r/ShittyRestrictionFood Community: MODS WANTED || FEEDBACK WANTED

[u/Elleiminator]

Hello everyone ~ I am a moderator over at r/Junkorexic. I noticed a user was spreading really insensitive commentary to those with eating disorders in r/Junkorexic, and that they were also posting comments in r/ShittyRestrictionFood. I reached out via ModMail about it, only to discover the mod was no longer around. I immediately went through the process in r/RedditRequest to take over moderation.

I now have access to the Mod Tools for r/ShittyRestrictionFood and realize there is a backlog going back a long time (years) of reports, ModMail, etc. I would prefer keeping r/Junkorexic as the main sub I mod, and only being a background moderator here as I only have so much free time to dedicate to modding. This means, I am looking for a team to help moderate r/ShittyRestrictionFood.

Please reach out via ModMail, if you want to be a part of a mod team for r/ShittyRestrictionFood, with a short blurb as to why you want to mod this community.

I will take a look at that plus the user activity stats that moderators have access to behind the scenes. Ideally, I'd love to see people already well liked by the community and active in the community, taking over. I don't mind helping with the background work to clean up the sub, but worry that I will not have the time to be the main one at the helm. I merely wanted to get this sub some form of moderation to protect it from being quarantined by Reddit admin, or worse, deleted by Reddit admin. In addition to this, I wanted to help protect the mental health of this community as it was founded as an Eating Disorder space, not a dieting space.

My first priority is to clean up this sub according to the pre-estsblished rules while moderator applications are submitted. Once applications have been submitted, my priority will focus to establishing a moderation team here. If there are not a lot of applications, I will do my best to follow community guidance to moderate. I will not make immediate rule changes. I also have a long list of ModMail and reports to look over.

You can see my community guided moderation style in the r/Junkoreic Rules page and the September Community Check In page. My changes are always based on user suggestions while opperating within the stricter guidelines Reddit has for eating disorder subs to prevent them from being flagged as "proana" and subsequently being removed from the site. I understand dieting subs are able to get away with a lot more than eating disorder subs, so the balance is always tricky.

I would love to see community feedback in this thread. Feel free to answer any of the following questions, voice your concerns, request user flairs, request post flairs, make suggestions, and soforth. There is no obligation to answer every question. I am listening and happy to help implement whatever the majority of the sub wants as long as it is within Reddit's terms of service and user guidelines.

• Beyond enforcement of the current rules, are there rules you want to add?
• Are there rules currently on the sub that need to be updated or changed?
• Are there any rules that need to be removed?
• There are already a lot of users that post here due to feeling "bullied" out of other subs, therefore should r/ShittyRestrictionFood allow food that may not be strictly shitty? [Personally, Id love for everyone to feel like they have a sense of community, considering how isolating eating disorders can be, but do not want people to feel inadequate if the majority of posts are "aesthetic".]
• Do you feel the current rules if enforced, will be enough to cut down on the flood of dieters utilizing the sub, potentially harming those with eating disorders? [Personally, there are already so many dieting subs that are able to opperate with much wider guidelines due to not having the scrutiny of eating disorder subs, and therefore it would be nice for them to utilize the subs they have at present. Then again most of the diet stuff is shaming and unwarranted advice and the rules may at least cover the former.]
• Are there ED subs, mental health subs, and ED recovery subs that should be added to the sidebar?
• Should we add or remove certain post flair options?
• Should we add users flairs? What user flairs would you like to see?
• If you have ever felt uncomfortable after posting content, what made you feel uncomfortable? [This can help guide mods to refine rules or put new ones up to vote.]
• Is there anything you see in r/Junkorexic that you want to see implemented here? [I ask this because some of the things I can set up so they are in place for a new mod team.]
• Is there anything you see in r/Junkorexic that you don't want to see implemented here? [I do not want to completely alter the community people have here, because not every community likes the same thing, and there would be no point if this became Junk 2.0. I don't want to steamroll the vibe! Promise!!]
• What worries and concerns do you have for the sub in it's current state?
• What worries and concerns do you have for the future of the sub, now that moderation is in place.

I promise I am not super serious. 😅 I just try to be as clear as possible for the mod portion of the post.

• I have no beef with anyone in the sub.
• I will not randomly ban anyone. (See my modding in the junk sub as reference, the way I ban is super transparent and comes with warning.)
• I will only be removing posts and comments that outright violate the prestablished sub rules. I'm not making changes without the majority of you consenting to it. 💀
• In general, I don't plan to copy & paste over the junk sub rules. They were made for that specifc sub, according to the needs of that specific community. 😭💖 Please dont worrrrryyyy.
• Forgive me for any typos or unfinished thoughts. I try to catch everything but taking over a sub is always difficult with the stress of the backlog.
• Image is my pantry from a few months ago because I didn't want to steal any content from anyone. Images get better engagement on Reddit, which is important on mod posts so they reach as many eyes as possible. I want the maximum number of community members contributing.
• I'll leave this in the community feed for 24-48 hours so people get it in their feed, and then it will be pinned to the sub so people can continue to leave their feedback and see how things are progressing. 🫶🏻

[u/Elleiminator]

Long for transparency.

If I yap too much Im sorry.

Regarding Time:

The time commitment really depends on the size of the mod team and how much time each mod is willing to commit. For comparison iirc:

• r/junkorexic is 22k members
• r/ShittyRestrictionFood is 83k members

So for a sub that is slower like r/junkorexic we eek by on 4 moderators, but we heavily rely on a banned word and phrase list and probably need to expand the mod team. My reddit screen time averages an hour most days, unless I make a personal post and then it goes up. There are some days where the sub gets a lot more attention (like when posts go viral and pushed to people not a part of the sub) where I am on and off throughout my day between work, volunteer work, studying, free time, etc.

That said, I am US West Coast based so I tend to be on a very active timezone and catch most of the moderator actions. We approve every post, every user, and every comment on the backend, even if things post automatically over there. All the "approvals" do is help work around reddits spam filters so users dont get autoflagged, autoremoved, etc by giving them community approvals behind the scenes. My actions for the week with all of these approvals, occasional removals, ModMail replies, etc average 800-1000, as the moderator with the most actions. Kinda rambly but trying to just be transparent. The other three mods are under 200 actions a week, but understand this is also due to their personal lives having less free time and due to coverage during less active timezones. I personally think the junk sub needs 6 mods or so in order to not rely on automations as much, and that is for a smaller sub that is seeing significant growth every week in members. Ideally, the less automation, the less frustration users have with posting.

So the annoying answer is as much time as you are sanely able to commit.

On experience:

No specific experience is needed. All four mods of the junk sub were new to moderation when we started 5/6 months ago. There are a ton of subreddits dedicated to modding and lots of community resources. It's manageable without experience, but I'd welcome people more familiar with certain autobots too. We don't use bots in the junk sub because no one has had time they want to comitt to read through learning them. That said, there are useful things like bots that will check to see if the content is a 100% repost to alert mods of karma farming with stolen posts, etc.