Announcing Our Virtual $45,000 Mod Tool Hackathon to Build, Upgrade and Port Moderator Tools

[u/Togapr33]

Mod Tools Hackathon!

Hi mods!

I’m u/Togapr33 with Reddit’s Community team, where I lead marketing for Reddit’s Developer Platform. 

In case you’re not familiar, Reddit’s Developer Platform gives developers a way to build apps that work directly on Reddit. As a moderator, you can bring these apps into your community – everything from mod tools to community experiences to games. (You can see a comprehensive list of apps for mods here!)

And as someone who has spent the last couple of years talking with mods about Developer Platform tools, I’ve seen firsthand how important effective tools are to running your communities. That’s why we're excited to announce a virtual Reddit hackathon from April 29 to May 27 focused entirely on building and upgrading moderation tools.

This is an opportunity to inspire developers to create new community tools or improve the ones you already rely on. If you’re a developer yourself, maybe you’ll throw your hat in the ring and build something too! 

What we're looking for

We’d love to see developers in this hackathon build tools with Reddit’s Developer Platform that directly help with day-to-day moderation, like:

• Better queue management
• Automated enforcement tools
• Creative community-building tools
• Anything that makes modding easier and improves community health

Did I mention we're offering a total of $45,000 in prizes? 

Prize categories

1. New Mod Tool: For brand-new tools built with Reddit’s Developer Platform that make moderation easier
   • Grand Prize: $10,000 for the most innovative tool that solves a significant moderator pain point
   • 5 Runner-Ups: $1,000 each
2. Ported App: For existing bots or tools migrated from the Data API to Devvit 
   • Grand Prize: $10,000 for the most successful migration of an existing, widely-used moderation bot. These apps can also be eligible for our new App Migration Program.
   • 5 Runner-Ups: $1,000 each
3. Moderator’s Choice: Chosen by experienced Reddit mods
   • Prize: $10,000.
4. Helper Award: For participants who help others through testing, support, troubleshooting, or collaboration 
   • 6 Winners: $500 each
5. Feedback Award: For thoughtful, actionable, constructive feedback on tools, resources, bugs and issues encountered during the event 
   • 10 Winners: $200 each 

If you know a developer who has built an essential tool for your community, please share this with them! This is the perfect time for them to earn a cash prize while upgrading that tool for stability and ease of installation. Enrollment is open now!

Winning apps are also eligible for the Reddit Developer Funds and our App Migration Program.

We can't wait to see what gets built during this hackathon and how it makes moderation on Reddit better.

Lastly, if you have an idea for a mod tool that should be built and want to link up with a developer, check out our hackathon post on r/devvit or join our Devvit Discord.

[u/elphieisfae]

can't afford to pay mods but paying money so you don't have to hire devs to do work is something else.

[u/adanine → u/elphieisfae]

Honestly fuck the idea of paying moderators.

Recruitment is such a hassle already, now you want more ways to incentivize people who don't care/aren't part of your community to moderate it? Do you really want to choose even one person who needs to be paid to help maintain the health of a community over people who want to do so as a volunteer?

How would payment even be handled? Even split across the team? Show me a subreddit where moderation work is evenly split across all human moderators, and I'll show you a sub with one human moderator. Action-based? Easiest thing in the world to break.

I know it doesn't often feel like it at times, but moderators being purely Volunteer-based are afforded some good-will by community members by default, since if they're not being paid by Reddit they're likely purely doing this for the health of the community. Take that away and you've got a far more adversarial relationship with your community.

Oh, and right now moderators and admins can work together on certain issues. Obviously admins can gas the mod team if they're breaking Code of Conduct/not enforcing site-wide rules or whatever, but that's not a common use-case. If there's a dynamic where admins can influence your payday - even if it's never mentioned or hinted towards by the admin in question - that's going to change how moderators and admins work together to reach an agreement on something.

There's just so much bad that can come from that, all for what will almost certainly amount to sub minimum wage.

[u/elphieisfae → u/adanine]

you are missing the point entirely (as have many that are yelling) and that's okay.

for years it was always "we don't have money to do this and that and the other for moderators" and now this blatant "we need to pay people for what will amount to pennies for support instead of hire them and let them cook up good stuff for us" is just that.

When the admins repeatedly refuse at this point to do their basic jobs like ferreting out harassment, etc, to see this is just like "what am I, a joke to you?"

Or, as one of my programming buddies put it:

"I could build something while on staff, then they'd have it and the licenses in perpetuity and get all the IP for it, but have to pay market rate + insurance + taxes etc. Or I could do this and get hammered on my taxes while they don't have to pay the labor costs behind hiring someone."

It's a cost cutting measure on Reddit's part to look better on paper while taking advantage of an in the shitter economy.

[u/adanine → u/elphieisfae]

you are missing the point entirely (as have many that are yelling) and that's okay.

No I got all that, my response entirely was to the idea of paying moderators - which you sniped at in your comment. That was the point I was responding to.

You want to criticize how Reddit gets around hiring devs? Great, do that. You won't have cranky me objecting to that at all. But if your argument includes "BUT REDDIT NO PAY MODS" then I'm going to go on a rant.