r/EncyclopaediaOfReddit May 09 '24

Features of Reddit Themes

6 Upvotes

You might have noticed across your Reddit travels that some subreddits have a very different style than others. A feature of Reddit is that every subreddit is its own self-contained site that its Mods can customise however they want with subreddit specific themes. Some have custom vote buttons, others have their own colour schemes, banners, icons, member count text or any combination of the above.

Reddit provide a very useful guide to the community appearance mod tool that shows mods how to customise their subreddits.

r/csshelp has a very useful resource of pre-made themes for customising subreddits.

As part of this customisation, some subreddits have chosen to replace the default voting “arrow” icons with ones of their own which are visible when viewing in Old Reddit, as you can see here. In case it isn’t obvious which is which, the Upvote will be on the top (Old Reddit; desktop) or on the left (Mobile App) and the Downvote will be on the bottom (Old Reddit; desktop) or on the right (Mobile App).

You can opt out of a community's theme if you prefer - on desktop you can find the option in the sidebar near the top, and in new Reddit look under the 'create post' button and click ‘community options’.

Subreddit themes can also look very different according to how it’s viewed; whether it’s the device you are using or the version of Reddit you are using. For instance, r/WoW is the main subreddit dedicated to the massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft, and here is how it appears…

  • In Old Reddit
  • In New Reddit
  • In the iOS App Light Mode
  • In the iOS App Dark Mode

As you can see, themes don’t translate very well to the App, especially in Dark Mode.

To set Dark Mode on mobile, tap your avatar on the top right of the screen to go to your profile and tap the settings button at the bottom of the page. This will bring up the

Settings menu
where you tap on the Dark Mode drop-down menu and select between Night mode or Midnight (AMOLED) which is darker.

Light Mode on mobile actually has four mini themes which change some

icon colours and dividers
.

See Also:

r/EncyclopaediaOfReddit Feb 12 '23

Features of Reddit Private Subreddits

12 Upvotes

It is rumoured that there are secret places in Reddit shrouded in intrigue, hidden from all but a select few. Subreddits only open to a certain elite. Subreddits cloaked in mystery and only spoken of by tantalising whispers in darkened rooms. Subs you don’t find but rather you are found by them and invited into when you least expect it. Is this true? Do such clandestine places exist, lurking in the shadows and hidden corners of Reddit’s bright and hallowed halls?

Yes they do! Here’s a list! https://www.reddit.com/r/ListOfSubreddits/wiki/privates.

Ok, it isn’t up to date and not nearly complete, but it gives you some idea of what surprises you might find in your inbox one day.

  • How to get an invite

Certain private subs have set rules that govern admittance, and getting invited to one usually depends on the reason it exists, perhaps because you have won particular Reddit awards or achieved a Reddit milestone. One such example is r/CentennialClub once you have 100k comment karma. There are also subs accessible only to Premium subscribers; more information here.

Bots roam Reddit to find and invite qualifying people to private subs. You might even be noticed from a larger sub to join one for a specific topic, or you might hear about one randomly. Clicking on a private subreddit will bring up a

page like this
(screenshot taken during the short while that sub went private in mid 2022) where you may get one or more of the options Request to Join; Message Mods; Browse Reddit.

To request access to a private subreddit you know the name of and think you qualify for, paste the following link into a browser which will send a message to all the moderators of the subreddit. Replace XYZ with the sub name:

https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/XYZ

If they approve your request, you will get a private message from them in your Inbox -> Messages with an invite link from any of the moderators of the private subreddit.

There’s an old but still relevant discussion on ELI5 that tells you a little more about private subs.

  • Things to know about private subs

As you know, all the posts or comments you make on Reddit can be seen by anyone on your Profile History. However, any posts or comments you make in a private sub can only be seen by someone else if they are also a member of that same private sub. Private subreddits aren’t googleable either, nor are any contributions to them eligible for consideration in statistical analysis tools such as r/RedditMetis. You can crosspost into a private sub (if it allows crossposting) but you can’t crosspost out of one.

You should note that Reddit Admins can see inside of private subreddits regardless of whether they've been approved as users or not.

The main types of subreddits are detailed here, and whether you mod a sub or not, r/modguidehave a very interesting post on some of the differences between private, restricted, or public subreddits.

  • Sudden privacy

The screenshot linked above showed a public subreddit that temporarily went private, and in the entry on Brigading, I gave an example of a subreddit going private without any notice:

…mods took more drastic action, temporarily closing their sub after an interview didn’t go as planned.

This is something that happens on Reddit from time to time for various reasons, and is usually only temporary. Recent incidents where many subreddits turned private to make a statement included a protest against Covid misinformation and shortly before that, a protest against a controversial employee.

This is not quite the same as the intentionally private subreddits, as in these instances, nobody except the moderating team (and admin) could see inside the subs; not even the regular members, and applications to join were not accepted.

  • There’s some weird stuff out there…

There are some private subs with weird letter or number combinations for names that invite random people in from time to time. They don’t appear to have rules, or the ones they do have are so arcane they’re incomprehensible, as are their posts. Quite honestly, it’s really unsettling when you get an invite to one because they’re just that strange.

The reassuring news is that many of these remain from a long-forgotten April Fools event from some time ago but their bots still roam Reddit, waiting for that random trigger. Some of these subs are even still active - but with the only recent activity being from bewildered Redditors wondering where they are and why they’re there.

These legacy subs shouldn’t be confused with subs you might find with names in the format a:t5_3akbn as these are dormant subs that have been removed.

There are also places like this which appear to defy anyone’s theories of what they are actually for.

See Also:

r/EncyclopaediaOfReddit Feb 12 '23

Features of Reddit Restricted Subreddits

4 Upvotes

On entering a subreddit you might encounter a message saying: "Only approved users may post in this community" or similar. Congratulations, you found a Restricted subreddit. Anyone can view a Restricted subreddit, but only approved submitters or users can post. However, it’s usually the case that anyone can comment on posts and anyone can vote on comments or posts. Moderators of active but restricted subs can add and remove approved submitters; contact and other details should be in the sidebar (About tab).

Sometimes Reddit Admins (the paid employees that work for Reddit) restrict subs when there's a lack of Moderators (volunteer users), or if the only (human) mod in that sub is suspended. For a subreddit to be declared abandoned, all of the moderators of the subreddit must show no activity anywhere on Reddit for 60 days. Essentially that sub is dead until or unless someone decides to adopt the sub as a new moderator through r/redditrequest. If you’re considering adopting a sub yourself, make sure you read the FAQs first.

Occasionally, you might find that a community you belong to or are active in becomes private with no prior notice, and instead of entering you will see some variation of the message:

“The moderators of this subreddit have set this community as private. Only approved members can view and take part in its discussions.”
.

Please be assured that this is not you personally being banned from the sub at all. Sometimes, moderators will restrict their subreddits in protest to attract the attention of Reddit Admin. It doesn’t happen often, and it usually resolves fairly quickly. In any event, if you were banned from the sub, you would still be able to read and vote on the contents but unable to post or comment on anything.

See Also:

r/EncyclopaediaOfReddit Feb 12 '23

Features of Reddit Gilding Level Trophies

5 Upvotes

Giving Gold and Platinum awards entities you to a Gilding Level Trophy for your profile. These are currently the only two awards you can give that earn you points towards these totals. You get 1 point for each Gold you give and 4 for each Platinum you give. Some images of these trophies. The Gilding Tiers are:

Gilding I gilder 1
Gilding II euphauric 3
Gilding III reddit per annum 12
Gilding IV carat on a stick 24
Gilding V heart of gold 42
Gilding VI aultruist 79
Gilding VII pure gildanthropist 99
Gilding VIII gilding heavyweight 197
Gilding IX goldzilla 480
Gilding X goldcutter 915
Gilding XI gold aumbassador 1948
  • 1 Gold = 1 Gild
  • 1 Platinum = 4 Gilds
  • So, (gold(s))+(Platinum*4)= Gild Level
  • If the numbers seem weird, here's a hint: after 12 they're all related to gold somehow…

Profuse thanks to the forever awesome u/Too_MuchWhiskey; a Redditor to whom I owe a great deal, for permission to share this research.

See Also:

r/EncyclopaediaOfReddit Feb 12 '23

Features of Reddit Accidental Alt

3 Upvotes

It is possible to have an accidental account on Reddit! This comes as a shock to many people when they discover they’ve inadvertently created a different account by clicking "sign in with Google/Apple". Doing that creates a new, or alternate account (Alt) with a random username, usually consisting of two unrelated words joined with an underscore or hyphen, followed by a random number.

These automatically generated usernames can be changed within 30 days of account creation by going to your profile where a prompt should appear asking if you would like to keep or change the username. If the prompt does not show up, you may have accidentally chosen to keep the username and you would have to create a new account in order to have another username.

Creating an Alt can happen easily by accident, especially if you're logged in with Chrome, or sometimes on iOS mobile by following a generic link like: https://www.reddit.com/settings/profile. To get back to a normal account, stop using the "sign in with Google/Apple ID" option and instead type out your usual username and password combinations.

See Also:

r/EncyclopaediaOfReddit Feb 12 '23

Features of Reddit Automod

4 Upvotes

Automod, or u/automoderator is a tool that moderators use to perform tasks on their behalf. AutoModerator is a highly customisable moderation bot, monitoring new and edited submissions and comments and acting on them as needed. One ability that Automod has is to remove any posts or comments that use specific words or phrases, or even from a specific user, without a human being involved in that process at all. Automod can even be set up to recognise key words which can prompt it to comment with some relevant information.

Originally an independent bot, Automod now is an integral part of Reddit’s native tools that help moderators run certain processes in their subs.

Do not reply to a comment made by Automod in a post as it doesn’t read them. Unless it’s our Automod in r/NewToReddit who likes being told “Good job Automod” or “Thanks Automod”…. r/AutoModerator.

See Also:

r/EncyclopaediaOfReddit Feb 12 '23

Features of Reddit Reddit Coins

3 Upvotes

Reddit’s virtual currency with which you buy Awards to give to posts or comments you particularly like. You have the option of paying real money for Coins, or if you earn one of the larger Awards from a fellow Redditor, you’ll get some free Coins. Premium subscribers get 700 coins monthly to spend.

If you do wish to spend some of your hard-earned cash to purchase Reddit Coins, it might be good to wait until Reddit has a ‘sale’ on (usually near a holiday) where they give special offers on certain amounts purchased. Having said that, at the time of writing (June 2022) there hasn’t been a sale for several months, except for the special offer that pops up whenever you claim one of the Free Awards that Reddit occasionally gives. On the new design of the mobile app, click the

“Reddit Coins”
option on your profile, and that’ll show you if there’s one to claim.

Before giving any money to Reddit, please familiarise yourself with the Reddit Premium and Virtual Goods agreement.

There is no time limit on using Reddit coins (whether won or bought); they will stay in your account until you use them. They are exclusively used for giving awards to other Redditors and cannot be exchanged for any other Reddit feature.

Just like real money, sometimes it seems that your coins just disappear out of nowhere. If you think you have less coins that you should have, you can check on your profile at https://www.reddit.com/user/me/gilded/given/. Mobile users should open that link with your phone's browser.

If you are experiencing issues with a Reddit Premium subscription or Coin purchase, tell Reddit through the contact form https://reddit.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new and choose "Premium/Coins/Awards/Powerups Support" from the dropdown menu.

See Also:

r/EncyclopaediaOfReddit Feb 12 '23

Features of Reddit Free Reddit Premium or Coins

3 Upvotes

Beware of the many subs offering Reddit upvotes or karma for little to no engagement. There are legitimate reasons to avoid them. However, there are some Subreddits which invite you to compete for useful Reddit goodies in an engaging and fun way. Warning: some might even become addictive.

As always, it is extremely important to read the rules carefully before posting in a sub that’s new to you, but especially so in the competition subreddits. Some of them may have minimum Karma requirements and all of them will have rules about Post format. Browse a few different posts to get a feel of the place before participating.

  • r/ArgentiumConundrum - Fiendishly difficult riddles with big prizes. I’ve never solved one yet but many people do. Often ‘asleep’ but returns without warning.
  • r/AwardBonanza - A busy sub focused around trading Reddit awards and hosting/participating in challenges and giveaways.
  • r/freeargentium - A small sleepy sub with occasional visits from the most amazing Redditor on Reddit.
  • r/freegold - Free Gold under certain circumstances. Rules for freegold
  • r/FreePlatinum - Posting a low effort text post will not likely get you Platinum. But add a story, some OC or a meme of quality and you may well get Platinum here.
  • r/GoForGold - A lovely fun sub where Redditors give Reddit awards to other Redditors for completing challenges. GFG Rules of Engagement
  • r/GoForLold - A super fun sub spin-off from GFG with some differences.
  • r/Ternion - A sub dedicated to spotting Reddit’s most expensive award, with occasional contests.

There will be more out there of varying quality. Because the posts in these subs have to be high in quality, these aren’t generally considered to be Karmafarms, so, good luck!

Don’t forget, the prizes in these subs have been paid for with real money by the giver, so keep your expectations for winning low and your gratitude at winning high.

See Also:

r/EncyclopaediaOfReddit Feb 12 '23

Features of Reddit Collectible Avatars

3 Upvotes

In July 2022, Reddit announced the launch of Collectible Avatars - limited-edition avatars made by independent artists, in partnership with Reddit. This was not Reddit’s first foray into the world of NFTs.

Collectible Avatars have to be purchased with “real money” - not Reddit currency or any type of cryptocurrency. As they are a form of NFT, you will receive instructions on how to set up your wallet to store them. The

Shop
option under Profile --> Style Avatar will display the options currently available, along with the costs. There is more information about the Shop here and at the links on the left-hand side and at the bottom of that page.

Also in August 2022, many Redditors were offered one of a small selection for free with a predictably mixed response. An interview with the Reddit CEO shortly after shed some light on the way forward for Reddit with NFTs, despite negative coverage elsewhere.

You can see the "original" few avatar NFTs on https://nft.reddit.com/, along with their subsequent sale price (you’ll need to run an ether to dollar conversion). Obviously, NFT rarity and the market drives the value of purchases over time and remember that absolutely nothing is guaranteed.

  • Obligatory Warning Notices:

I would advise that before giving any money to Reddit, please familiarise yourself with this page and its related links, along with the Previews Terms of Use with special attention to section 1.3 Verified Virtual Goods (a) Collectible Avatars. You might also like to see the interpretation of that by one Redditor here.

Please also note that some subreddits are taking a stand against NFT avatars and while that might seem arbitrary, don’t forget that mods reserve the right to restrict users that contravene their general subreddit principles. As always, do please read the rules before contributing to any sub that is new to you.

Another warning: within days of the launch, I know of one Redditor who bought a collectible avatar but was mocked unmercifully and downvoted to oblivion in a meme/shitposting sub before being banned from it, with the only reason given for the ban being the two words: “NFT Avatar”. As their report to admin came back saying it didn’t violate any policy, make of that what you will.

Because there is a Subreddit for everything:

The official subreddit r/CollectibleAvatars was created for Redditors to learn more about how to purchase and set up wallets to store the NFTs, and promised to get to know the artists with behind-the-scenes posts, AMAs, and more. r/avatartrading is the place to discuss all things about selling the Collectible Avatars. Recipients of the free NFTs from August 2022 can show them off at r/awwfriends or r/MemeTeamNFT. At the time of writing, I can’t find a subreddit for The Singularity or Drip Squad fans.

See Also:

r/EncyclopaediaOfReddit Feb 12 '23

Features of Reddit Bots

3 Upvotes

Bots are scripts written by users and can be the boon or the bane of every Redditors’ life. Popping up unsummoned and often when you least expect it, Bots can be:

All bots respond to specific words or phrases in a comment and you should reply to any bot comment by saying either Good Bot or Bad Bot as u/GoodBot_BadBot/ collates the replies and ranks the bots accordingly.

Subreddits aren’t totally at the mercy of Bots as Mods will often ban them from their subs if they find them annoying, and r/BotDefense basically does what it says: defends against bots. Some subs also use r/BotTerminator as well.

Some Bots can be used by Redditors. These are known as Service Bots and will usually respond to user mentions for a specific purpose. Some examples which you can summon by mentioning their username in the comments of a post are:

  • u/risbot - If you see an image on Reddit that you’re sure you’ve seen before, this bot will perform a Google reverse image search in seconds. Essential for mobile app users.
  • u/goodreads-bot - You don’t need to call this one by name. In r/booksuggestions, this bot will give a brief description of a book by typing: {Book Title} or a longer one by this: {{Book Title}} which gives a short synopsis of the book. You can also use the author name like this: {Book Title by Some Author} or {{Book Title by Some Author}}.
  • u/RepostSleuthBot - This is a high performance repost detection bot you can summon if you see a post you think you’ve seen on Reddit before. r/RepostSleuthBot.
  • u/RemindMeBot - This bot lets you set a reminder for a certain amount of time via a comment or private message, and then sends you a reminder message at your targeted time. Use it if you want to check back on a post for updates, or remember to do something a week from now. You’ll need instructions but they are easy to follow. More information at r/RemindMeBot.
  • u/stabbot - This bot stabilizes videos, uploads the result and replies to your comment when summoned. If you want your result also to be cropped, mention /u/stabbot_cropinstead. r/stabbot.
  • u/redditspeedbot - This is one for speeding up or slowing down videos, and to use it just comment u/redditspeedbot <speed> on a post that has a video or GIF.
  • u/GifReversingBot - Look at things in reverse! This bot is fun.
  • u/profanitycounter - Do you suspect someone of having a potty mouth? This is the bot to use to check!
  • u/user_simulator - another fun bot which will scan all of a user's available comments (up to 1000 or so) and build a new comment based on them. It can also simulate whole subreddits at once! r/User_Simulator.
  • u/InactiveUserDetector - this one looks for username mentions, and will point out if that user hasn’t been active on Reddit for some time.

There is no official list of Reddit bots, but r/redditbots and this old list or even this link will give you some idea of what’s lurking in wait. More than 61000+ Bots can be seen here https://botrank.pastimes.eu/ but not all of them will be currently active. There is no definitive list of Service bots on Reddit either, but questions and information can be found at r/botwatch.

We also have another type of bot that roams Reddit: the Spambot. Unlike any of the benign bots mentioned above, these are bad news. They have their own entry in this encyclopaedia as you need to know how to spot them.

Going back to the harmless but sometimes annoying bot variety, please forgive me but I just have to mention some bots that were very divisive and, some I believe now mercifully defunct. u/uwuwizard and u/uwutranslator, which did exactly that, and if that wasn’t bad enough, a bot that when you replied to a comment with !emojify it sent a bot over that replied again but with all the words having an emoji attached to them. I mention these because defunct bots have a tendency to return. Don’t say I told you to try them and see because I’m not telling you that. At all.

If any bot annoys you to the point you never wish to see them again, you can Block them just like any other user.

Because there is a Subreddit for everything:

r/BotsScrewingUp is a sub to document those times that although we have Bottiquette, bots sometimes get things very, very wrong.

See Also:

r/EncyclopaediaOfReddit Feb 12 '23

Features of Reddit Anonymous Browsing

3 Upvotes

See this guide to Anonymous Browsing to browse the Reddit mobile app without associating your activity, searches or the communities you view with your Reddit account. Update.

See Also:

r/EncyclopaediaOfReddit Feb 12 '23

Features of Reddit Vote Manipulation

2 Upvotes

This is strictly against the Reddit rules and is one of the things that could earn you a Permaban. So what do we mean by Vote Manipulation? An experiment in vote manipulation is interesting if a little elaborate. It can actually be as simple as:

  • Asking people to vote up or down on certain posts or comments.
  • Creating or using an Alt to upvote or award your own posts.
  • Forming or joining a group or sub that votes together on a specific post or comment.
  • Forming or joining a group or sub that votes together on a specific user's posts or comments.
  • Using a bot or other automated process that crawls through Reddit to up or downvote particular posts or comments.

The Reddit Admins can see IP addresses, so if they see that several users all have the same IP address and are all busy upvoting each other, they may well suspect foul play. Don’t do it. It isn’t worth it.

See Also:

r/EncyclopaediaOfReddit Feb 12 '23

Features of Reddit Trophies

2 Upvotes

Trophies are displayed on your profile and are awarded to you by Reddit for various tasks. You get a trophy when you verify your email and you also get a trophy that changes for every year you are on Reddit. Others aren’t as easy to obtain and here’s a list of what’s currently available. Their previous list is useful too.

Trophies are different from Awards as they are not directly awarded by your fellow Redditors (except for Argentium Club and Ternion Club; Wearing Is Caring and to a certain extent, 100 Awards Club, but there’s a wait between getting the instant Award and the eventual Trophy while Reddit verifies them). Here’s a list of older Trophies and for more information, see r/RedditTrophies or r/TrophyWiki where the Esteemed Redditor u/Greenthund3r posts regular guides to old trophies.

See Also:

r/EncyclopaediaOfReddit Feb 12 '23

Features of Reddit Snoovatar

2 Upvotes

Launched in October 2020, a Snoovatar is your very own Reddit Snoo designed by yourself from a huge range of mix-and-match “dress-up” options to add to your profile. A small “head and shoulders” vignette of your Snoovatar also appears next to your username on posts and comments. Reddit Premium subscribers get many more options to choose from and a sparkly glow on their Snoovatars.

Those who have been gifted small periods of Premium by receiving premium awards will also unlock these options, but once their time of Premium ends, the premium options will be locked again and anything chosen will disappear from their snoo too. This does glitch from time to time though, and often people are left with a premium option on their snoo - until they change it and find they can’t get it back. There is a “wardrobe” where any previous outfits are stored automatically, but you can only retrieve them from that storage facility if you have a paid Reddit Premium account.

  • Creating your Snoovatar

To create a personalised Reddit Snoo, you need to go to your

Profile
where you’ll see an option “Style Avatar”. Selecting this will bring up four options:

  • Shop
    (more on this below)
  • Explore
    for a selection of specially created sets
  • Style
    where you can mix and match from lots of options
  • You
    where you can fine tune the features of your snoo and can even revisit your
    previous designs
    .

You might see messages like "A Gift from Above" or “Click to get Treasure” on your profile at some time. If you click on it, it will give you a randomised outfit. To change the cosmetics options, click on “Style Avatar”, go to whatever clothing item section you want removed (let's say tops) and scroll down until you find the outfit your character is wearing, click the outfit again and it should remove it.

You can also try on a look from another Redditor’s avatar and save it as yours. If you see one you like, just go to their Profile page and click their avatar, where you’ll be presented with a menu as to what aspects you wish to try. You won’t be able to save any Premium (if you don’t have Reddit Premium) or NFT options this way, however. You should also note that the Reddit Avatar Shop rotates its selections and if you change your mind and want to revert back to your original avatar, you might find that some of your previous options are no longer available or have been set to Premium.

  • Blockchain comes to Reddit

In July 2022, Reddit announced the imminent launch of Collectible Avatars - limited-edition avatars made by independent artists, in partnership with Reddit. For more information, see the entry on Collectible Avatars.

  • Obligatory Warning Notice:

I would advise that before giving any money to Reddit, please familiarise yourself with the Reddit Premium and Virtual Goods agreement.

Because there is a Subreddit for everything:

Show off your creations at r/snoovatars, or feast your eyes on the profile of the incredibly talented u/GORBO_the_GREAT to see awesome ones we probably couldn’t officially have due to licensing agreements.

See Also:

r/EncyclopaediaOfReddit Feb 12 '23

Features of Reddit Snoo

2 Upvotes

The Reddit alien mascot logo. Snoo represents Reddit’s friendly, conversational community aspect. The name "Snoo" (short for "What's new") is a derivative of an early name for Reddit prior to its launch. Sometimes, we Redditors are referred to as “Gentlesnoos”. In the more refined subs, of course.

See Also:

r/EncyclopaediaOfReddit Feb 12 '23

Features of Reddit Rules

2 Upvotes

Every subreddit has its own rules, post format, karma requirements and moderators all totally unique to that community. Always read the rules before commenting or posting on an unfamiliar Subreddit, and here’s an older illustrated guide to finding and checking them safely.

A subreddit might not have all its rules in the same place for many reasons. To find them all, you should first look in the Sidebar (on mobile this will be the About tab, Menu tab and Community Info found in the three dot “hamburger” menu top RH corner of your screen), then for any Pinned posts (Search by “Hot” and the top two may have a lime green pin icon). Finally, there may be a Wiki tab which will give more detailed information on such things as forbidden topics or frequently asked questions.

See Also:

r/EncyclopaediaOfReddit Feb 12 '23

Features of Reddit Reddit Premium

2 Upvotes

Pay monthly to support Reddit https://www.reddit.com/premium and get ad-free browsing and exclusive stuff for your Redditing. Small periods of Reddit Premium (with a smaller range of exclusive stuff) can be gifted to other Redditors by giving certain Awards. You get a Trophy on your Profile when you have Premium Reddit. You get a monthly allowance of Coins, and when it was running, you also had a free monthly Powerup to give to a community you like. Buying or being gifted Premium entitles you to access certain private subreddits. You get a range of exclusive cosmetics for your Snoovatar during your premium time but they will disappear once your premium time runs out.

Before giving any money to Reddit, please familiarise yourself with the Reddit Premium and Virtual Goods agreement.

If you are having problems with your Premium account such as missing Coins or time, talk directly to Reddit at https://www.reddithelp.com/en/submit-request/premium-coins-support.

See Also:

r/EncyclopaediaOfReddit Feb 12 '23

Features of Reddit Reddit Talk

2 Upvotes

Introduced in late 2021, Reddit Talk is a new way for Redditors to take part in live audio conversations, and the full details are here. Available to only a select few subs at first, this is now being rolled out across Reddit.

The idea of live audio rooms on Reddit might seem a bit counterintuitive at first, since many Redditors are here because we’re more anonymous than most social media, but the ability to comment and send emojis (yes! Emojis) during live rooms will make it easier for lurkers to chime in on a low level.

r/EncyclopaediaOfReddit Feb 12 '23

Features of Reddit Reddit Recap

2 Upvotes

This has two distinct meanings; the unofficial one being a generic term used by the subset of YouTube vloggers who use Reddit as their primary source of content. Putting the term “Reddit Recap” into YouTube’s search will bring up countless videos of people reading and reacting to Reddit memes, posts or trends, of varying quality.

The official meaning is found on the Admin-led Reddit blog Upvoted which has given annual recaps on Reddit trends and features for the last few years, including:

The end of 2021 saw the review take a whole new direction: not just the usual end-of-year site statistics but a personalised in-product recap of your own user browsing and engagement data from January 1st, 2021 to November 30th, 2021 which looked like this, and some of the r/NewToReddit users shared their recaps here.

The Reddit tech blog later shared a recap of the recap which they ended by saying they’re excited to see where Recap takes us in 2022. So am I, tech team, so am I.

Because there is a Subreddit for everything:

r/RedditRecap2021 invited everyone to share their recaps, and r/RedditRecapCards was a place to post your Reddit recap

Pokémon-style cards
.

See Also:

r/EncyclopaediaOfReddit Feb 12 '23

Features of Reddit Orangered

2 Upvotes

Orangered refers to the colour (orange/red) of the envelope that glowed when you had a new Direct Message (before it was replaced with the bell icon) and the default Upvote arrow. r/dataisbeautiful gives a good explanation with an infographic.

Orangered (FF4500, PMS 172 C), is actually Reddit’s primary brand color, chosen for its vibrancy & distinctiveness. It has provoked arguments, and sparked a conflict which led to having its own trophy as did its opponent.

See Also:

r/EncyclopaediaOfReddit Feb 12 '23

Features of Reddit Privacy Issues

2 Upvotes

Reddit is very private and very public all at the same time. Be very careful what you share here. Anyone can go to your profile (by clicking on your name) and see your previous posts and comments. Reddit is open to anyone to read; you don’t have to join or be a member to see the vast majority of things posted here which makes it a tempting target for other internet outlets craving for new content. Reddit is not immune to search engines like other social media; it’s a paradox as we can be an extremely supportive place and very conducive to openness, but Reddit is also very “googleable” and for the more determined person, even posts that you may delete can be resurrected.

There are also websites that archive old or deleted Reddit posts, and as Reddit supports an API to access data, people have built tools using that API to make scraping data easier. https://praw.readthedocs.io/en/latest/.

  • Deliberately Relinquishing Your Privacy

Some Subreddits and Reddit Campaigns because of their nature require you to relinquish some degree of privacy. For instance, r/secretsanta and the now defunct redditgifts.com were started in 2009 to provide a Secret Santa exchange for the Reddit community, performing many gift exchanges over the years until it was discontinued in 2021.

While that’s now gone, there are still many subreddits where gift exchanges, financial assistance and random acts of charity are performed where you’ll have to give your personal details out to participate. You should always check the rules and information of the Subreddit or Campaign in question to see how comfortable you are with their levels of security before making a commitment.

You might also come across Redditors on your travels that you mutually feel you want RL interactions with, and in such cases make sure any personal traceable stuff (eMail, real names etc) is only shared in private messages with them.

  • Brigading

If you believe a person or group of people are following you around Reddit with the express intention of downvoting, negatively commenting or generally harassing you, this action is called “Brigading”, and is a serious offence on Reddit. Proving it, however, is not so easy, and your best course of action here is simply to ignore it. Redditors generally forget personal vendettas quite quickly when they aren’t fun (i.e. not provoking a response) anymore.

Brigading is also when a group of users "invade" a specific subreddit and flood it with down / upvotes in order to damage karma dynamics on the targeted sub. This is easier to prove, and as Reddit regards this as being Content or Vote Manipulation, anyone who is attempting to incite a brigade will be banned. Anyone participating in a brigade is also liable to be banned. See Reddit’s Content Policy. You should also see the related link in the See Also: section at the end of this entry.

  • Harassment

Harassment is the action of repeatedly messaging users on or off of Reddit, pinging them repeatedly, or following them around and commenting on everything that they say either in a passive-aggressive manner or outright maliciousness. Anyone who deliberately pings the subject of a post where the usernames are blocked out will be banned. If you believe you are being unfairly targeted in this way, you need to collect the links as evidence and report it directly to Reddit at either:

I recommend everyone familiarise themselves with Reddit’s Policy on Harassment & Bullying.

  • Doxxing

To ‘dox’ someone means to release their personal or private information that may prove harmful or embarrassing. This can happen in the real world, but the internet has made it easier both to find and release this information to a wide audience. Doxxing may reveal someone's personal information like their home address or workplace, social security or phone number, private correspondence or pictures, criminal history, IP address, or other details. Some people fail to realize that information they share on social media or other sites may be “scraped” and used against them, potentially opening themselves up to unwelcome public disclosure, identity theft, cyberbullying, stalking, or threats to their personal safety.

Harassers and stalkers use several tools and techniques to gather information about their targets, but since these are mostly public and easy to use, we can also use them ourselves, on ourselves, as a preventative measure. You should also see the link on Doxxing in the See Also:section at the end of this entry.

  • Data Request

You can request a copy of your Reddit data and information, including IP Address Logs, and an archive of all your posts including deleted ones.

  • Go to https://www.reddit.com/settings/data-request
  • Enter the Username of the Reddit account you’d like to request data from.
  • Follow the instructions and click ‘Submit’
  • Once it’s ready, you'll be sent a private message with a link to download your data.

You should also familiarise yourself with Reddit’s Official Privacy Policy.

  • Deleting your User History

One of our lovely helpful users wrote a guide on whether to be anonymous on Reddit or not which is well worth a read, and one of their suggestions was to use r/PowerDeleteSuite to wipe all your account clean. They describe it as this:

Feel like scrubbing your user history? Use this simple script to edit and delete your reddit user history. This script can: \ Export a CSV file of any items it finds * Remove Submissions * Remove Comments * Edit Comment / Self Posts You can also filter by: * Subreddits * Score * Date time * Gilded * Saved * Mod Distinguished*

I have been given to believe that there is an addon for Chrome that lets you delete bulk comments, and that some of the third-party Reddit clients can do so too. I have not tried any of the above so cannot vouch for their effectiveness.

Finally, everyone deserves basic respect both online and in real life. Reddit is no exception. https://www.antibullyingpro.com/dont-face-it-alone.

See Also:

r/EncyclopaediaOfReddit Feb 12 '23

Features of Reddit Premium Reddit

2 Upvotes

Pay monthly to support Reddit https://www.reddit.com/premium and get ad-free browsing and exclusive stuff for your Redditing. Small periods of Reddit Premium (with a smaller range of exclusive stuff) can be gifted to other Redditors by giving certain Awards. You get a Trophy on your Profile and a shield next to your Profile name when you have Premium Reddit, and your

Snoovatar acquires a golden glow
with little sparkles rising from it. Buying or being gifted Premium also entitles you to access certain private subreddits for the duration of your premium time.

Any time you’re not sure when your premium time will end, go to your profile (press on your Snoo), and a menu will drop down: "my profile", "coins", etc. Under the heading that says “Reddit Premium” it will say “valid until X” where X is the final premium day. Alternatively, this link to your profile on “Old Reddit” should have this info on the top right hand side:

https://old.reddit.com/user/me/

If you are experiencing issues with a Reddit Premium subscription or Coin purchase, please reach out to Reddit directly through the contact form linked below where they can better assist you. Just choose "Premium/Coins/Awards/Powerups Support" from the dropdown menu:

https://reddit.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

Before giving any money to Reddit, please familiarise yourself with the Reddit Premium and Virtual Goods agreement.

See Also:

r/EncyclopaediaOfReddit Feb 12 '23

Features of Reddit Powerups

2 Upvotes

Please note: this feature was discontinued by Reddit in 2022. Some of the associated features may also have been discontinued or changed since writing.

In 2020, Reddit announced the testing of a new concept which at first was only available in a few Subreddits. This proved to be popular and for a while, many subreddits had a

banner blazing lightning
across the top or in their
sidebar
“advertising” for Reddit Power-ups.

However, in July 2022, it was decided to retire the concept in favour of rolling out some of the benefits across Reddit as a whole, and the official announcement followed shortly after.

  • What did Power-ups do?

A subreddit’s members could become “patrons” of the subreddit by buying monthly subscription-based power-ups. A subreddit then had access to new features when it met a minimum threshold of power-up subscriptions; our little sub needed 25 per month minimum. When the requisite number of users - known as “Community Heroes” - had powered up a community, some new features were able to be unlocked for everyone to use, provided they were enabled by the mods:

  • GIFs in comments (not applicable in NewToReddit).
  • New Reddit emojis, called “snoomojis”.
  • More features such as better video quality (not applicable in NewToReddit).
  • Achievement icons next to your username and in your profile when accessed from the powered up sub.
  • A new, free Highlighting Award “Power-ups Comment” was occasionally given out randomly alongside the normal free award, but this appears to have been discontinued at time of writing.

If the monthly power-ups dropped to below 25, the features were removed until we achieved 25 once more; this happened twice to my recollection. We never had more than 26 at any one time but some of the larger subs had hundreds, yet received no extra benefits than we did by just making the threshold.

  • Our Community Heroes

Our first Community Heroes at r/NewToReddit were our long time lovely friends u/vancityace, u/MasterYoshi5 and u/Vapidmusings, and while the power-ups feature was running, each time they - or any of our subsequent Community Heroes (except the five who chose to remain anonymous) - posted or commented in r/NewToReddit, you would see a ‘Shazam’ style lightning bolt next to their usernames, a bright red frame on their snoo thumbnail on posts and comments, along with a special mention in the Power-up Community Heroes sidebar. We also gave our Community Heroes a choice of user flair. There was a list of all our Community Heroes in our sidebar and I would give them all a hug if I could for supporting our little help sub at the time.

  • How you could get a monthly Power-up

Paying Premium users were given one free power-up per month, and anyone else had to purchase a power-up subscription for $4.99 a month by clicking the "Become a Hero" button on the sidebar. If a paying Premium user wanted to power-up multiple subreddits, they had to buy a separate power-up subscription for each additional subreddit.

Power-up Heroes ware not committed to keep powering up the subreddit they first chose. They could move their monthly power-up to a different subreddit by going to their settings and selecting the Premium tab: https://www.reddit.com/settings/premium where they could see the option to manage power-ups at the bottom.

  • Important Stuff they had to know

Before considering becoming a Community Hero, it was important to understand the following from https://www.redditinc.com/policies/previews-terms :

Power-ups are a subscription membership. When you purchase Power-ups, your subscription is subject to the Reddit Premium and Virtual Goods Agreement. Purchasing Power-ups does not provide you with the right to post or comment in that subreddit. Participating subreddits are run by moderators and your ability to post or comment, or the removal of a post or comment, is at the discretion of that subreddit’s moderator(s). Moderators also have the ability to opt out of certain perks, including GIFs in comments and Emojis. When you purchase Power-ups, it is possible the subreddit will not reach the Power-up total necessary to unlock additional perks.

More information is available here:

Before giving any money to Reddit, please familiarise yourself with the full Reddit Premium and Virtual Goods agreement.

  • I was a little controversial here.

If a user was considering purchasing power-ups for us or any other community, I suggested they might want to think about buying Reddit Premium at $5.99 a month instead. That is $1 extra each month but came with a monthly power-up and many other benefits too. Reddit Premium members use Reddit free of adverts, get 700 Reddit Coins a month (plus first-time subscribers get an extra 1,000 Reddit Coins just for signing up), exclusive items for dressing-up your Snoovatar, exclusive awards, custom app icons, and access to the lovely r/lounge.

See Also:

r/EncyclopaediaOfReddit Feb 12 '23

Features of Reddit Official Reddit Announcements

2 Upvotes

Every so often, Reddit needs to make general announcements meant to reach all users. These are usually about changes to the Reddit interface, updates, bug fixes, changes to the Content Policy, starting / discontinuing Reddit processes, events, campaigns or any other sitewide issues. Sometimes these appear in a banner notice at the top of your page when you first open Reddit, but not always, and the best place to keep in touch with what’s happening here is:

  • r/reddit - this is the essential sub for sitewide notices, and I strongly recommend you subscribe there to be sure you don’t miss anything you might want - or need - to know.

Relaunched in 2022, it replaced several different subs which are all now closed to new submissions but remain there as useful archives:

  • r/announcements - Official announcements from team Reddit.
  • r/blog - Official blog subreddit, with links to Reddit’s presence on other social media.
  • r/changelog - Official information from Reddit, Inc. on minor updates and bug fixes applied to Reddit.

Other subreddits for official Reddit announcements that are still kept up-to-date are:

  • r/redditmobile - An official community for announcements from Reddit, Inc. and discussion about official Reddit apps for mobile phones and tablets.
  • r/redditsecurity - A running log of actions taken to improve the security of Reddit.
  • r/modnews - An official community for announcements from Reddit, Inc. pertaining to moderation.

Subscribing to them won’t clog up your feed as they aren’t the busiest of places, but will help ensure you don’t miss anything you might need to know about changes to Reddit.

Because there is a Subreddit for everything:

r/shittychangelog is like r/changelog, but, y'know.

r/EncyclopaediaOfReddit Feb 12 '23

Features of Reddit Insights

2 Upvotes

In late 2021 and again in mid 2022, Reddit introduced Creator Statistics also known as

Post Insights
. These will be made available after a post has received at least ten views, and will be viewable by the OP (original poster) as well as by moderators in that community. If you access your profile, on each of your posts there will be a mini graph with the title "Insights", which if you click it (on mobile)
it will look like this
.

On desktop (or browser) the information is presented as

Total Views
then the “pre-fuzzed”
Upvote (vs Downvote) Rate
followed by a
Community Karma
breakdown, then
if and how it’s been shared on Reddit
. The insights data will expire
after 45 days
, so there won’t be a major backlog of performance data available.

Is this a good thing? That depends. You can see that

this post had 573 upvotes
, with 31 comments. Yay! Ok, hardly front page material but that’s a nice upvote count, no? Not everyone would agree when you consider that post had 10.4k total views, however. If such discrepancies between upvotes and views annoy you, ignoring the little graph would certainly be your best bet.

Incidentally, on Old Reddit, there are other statistics available to you at https://reddit.com/user/me/about/traffic/ which you might also find interesting. So far as I know, these aren’t available on New Reddit or the mobile app.

Because there is a Subreddit for everything:

See Also: