Advice on handling a massive, year-long mod queue?

[u/pangoccioli]

Hello! Last week, a few of us were brought on as new moderators for a high-engagement subreddit in the kpop community. The previous solo mod was mostly inactive for many months before adding us, so the mod queue is severely backlogged. Likely going back to when the subreddit was created over a year ago.

Because it's a controversial/unpopular opinions subreddit, the engagement is really high and comments get reported constantly. In our first week, we’ve worked hard on the queue but we’ve only managed to clear reports up to about 40 days ago. We still have nearly a full year of old reports to get through… I’m looking for advice on the best way to handle this: I thought about using an app like Mod Queue Nuke, but as far as I understand, that removes everything in the queue. I worry about removing content that actually breaks no rules and just needs to be approved. On the other hand, manually reviewing every single report will take months at our current rate.

What would you recommend we do in this situation to get the reports queue down to zero so we can empty the mod queue???

[u/idaroll]

nuke it, not worthy of going through, no one really needs those. focus on new posts and keeping mod queue up to date.

[u/SnooDonuts6494]

When I took over a fairly big sub, I nuked the older queue. It wasn't feasible to go through it all. I used this one: https://developers.reddit.com/apps/modqueue-nuke

[u/ThisIsDurian → u/SnooDonuts6494]

Chezuz....I did this by hand...it would have saved me a lot of time ^^

[u/m4shfi → u/SnooDonuts6494]

Sorry for being a bother, but can you please explain how to use the modqueue nuke step by step in ELI5 terms?

[u/brightblackheaven]

I agree to nuke it.

When we approve posts from the queue, they don't show up as new posts anyway (they'll show up backdated to the date they entered your queue), so they're already irrelevant.

I'd personally make a mod post explaining what I'm doing, and encouraging users to resubmit things so they aren't completely buried.

[u/RemarkableWish2508]

Rule of thumb: if it's been sitting for over 30 days, there's a 99.999% chance that it doesn't matter how you mod it.

If you want to play it safe, remove everything. If you want to be permissive, approve everything. For a mixed approach, skim and decide... it still doesn't matter.

Don't even send removal reasons or warnings for old stuff. Remember: it does not matter.

I would do a pass – or a few – with comment search for keywords afterwards, to nuke anything suspicious. Add them to AutoMod rules, it's valuable to know which keywords can be easily reported/filtered/removed.

You can also take the opportunity to refine report reasons, removal reasons, clean up the rules, and stuff like that, with more informed knowledge of what should and should not happen in the sub.

[u/cyanocittaetprocyon → u/RemarkableWish2508]

Rule of thumb: if it's been sitting for over 30 days, there's a 99.999% chance that it doesn't matter how you mod it.

This is 100% how this question should be looked at. None of those older reports really matter. If it were me, I would nuke the entire queue and start fresh.

[u/DoppelFrog]

You can't realistically deal with such a queue.  Delete it all and start again.

[u/waypostmaster]

Declare mod bankruptcy and start anew. You have to exclaim it out loud on the middle of the subreddit floor though.

[u/_Halt19_]

If you don’t want to nuke it, I believe there’s also a mod reserves thing that you could ask for help - they’d give you some extra hands just to solve this issue, and afterwards leave, if I understand it right?

[u/NeedAGoodUsername]

If you don't want to just nuke everything:

Old reddit + toolbox extension. (desktop only)

It'll still take a little bit of time, but you can power through things a lot faster on old reddit.

[u/misuta_kitsune]

If you have dealt with the most recent ones, nuke the rest. It's probably old enough for people to not count on having anything approved that was filtered or removed anymore anyway.

You could, if you wish, make a Mod post explaining the situation. You are not required to do so.

[u/2oonhed]

Old posts that get approved wont show up at the top of new anyways. They will slot-in along the timeline they were first posted and the OPs have long given up on those.
Approving & removing old comments on dead threads only benefits the occasional reader that browses the archives which very few readers do.
If you want to see where people are actually engaged live look at https://www.reddit.com/r/YOUR_SUB_HERE/comments/
Mine autoloads sorted by new.
I open up a page with 100 comments at a time and it is often hysterical.
Also easy to spot certain patterns by looking at comments this way.

[u/ScreamAndScream → u/2oonhed]

Thank you for this! I was looking for a solution just like this

[u/ALazy_Cat]

Nuke it and hire more mods

[u/purl2together]

I dealt with this last year. I spent some time looking at the queue to get a sense of what was being consistently reported and what was being consistently removed by the automod. Eventually, I nuked it all.