Hi all and happy new year, Curb here with an community announcement and a request.

Preamble:

I was added as a moderator of this sub a little over 5 years. I volunteered to help as the original mod team became busier in their day-to-day lives. It was my expectation at that time that I would clean as I regularly browsed. That has not been the reality.

When I joined, there were 4 mods (+1 who just moderated the community chat). I've since added 7 more mods and fleshed out the automoderator to take care of spam and the most low-effort posts. Regardless of that fact, I still do the bulk of the moderation here by a pretty significant margin.

Team activity for 2024.

To give you some idea, here is an abridged list of moderator actions for the last 365 days. Additional context: u/ImadeJesusLaugh has been on the team for exactly a month today. I greatly appreciate their help.

Fun fact: Reddit admins reached out to me personally during Coachella 2023 because I was the only active mod. I moderated a total of 32 hours during the first weekend. 😅 That's when I brought on u/-Wess- and u/BroodPlatypus.

The point of sharing this isn't to condemn the inactivity of the other mods. Everyone's got stuff going on. (Some very cool and exciting!) Priorities and interests change. That's exactly why I'm writing this message. My priorities are changing too.

I don't plan to get into the specifics of my personal life here, but suffice it to say I don't have the time to dedicate to this community that I did before. I need to step away—indefinitely, if not entirely. It's time for some new members of the community to step up.

Our last public call for moderators was almost 5 years ago, so we're going to do that again!

This is how it will work...

Nominations

Use the comments in this thread (and only this thread) to nominate members of the community you think are fit to join the moderation team. Before you comment, please search (Ctrl/⌘ + F) for the username of your nominee to see if they have already been nominated. Use upvotes and/or commented seconds) to support your candidate.

Be descriptive in your nominations and seconds. We want to know why this member of the community is worthy of the role. Are they active everyday? Have they been particularly helpful in answering questions for new members? Do they surface interesting links and content? Do they stand up for folks being attacked in the replies? We want to know!

You are free to nominate yourself. However, you will need to back up your nomination just as everyone else does, with concrete examples of your exemplary participation in the community. Evidence of existing moderation experience is a plus. Otherwise, seconds are absolutely required to be considered for selection.

If you feel there is any reason why a nominee shouldn’t be considered, you’re free to share this, but keep your response respectful and rational. Remember, “we have good discussion.”

If a candidate would prefer to withdraw their name from consideration, they can either reply to their nomination or PM me to do so discreetly.

We’ll leave nominations open for at least a week.

Selection

After nominations close, the existing mod team will review the nominees. What happens next will depend on the number of quality candidates. The most likely event is that we will simply choose the 2-3 most outstanding nominees and verify their acceptance of the role. At which point, we will announce the new members of the team to the sub in a separate post.

Remember to follow all of the sub’s rules as you converse in the comments below. I look forward to everyone’s nominations as well as their kind and considered participation in this process. Thank you all!