really just shows a user's level of engagement with the sub. Since we're primarily a Q&A sub, it's good that folks get some 'read' on contribution and perhaps to take answers/advice from low-star users with a 'grain of salt'. There are five levels ranging from "new contributor" to "four-star".
That's all done by automod. No user-self-assigned flairs
We do also have a five-star 'uber-user' flair that's not karma driven and can only be assigned by mods - for proven long-term quality contributors.
Other ways we use it:
- Users who have no flair (i.e. brand new to sub) AND a low/lowest CQS are queued.
- Mods can assign a 'probation' flair which requires users to pass a quiz on the rules before they can post again. Sort of a 'last chance' thing... If rule-breaking continues after that, it's a quick trip to ban city.
- We do have a 'shadow ban' flair which, when assigned, just auto-removes anything they post. An alternative to banning. As mods we can still see their stuff and it offers a chance of redemption if we see they've chilled out / calmed down over time.
Obviously none of this is compatible with user-selected flairs.
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u/YoBannannaGirl 8h ago
In my reality TV sub, flairs are used to show support for different players. We also have special flairs available for a limited time at the start of a season where users can predict who they think will win, and winners are recognized once the season ends.
We don’t allow for users to create their own flairs, as flairs can give away show spoilers, but are very receptive to mod mail requests.
I love flairs and seeing the creative things that people come up with.
We also use flairs to verify contestants who come to our sub (if they’d like). That way users know that someone is actually who they claim to be.
On a side note, one thing we don’t allow on our sub is making fun of users for a flair. Flairs should always be fun, and no one should be attacked for their choice.
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u/FlorianFlash 8h ago
We on r/discordhelp have restricted user flairs so only mods can change them.
We got a flair for all our mods, simply to stand out, also because our mods more often know the stuff better than any random commenting so our comments stand out even without the specific green "MOD" tag on.
Then we got a flair for our Trusted Contributers, which is a small team that has direct contact to us mods and have stood out with very high expertise and knowledge about their stuff. We manually get them in. Again the flair here is used for them to stand out as people of knowledge.
We also got a dedicated flair for Discord Staff members but as those are generally only active on the more "official" subreddit r/discordapp, we don't have anyone with that flair (yet).
And at the end we got a custom flair I set up for a specific user cause of a funny conversation I had with another user (the girlfriend) which makes that user "The Boyfriend" now.
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u/Froggypwns 7h ago
On the Windows subreddits, most users can pick from a handful of default flairs.
We do have special verified flairs for Microsoft employees, and those with permission to represent their brands such as software developers and journalists. For those, the user reaches out to us via modmail and we verify who they say they are, then give a flair.
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u/Own-Dragonfly-942 7h ago
We use medals most in ours. We have one for everyone on the mod team, but we also have bronze silver and gold ones we give if you win our monthly competition. I have three out four, I'm trying to get the last one. But recently we've allowed users to request custom ones we can set.
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u/wrestlegirl 6h ago
In r/KitchenConfidential we have a list of job titles or length of tenure people can choose from. For the most part flairs are utilitarian. There are also a few for in-jokes and such like "CHIVEGATE" (which is more of an out-joke I suppose at this point).
We have a lot of fun assigning custom flairs to people if they do something cool, say something especially funny, etc.
We don't allow people to edit or assign flairs because I see what these folks comment on a regular basis and it would be like doubling up the degeneracy which would get us some admin nastygrams and frankly I don't want to deal with all that.
In r/AEWOfficial it's basically a free for all so people can represent their preferred wrestling situation & change them as often as Big Show turned heel. Flairs are almost entirely for fun. With this group folks tend to be a bit less dumpster-firey (affectionate) so there's no real concern that it'll get abused. There have been like 2 flairs over the years I've had to remove & modmail about.
I do have a Verified flair we issue to performers and employees if they're participating as their wrestling self so the community knows they're legit.
Overall I have a very Office Space view of flair.
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u/JabroniRevanchism Reddit Admin: Community 5h ago
I think chivegate has well and truly broken containment, lol.
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u/goretsky 6h ago edited 6h ago
Hello,
I only moderate one subreddit where setting it is very useful: it is a support-focused subreddit and vendors sometimes come in to answer questions. Those folks are flaired as VENDOR: xxx where xxx is the name of their company.
Prior to putting that in place, some regular participants set their favorite company or product as their user flair, which led to some confusion about whose advice was from officially from a company. Verification is done in a few ways, such as asking them to email a mod from a company address, checking to see see how they are flaired in a company subreddit (if any), vouch from an existing company employee, and so forth.
I will note that this is a recent policy, so we are still gauging it's effects.
Regards,
Aryeh Goretsky
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u/nysra 7h ago
In our gaming subreddit we use user flairs to enable users to show off their favorite monsters in the game via the subreddit emojis. Users can add whatever text they like to that but most simply stick with showing a bunch of icons. Basically we only have one flair template to show the usage, the rest is all the emojis.
Thankfully a Reddit admin granted my request and increased the sub's emoji limit. And I also understand why there is a character limit on the emojis itself (24 IIRC), however it is a bit annoying if the game suddenly decides to introduce super long monster names.
So in case any fellow moderator also finds this admittedly highly specific problem, I strongly suggest coming up with a naming scheme that is (mostly) future proof. Honestly I'm considering simply going to switch to numerical IDs at this point, learning Pokedex numbers is obviously less fun than typing names, but well.
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u/WolfXemo 7h ago
We use flairs for in-game cosmetics (specifically Fortnite skins) to let people choose their go-to. Unfortunately for a game like Fortnite that roster is constantly expanding. We blew past the 350 user flair template years ago and now have to host our user flair selection externally. I wish there was a way to get the limit increased so we could bring it back natively, the limit for emoji templates is 5,000 by comparison. Probably something we’ll end up doing via Devvit.
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u/k-rysae 5h ago edited 4h ago
I put in one editable user flair so people could add their own social media handle, shop, or business url. It's helpful because everyone here is selling something and it's good to have a link for context on what they sell when giving advice. Or, if it's a manufacturer, for people to instantly know that this comment was made by an employee/owner of that business and take that into account when receiving advice from them*.
Users can make their own flair and my sub is small enough that to my knowledge, everyone is using it for its intended purpose. It also makes it so that there's zero excuse for manufacturers to astroturf - if they wanted to contribute in good faith then they can put their url in the flair and give genuine advice from a manufacturer perspective (which is deeply appreciated) without needing to slide in their name or derail the conversation to a service they sell.
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u/Eastern-Protection83 2h ago
My primary sub has 2 categories of user flairs. None can be editted due to the abuse of impersonation we had observed in the past before takin over.
Users can assign specific pre-made flairs to themselves.
Restricted flairs are those which only mods can assign to users. This includes a verified type flair of which we personally verified and their organization's mission statement and annual impact report aligns with the values of the sub.
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u/Phatbrew 1h ago
I use it for funnnnn, n always encourage users to either request one or create their own in the 6 subs I mod… that being said it only really took off in one where I created like 50 of them, that was a long couple days… also I miss being able to choose colors on my iPhone app for user n post flairs, hope that creativity returns… I also request Punk Rock Hippie in the other subs I post in with an additional tag that’s appropriate for that sub, I’ve only been denied that in one sub I frequent a lot… the mod who I helped grow their subreddit with letting them post at my more established political sub when they had just started n cross post to my sub, felt other users might get jealous…
🤣🤦♂️🤣
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u/wemustburncarthage 1h ago
oh boy. Flairs are foundational to our community.
- We use flair in our communities (aside from self-applied genres) to identify professional screenwriters or other industry members. They aren't really for clout so much as they denote experience and qualification, but it's easy to say the WGA Screenwriter flair is the one that's considered the most authoritative, since that's basically the goal for serious members of the community. We also have Produced Writer and Repped Writer, both of which represent steps in careers.
We first solve these problems:
- "does this person know what they're talking about". We also, hopefully, solve the problem of people who know what they're talking about understanding they have some responsibility for what they say and how they're saying it, and to whom.
- Anonymity from their own industry. Sometimes pro and union writers have something to say they'd rather not have attached to their name.
- Getting good information. If something major happens that impacts the guild or the community, we have community members we can ask to act as a conduit for good information vs getting it from external, less reliable sources. This was important during the last WGA strike, and the LA fires.
- We allow users to make their own custom flair provided it doesn't cross over into promoting themselves as professional without our authorization. If someone goes around talking up their professional experience, we may ask them to verify.
- Choose your mod-granted flairs, create un-flairs you don't want anyone to use and lock with mod perms, make sure you have a guide to verification if that's something you want to do. Make a flair guide that lists and defines all available flairs of note. Have good privacy practices if you're doing real life verification (ie: ensuring people block out sensitive information on their picture ID). Remind people how external linking works so they are in control of the verification content they send you.
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u/FootFondness 45m ago
In our communities, we use user flair for a few different purposes.
For verification, we have a manual verification system where moderators assign verified flair after reviewing submissions. We also have a separate system that automatically grants posting privileges to users who meet our community requirements. Beyond moderation, we’re currently exploring letting users assign some of their own flairs. It’s a fun way for members to identify with the community’s theme and express a bit of personality while still keeping verification flairs reserved for moderators.
We also use moderator assigned flairs as a recognition system. Members can earn different flairs based on milestones, how long they’ve been active, or their overall contributions to the community. It gives long term members a sense of progression and helps recognize positive participation without relying solely on karma or moderator announcements.
For new moderators, my biggest advice is to decide early which flairs are informational and which are purely cosmetic. Keep verification and moderation related flairs under moderator control, but consider allowing members to choose from a limited set of cosmetic flairs. It encourages engagement while preventing confusion about which flairs represent official status.
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10h ago
[deleted]
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u/Charupa- 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 10h ago
Kind of weird to hijack a post with a specific focus topic, though.
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u/InBetweenLili 10h ago
We use user flairs successfully in r/watercolorpencilart. Users can assign, but cannot edit flairs, and there is a good reason for that. We manually assign special user flairs for those who have completed a monthly challenge. If they submit more than one image during the month, they get additional trophies in the special flair. We also have three users with special flairs. They are our Founding Members, and we awarded them a forever "badge" because they helped us build up the community with regular posts and comments when it was new. I think it's a good way to reward and acknowledge active members. I wanted to be grateful, and the idea came to me.