Hey everyone. I cleared this post with the mods beforehand.

I know this sub is usually dedicated to surviving the queue, troubleshooting and asking about bans 😂, but I wanted to step back and ask a bigger question about the reality of the work you/we do (I'm a mod too).

I’m working on creating a podcast. We aren't covering standard internet memes; we are digging into digital governance, the psychological toll of managing anonymous mobs, and the friction required to build a thriving ecosystem. We're treating subreddit moderation not as a quirky hobby but as a massive sociological experiment.

I’m looking for the messy realities of community building on Reddit. I'd love to hear your stories in the comments:

• Tell me about a time a vague rule in the sidebar caused a complete meltdown and how you had to rework things to fix it.
• Walk me through a time the community mutinied against a major change you made.
• How do you handle the friction of transitioning fleeting, real-time trends into permanent community lore?

I want to read your stories below. And if anyone has a story that is too complex for a Reddit comment and wants to vent on the record, my DMs are open for potential podcast guests.

Thanks for keeping the internet from burning to the ground.

If you have questions about the podcast, you can ask those too...

My community here on Reddit has been inactive for 2 years, how can I prevent future and or potential problems from happening?

I have come across some really egregious spam in unmoderayed subreddits.

I will avoid giving examples, but it is gambling spam showing up in completely unrelated subreddits.

For example, there will be online gambling spam questions in AI subreddits, or science podcast subreddits.

The mods for these subs are MIA.

The spam is so egregious. There will be a post with 100 comments and 100+ upvotes in a subreddit where the average topic gets 2 upvotes and 3 comments.

There is a pattern also where the top comment is clearly upvote manipulated to have many dozens of upvotes.

The comments themselves are clearly generic comments with no substance.

Reporting the spam falls on deaf ears because there are no active mods.

The accounts that posted the spam, and the accounts that answered the spam questions with their spam links are often suspended by Reddit already, but the posts and their spam links remain up.

These posts rank in Google and take traffic away from middle-sized, legitimate, on-topic subreddits because they cannot compete with the volume of fake upvotes and manipulations that have taken place.

I wont post links to any of this because it would break the rules of this subreddit.

I would like some advice on how to get these super-spam posts removed once and for all however.

Any tips?

Thanks!

EDIT: If I Created A Special Subreddit

I want a subreddit where we could report this crap as a group.

Maybe if a dozen people report obvious spam it will force more scrutiny, by a human Admin or by a bot, I dont care, so long as the spam gets removed.

If I created a subreddit where we as mods, as people who easily spot spam/bot networks/etx on Reddit, could post about this spam, providing links to it... would you join me there and help me mass-report spammers?

I would help you do the same.

Anyone?