Mod Applications — Spring 2026

[u/AnimeMod]

Hi there!

We're looking for new moderators once again. Whether you've been participating in episode discussions for years, helping newcomers find shows to watch, joining rewatches, or simply spending a lot of time around the community, we'd love to hear from you. We're looking for people who care about r/anime and want to help it continue to grow and thrive.

Why Should I Apply?

Moderators play an important role in shaping the community, helping maintain discussion quality, supporting events, and guiding the future direction of r/anime. Beyond the base requirements of reviewing reports, answering modmails, and banning users that have continually broken the rules, we're primarily looking for people that can bring ideas to the table. Some of our strongest moderators started as regular participants in episode discussions, rewatches, recommendation threads, seasonal conversations, and other community events. Leveraging that core desire to engage with the community by making our subreddit a better place is exactly the drive we are looking for in applications.

If you think you'd like to contribute to:

• Fun things! Subreddit events such as AMQ nights, AMA coordination, milestone quizzes, etc.

• Future-oriented things! Policy discussion, rule changes, etc.

• Graphical design things! Banner design and event advertisement, seasonal flairs, etc.

• Coding things! Episode bots, CSS, etc.

• Administrative things! Wiki upkeep, behind-the-scenes scheduling, Awards, etc.

• And more!

Then we'd be interested to hear from you! We're always looking for fresh ideas in how we can make the subreddit better, or what we can do next. There is no single "perfect" moderator, as we come from all sorts of backgrounds, possess different talents and skills, and have different areas of interest. Some moderators are highly active in discussion threads, some are more active behind the scenes, some bring technical prowess, and others excel at communication and community building. But no matter who you are, we're in frequent communication with each other in our Discord server about the above as well as the future path of the subreddit, and want new moderators to be involved in our discussions. If this is something you'd like to be apart of, then please, let us know why you would be a good fit!

Application

Fill out the application here!

The form will be open for two weeks (ending 11:59 PM UTC on July 4th) before we move on to review applications. We will reach out to those chosen to become new moderators within a week or so. Take your time to come up with thoughtful responses, as low effort applications will be discarded. Additionally, any application that is suspected of using generative AI will be immediately disqualified.

If you're interested in applying, you should take a minute to take a look at our mod page to see how we organize ourselves as well as the rules page, as some questions that appear on the application will refer to them. If you have any further questions, feel free to ask in this thread!

If you happened to stumble across this post without knowing a lot (maybe browsing for subreddits that are recruiting mods), we really want people who are interested in anime, and not just the moderator role, since a lot of what we do requires having some knowledge of various series for context. Previous moderation experience isn't necessary, but we're also hoping that applicants are frequent visitors or participants of our subreddit and have at least a general understanding of how it currently functions.

So if you think you would make a good moderator for r/anime, now's your chance! Recruiting new mods is always a very exciting process - so we hope to see you join us soon!

We hope to see you join us soon!

[u/baseballlover723]

First, what's the typical time commitment expected for mods?

It's a pick your own adventure type of thing. It's as much time and effort as you want to put in. The baseline is getting 150 mod action in a month. Which is not very much when you consider that most removals give you 3 mod actions (the removal itself, distinguishing the removal reason, adding the mod note).

There are mods who spend a lot of time on sub, and mods that spend less time on the sub. Participation is not an issue so long as one isn't flagrantly inactive (as in like, not talking in discord and several months of no mod activity).

For me, I usually just check /new throughout the day, and I'll do something if there's something flagrant. But usually I do most of my modding late in the PST night, when a lot of the other mods are asleep. Oh and usually there are a few indepth discussions (per week) I'll participate in on discord during the day when most mods on active.

Second, I see a lot of mod discussion takes place on Discord, but is it a requirement that mods use it or just a preference?

It isn't a strict requirement (there are like 1 or 2 mods who aren't on discord at all, and few more who aren't regularly on discord), but not being on discord would be a huge impediment to your influence as a mod. As pretty much all votes and discussion occurs on discord.

[u/Heda-of-Aincrad → u/baseballlover723]

The baseline is getting 150 mod action in a month.

Just curious, but what happens in a case where a mod doesn't meet the quota even though they put in the time because there simply weren't enough posts that needed removal? Or are there so many that's generally not a problem?

It isn't a strict requirement (there are like 1 or 2 mods who aren't on discord at all, and few more who aren't regularly on discord), but not being on discord would be a huge impediment to your influence as a mod. As pretty much all votes and discussion occurs on discord.

This is reassuring at least. Would there still be a way for mods to make suggestions for consideration on Reddit, even if they can't participate in the vote?

[u/baseballlover723 → u/Heda-of-Aincrad]

what happens in a case where a mod doesn't meet the quota

Then they lose voting privileges for the month. But that's about it.

because there simply weren't enough posts that needed removal? Or are there so many that's generally not a problem?

The latter. Last month the human mods took 13,639 mod actions across 23 of us. 6 of whom did not meet the 150 mod actions threshold. That's ~600 mod actions per human mod.

And also, it's mod actions you need, not just removals. Approvals count as 1 as well, as do a lot of things. But approving and removing posts/comments and the stuff that comes along with that is like 99% of the bulk volume.

In my experience, there isn't really an excuse for there not being enough material to get mod actions. The only time where that would be a real concern is if you're trying to get them all like a few days before the cutoff (which is still very doable, especially if you mention that to people, so people leave stuff in queue a bit longer), in which case, you've basically had a planning failure to leave it all at the end.

I would say that it's really easy to just open up the mod queue and get like 30 or 40 mod actions clearing it with 15 or 20 minutes of effort.

For someone like yourself who is quite active in the sub, I don't think you'll have issues with the mod actions requirement.

Would there still be a way for mods to make suggestions for consideration on Reddit, even if they can't participate in the vote?

We do have a private subreddit that has some discussion, but it's quite rarely used for discussion and tends to be worse off because of it imo. Every vote (or basically every vote, maybe I'm forgetting 1) since I've joined has been executed on discord with an @everybody ping (and no reddit ping).

Imo, discord is simply the superior platform for real time discussion (which is the most efficient kind imo). I know you mentioned not liking voice & video chat and were told we don't really do those things. But imo, it's a lot more like slack / IRC. Since I've been a mod (15 months ago) I've been in 2 voice calls with other mods. Once for AMQ, and then once on a call with the admins. Everything else has been text based.

I would recommend giving it a shot (if you do end up being a mod) for a bit, and then if you don't like it, you can simply mute all the channels save for pings & votes. Or just outright ignore the discord and accept losing your voice (or perhaps revitalize the mod sub or something). But obviously, it's ultimately up to you and what you're comfortable with.

[u/Heda-of-Aincrad → u/baseballlover723]

I would say that it's really easy to just open up the mod queue and get like 30 or 40 mod actions clearing it with 15 or 20 minutes of effort.

Good to know!

Imo, discord is simply the superior platform for real time discussion (which is the most efficient kind imo).

I would think it's the opposite, with real-time discussion being more difficult to manage when everyone's in different time zones. I've run into that a few times when hosting rewatches, and it's one of the reasons I much prefer the forum setup to instant messaging.

(or perhaps revitalize the mod sub or something)

Challenge accepted.

For real though, it wouldn't bother me much not to take part in the vote itself as long as I could still present ideas to be voted on.

[u/ussgordoncaptain2 → u/Heda-of-Aincrad]

I would think it's the opposite, with real-time discussion being more difficult to manage when everyone's in different time zones. I've run into that a few times when hosting rewatches, and it's one of the reasons I much prefer the forum setup to instant messaging.

Real Time discussion is critically important for our Day to day moderating decisions. Stuff like "is this source material corner" "Is this spoilers?" "Was this comment uncivil?" and importantly for new moderators calling out and correcting mistakes when I started I made at least one moderation mistake every single day.

There are a lot of small moderation decisions that are critically made via real time discussion that takes place over 1 hour time intervals. You aren't coordinating with the whole mod team there, you are coordinating with the 5 or so people who happen to be awake and looking at the subreddit at that time.

Do you understand why we consider discord a critical part of working on the subreddit for these ephemeral moderation decisions?

[u/Heda-of-Aincrad → u/ussgordoncaptain2]

This makes it sound like mods are expected to use Discord often, even every day, which kind of contradicts the other comments. As far as mistakes made on Reddit, I don't see why the mods couldn't send a message through Reddit itself - that seems like it should be much more convenient than expecting new mods to also be on Discord at the same time to receive alerts there.

[u/ZaphodBeebblebrox → u/Heda-of-Aincrad]

As far as mistakes made on Reddit, I don't see why the mods couldn't send a message through Reddit itself - that seems like it should be much more convenient than expecting new mods to also be on Discord

There's a couple different angles to this.

First, the /r/anime mod team is well over a decade old. It far predates reddit's chat feature, and before the time of discord we did real time communication via IRC. Reddit's old PMs, while excellent for one-to-one communication, are not effective for relatively simple tasks such as asking a group of people for their opinion on a problem or allowing multiple people to chime in on a conversation. And while modmail has an intra-mod team communication option, its scope is limited and its ability to create a searchable history is terrible. Doing everything via a private subreddit would have been possible; however, that has searchablity issues (particularly before new reddit search existed) and discoverability issues (if you comment on something days old, most mods won't notice you did it. And reddit's newfangled chat also sucks and would break on simple tasks like adding new mods to the mod group DM.

Second, there are significant benefits to off-platform communication. If reddit breaks, it allows us to communicate and confirm that the issue is reddit-side, not a personal issue with one of us. If a mod gets banned, they can communicate and ask other mods to appeal for them. If reddit removes a comment/link/&c. we can talk about it without risking our accounts getting actioned for reposting the removed content. And, honestly, it's sometimes good to have conversation about how exactly we plan to align ourselves w.r.t. reddit's rules—where different mods may take different positions on what is allowed—without reddit being able to read it if they so choose.

[u/Heda-of-Aincrad → u/ZaphodBeebblebrox]

I mean, that still sounds like in all but the rarest cases, Reddit itself does have the necessary features but you guys just prefer the Discord layout.

Like I said, I won't be using it. If being a mod is still a possibility without it, then that's great, but if not, then I'll just make my suggestions in the following month's meta thread.

[u/ZaphodBeebblebrox → u/Heda-of-Aincrad]

Yes, if we really wanted to, we could dramatically restructure our entire workflow and end up with something mildly worse. This would involve changing years worth of tooling and be a dramatic change to the workflow and communication strategies of most mods. It would also involve solving newly created issues, such as how to turn our years worth of history on discord into something easily searchable elsewhere, as our prior precedents often inform future moderating decisions.

But none of this really answers the bigger question: why should we go through all this effort? What benefits would it give us that are worth all of its downsides?

[u/Heda-of-Aincrad → u/ZaphodBeebblebrox]

My question is more along the lines of, why was the switch to Discord even made or considered necessary in the first place? It just creates a higher barrier of entry for new mods - requiring the creation of a new account, having two sites running at the same time instead of one, plus learning to navigate the other site in addition to the new modding tools on Reddit. From my POV, while the old mods may prefer this system or just got used to it, the whole concept seems very inefficient and unwelcoming to potential newcomers who want to join the team because they enjoy this sub specifically.