For many years, I’ve moderated one of the most popular online communities on Reddit. Such communities are called subreddits, and the very popular subreddit I moderated for many years (but not the only one) is r/volunteer. The description, which has a character limit, reads:
Share volunteering experiences or attempts to volunteer (unpaid work for a CAUSE, like helping foster kids). Share vol opportunities for others or a paid or unpaid role for a manager of vols, or a resource for such. Ask questions or for advice on recruiting, engaging & supporting vols, or about policies or safety for vols & those they serve. Discuss volunteerism ethics.
The description also notes: This sub is a highly moderated.
I’ve been a moderator and facilitator of online communities and discussion boards in association with events since the 1990s. My first gig was on the soc.org.nonprofit newsgroup (remember USENET?). I’ve done these moderating and facilitating gigs mostly as a volunteer (unpaid). Why? Because I enjoy networking with others in my professional areas, from volunteer engagement to humanitarian response to nonprofit management to communications for development and on and on. I’ve been a part of even more online communities as just a member – asking questions, answering questions, debating, and lurking. Online communities have always been what I loved most about the Internet, far more than the World Wide Web or any streaming service. Participation in online communities has landed me short-term paid gigs and full-time paid jobs, including with the United Nations. Participation has also given me some wonderful learning experiences and terrific professional colleagues.
I’m VERY proud of my many years moderating and facilitating the volunteer subreddit in particular. It has taken several hours a week to moderate and facilitate the group. It’s a group that has always been very popular on Reddit, but once I took over, membership exploded, and it got even more popular. It also had more on-topic posts, more on-topic comments and more viewers. What did I do so that the subreddit got more members, more viewers and much higher quality content?
One thing I noticed early on was a complete lack of quality control regarding posts on the subreddit. Misinformation about volunteering was everywhere, as were posts from very dodgy groups wanting foreign volunteers to pay a great deal of money to “help” in some developing country somewhere, and “nonprofits” that would give a person a letter, in exchange for a “donation,” saying they had completed online community service for the court. There were people recruiting volunteers but offering no information on who was behind the initiative, something I feel strongly puts people at risk for harm. There were also people asking for volunteers to engage in initiatives that many groups were begging people NOT to do, like create holiday cards for people in assisted living or children in hospitals. There were teens with no experience wanting to create mental health crisis lines – which could, of course, put more teens at risk and lead to teens being harmed. And on and on.
There were also frequently asked questions that were easily answered: how do I volunteer? How do I volunteer to explore a career? How do I volunteer to help animals? How do I volunteer to make me look good for a scholarship? Etc.
My goal in becoming the moderator of the group – and I was the only one, no one else wanted the role – was to get rules in place, get quality content posted regularly that addressed the FAQs, and counter all the misinformation.
Since I began moderating the group so many years ago, it has taken hours of my time every week:
- reading every post,
- writing and rewriting and rewriting the group rules as the group and the content evolves,
- always giving a reason for deleting a post or comment,
- welcoming someone who reposts because they’ve rewritten their message so that it fits the rules, complimenting good content,
- creating meaningful content tags to that content is easier to find,
- creating automated rules (such as requiring that the word “volunteer” appear somewhere in every post and comment),
- addressing FAQs with detailed responses (and that sometimes means pointing people to previous responses),
- regularly posting what I hope will be thread starters,
- promptly banning trolls, people who won’t follow the rules, those trying to sell community service, etc.
- trying to answer the many questions and comments that come in via modmail.
- posting links to questions and comments to other social media, trying to get more people to respond with quality content or to raise awareness about an issue that I thought more volunteer management experts and consultants and volunteerism-focused organizations should know about.
I’ve always tried to be strategic and thoughtful in the writing and re-writing of every group rule, of every group structure, even of using the automod function. I created standard content tags for the group that I shadow tested for weeks, going back through years of posts and thinking, “which tag would this have if tags had been a thing then?” I never made a group change impulsively and I can justify every post deletion and every ban.
I think it speaks volumes that there are so many other subreddits that are focused on volunteering but have few or no rules regarding transparency, safety programs when vulnerable populations are involved, no prohibitions anywhere near what r/volunteer had – and those subreddits have never taken off. And I even linked to them on r/volunteer, so that people knew, if they didn’t like the rules, there were plenty of other places on reddit that had the “anything goes” vibe they claimed to be looking for.
I loved the experience of moderating r/volunteer in that I’ve gotten to help people volunteer and I think I’ve finally gotten through in a big way regarding why trying to be a volunteer can be so hard (because most organizations have zero volunteer management training, don’t have a person dedicated to volunteer engagement, and can’t get funding for such because foundations and corporations refuse to fund “overhead”). I’ve also really enjoyed seeing for myself just how much people under 40 really, REALLY want to give back to their communities and do good in the world. It’s why, when networking with volunteer management professionals elsewhere, I’ve been able to say, with confidence, that claims that “no one wants to volunteer” are not true. So much of my interactions on the subreddit have affirmed everything I’ve said for years about how to recruit volunteers and engage them effectively. The vindication has been wonderful.
But moderating has also meant a LOT of abuse and personal, nasty insults. I have kept those private from the members of the subreddit, because I see no reason to amplify that hate. I’m not talking about people who are criticizing my points of view; I’m talking about people who say vile things, things meant to terrify. I’ve also regularly been threatened with the filing of lawsuits (such has never been filed, BTW). Two different angry people called me at home – a consequence of me being transparent on Reddit about who I am, rather than hiding behind a cyber pseudonym.
But just as bad, and maybe worse, are the people who parachute in to the group for a few days and demand my credentials and demand that I prove I really am an expert regarding volunteer engagement; these are requests from people who won’t share their own credentials and are unaware that there were any global standards regarding volunteer management, unaware that there are global gatherings on the subject, etc.
Those constant demands for me to prove I am an expert, and the repeated “Why aren’t you doing it THIS way?” messages from people who rarely provide meaningful content has finally gotten too much.
And so, my time moderating the volunteer subreddit is at an end. Not ending how I wanted it to – I kept trying to recruit new moderators, so I could just be a regular member, but no one ever even tried to meet the criteria. But I’m done – as moderator and member.
I’ll stay as moderator, for now, on other subreddits – you can see all of them here. And active on even more. And I’ve reproduced Reddit4Good on my own Reddit page, and will keep that updated – no where else. If you ever see that list anywhere else, remember: I created it.
And one last note: I’ll always be frustrated with all of the volunteer management researchers and consultants out there, all of the leaders of volunteer management associations, all the volunteerism-promoting organizations like Points of Light and the Corporation for National Service, who would not even read the volunteer subreddit, let alone participate in it. For those consultants, researchers, nonprofits and associations to ignore what is probably the largest community focused on volunteerism is shameful.
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