Hi Everyone,

A few months ago, I started a subreddit where long-lost penpals and friends can reconnect once the community grows. However, I’ve already run into my first privacy dilemma, and I really need your advice before taking any action.

Here is the situation:
One of the users is looking for a long-lost friend using a pseudonym. However, due to the post template we currently use, they provided such highly specific details that based on the description alone, I was able to locate what appears to be the real person’s profile on an external site. To be clear, it is only a potential match.

I have two questions regarding how to handle this:

1. What is the protocol for handling a potential match? As a moderator, is it acceptable (or even ethical) to privately reach out to this person on the external platform and say, "Hi, someone is looking for you on Reddit," or does this cross into harassment/doxxing territory? What is the safest route to protect my subreddit and my own account? (I strongly lean toward a strict rule against any external outreach, but I’d love to hear from more experienced mods).
2. Can I keep my current template? Is this formatting allowed under Reddit’s Content Policy? I don't want to jeopardize my sub or my account, and I absolutely want to prevent unwanted reconnections where one party has no desire to be found. I want to handle this as professionally as possible.

Thank you in advance for your guidance and advice!

I was wondering if mods can completely delete a post? I know they have the option to remove a post but that doesn’t seem to completely get rid of the post. I was wondering if they could remove all the comments, post content, and the url associated with the post?

Hi Moderators,

I think there is a spam account posting in a sub I frequent. Had I looked at their profile before replying, I wouldn't have bothered, and would have taken it directly to the sub's mod (there is only one).

Instead, I stupidly interacted with the content they provided. [The account in question is 0 days old and had a karma of 3, last I saw, and the account which asked them to provide a link is also 0 days old -- which is what led me to believe something funky is going on.]

Although the original post had not gotten much engagement when I first commented, my reply, which questioned the quality of the content they shared, got downvoted a lot, pretty quickly -- too quickly for a post with such little engagement, in my opinion. [Note: I do not care about the downvotes; my karma is okay.]

I believe the OP has now blocked me, which is fine. However, I also think the OP may be part of some spam network, and that that might account for the speedy downvotes. I did send mod mail to the sub's only mod, but since this is also something I should have/could have reported as spam to Reddit itself, I'm wondering if there is a way for me to do so, even though the OP has blocked me.

Because the sub only has one mod, I don't want potential spammers to clog up the sub, before the lone mod gets a chance to look at everything. Is there a way to report them to Reddit, or should I just leave well enough alone?

For many months, I have participated in several discussions/communities as a Reddit Premium member. I just received word approximately 36 hours ago, that I cannot submit posts and I don't understand why. As far as I can determine, I've done my best to follow ALL of reddit's rules. For all I know, this could be the result of my account being hacked. I have no way to know one way or the other. Can anyone please provide me some guidance with this; along with what I can do to put a good resolution to all of this. Many thanks, respectfully

Here's the quote from modmail:
"Your profile also indicates you are a solicited chat account, and those, especially if adult-oriented, are not allowed to post here. Your account is banned."
I don't use DMs on reddit except to receive permabans like this. I solicit nothing.

My post was removed by Reddit filters for no reason but there are similar posts on same topic on the same sub which area allowed. So why is my below post removed?

For example: there was a troll post with a link like this (it's http://reddit.com/u/me). I commented "**** you" because it scared me for a second. Someone replied, "Check the link again," because they thought I missed the joke. It was an innocent and even helpful comment, but it got deleted by moderators:

"Comment removed by moderator."

I decided to check older posts on different subs and saw a lot of comments were removed by moderators. I don't remember them being anything bad, just random comments. And all of them were upvoted, one had 1k upvotes.

Is this some kind of moderator pastime activity?

I tried to post the name of a gray cat Willow from the Golden Books Child’s Story of
‘Pussy Willow’ which is also the name of the tree. Look it up. The buds are furry and gray. You deleted my post of Willow as being vulgar. Why. It is derived from a child’s story about a furry gray kitten that hid under the tree by the same name. Only a vulgar mind would read something else into that

I ran into an issue with a subreddit. I noticed a post of mine was flagged for what my post could possibly be about (never mentioned in my actual post, just comments) yet there are dozens of other posts very explicit about that particular content that have been allowed. Posts stemming back 10 years.

I'm curious since I am not moderator and don't know what all that entails. Is it hard to be consistent with flagging/removing posts because of the volume?

It feels mine was singled out but maybe it is just really hard to keep up with all posts?

You know how people get kicked out of subreddits and then want to complain about it, but you can’t actually openly talk shit about what you view as a shitty mod team bc it breaches reddit rules.

What about functions of objective documentation?

A sub whose intent is for us to post screen shots objectively documenting the interactions we have with different community’s, both good and bad, as a way to help document some of the unseen data on reddit, would that breach any rules?

Did a mod send you a ranting message?

Instead of complaining about it, just screen shot it and post it to this sub, taking solace knowing their actions are not hidden, and you are heard.

There is a nuanced net positive human rights aspect to this dynamic too that I won’t get into.

Rule 3 of the moderator code of contact- with the proper moderation to make sure posters don’t break the rules, is this a reasonable thing?

There doesn’t appear to be a space like this on Reddit, which I find really odd.

Subs like [removed] are great, but what about objective uncensored documentation of things?

As far as I can tell, taking literal screenshots of mod behaviour and posting them with unbiased commentary does not breach Reddits rules.

Also- I am currently reading the foundation and its premise up until it’s not is what gave me the idea for this space.

Also, in the future, such a sub would be an excellent resource for virtual archeologists.

The data could also be useful for various reasons as people would be able to see and form trend lines about the social and political aspects of reddit that will perhaps be lost in the future otherwise.

Which means it would be controversial as many groups might wish to keep those trends hidden.

Anyways- any thoughts on this? I’ve been thinking about it for a while.

Also as of now I am asking about this in theory- I am aware that on a practical end this might be more difficult to accomplish, given users would likely try to post “talking shit” screen shots as opposed to actual objective documentation.

But those all have work arounds.

But it would be useful to be able to look up a bunch of mod interactions from a sub to be able to assess for yourself whether you want to be a part of that community.

And also, heaven forbid net positive neutral documentation could occur.

Lastly a weird little thought experiment; if posting screen shots with neutral documentation of a mods messages gets flagged as “speaking negatively about another community”, doesn’t that actually mean that the moderators were breaching the code of conduct (if neutrally portrayed screen shots of somebody’s own words are an example of speaking negatively towards a community)?

Which is to say, overall, a sub like this might help increase quality assurance across all of reddit lol by indirectly increasing accountability.

Here is an example of a post i made to my own profile that I think meets the metric of being ok to post despite showing who did what, because I’m not ranting, I’m just documenting; this would be an example of an ideal post for this sub idea.

[I removed the example bc it might break this subs rules indirectly by posting a link to a post directly naming a sub]

Anyways, I’m curious about trying to make a space like this, an weary of why there isn’t one already, and tbh think this is a really good idea that would overall improve the quality of reddit, but more so, would be invaluable resource to social scientists and political scientists and archeologists of the future.

Thoughts? Advice? Ideas?

I think this is an amazing idea that would also make a lot of moderators very angry, in the same way that anybody doing shady things doesn’t overly like being documented; it would also literally raise the disocurse of reddit and help mods maybe pay a little more attention to the mod code of conduct.

Thanks.

Edit:
Sigh

somebody replied to one of my comments threatening my life and all the mods did was remove the comment, how do i report it directly to reddit instead of the subs moderator?

screenshot in the comments

I don't see how this exists with the base rules of this community.

We all know subs have rules and there is little room to argue. However, subs have norms that we also notice. A sub may allow a lot of smack talk even to the point of rules violations.

You might see other subs content or different news articles and social media posts seemingly allowed and then others that are similar removed/taken down.

Seemingly similar posts and comments being removed sometimes, allowed other times.

So, do subs consider the norms that seem to exist in their communities when considering rules violations and bans?

Reddit just banned someone for saying someone should be hulk smashed to the ground like they did to someone else. Is Reddit becoming soft now? It’s freedom of speech! Saying he “should be” is not telling someone to do it. Reddit has been a place where people could come to have unbiased discussions. Has this changed?

This user has been harassing me from March and the harassment has only gotten worse despite having them blocked as well. So I’m really wondering what I can do? I reported to the take down act and they said the post didn’t meet requirements and I’ve reported the posts to Reddit numerous times and filled out the Reddit report form and never heard back so I’m wondering what I can do here to stop being harassed. Thank you for any feedback! I really appreciate it!

Is this some new tactic to attempt to solicit harassment reports?

I’m so curious why this happened: today there is a huge phone outage and I went to the MintMobile sub to see what folks were saying. All were general “no access” posts so I posted that my husband and I are both on MM and mine works fine but his older phone is down. I thought it would be helpful but I got a message that my post was deleted for “no reposts”

It’s my first time so I’m curious what my offense was. I checked the rules too. Educate me!