Ask HN: How do you moderate a subreddit?

Remove spam and warn people that are behaving exceptionally poorly. I only moderate very small subreddits, but that's all I do, aside from playing with the design for fun.

I founded and am the sole moderator of r/apachespark. That one's easy because it's a well-behaving crowd and the purpose of the subreddit is obvious. The only real things I do is remove spam/unrelated material and tag big releases as announcements.

More generally, I think the moderators' main job is to set the mission/rules of the subreddit, and enforce them. Subreddits with weak enforcement rarely thrive as they devolve into the least common denominator.

My moderating day generally goes as follows:

- Look at the mod queue, replying to any mod mail we've received and any posts that have been automatically removed by our AutoModerator script.

- Have a peak at the new posts, on any one day my sub-reddits only get a couple of hundred, so it takes a couple of minutes for a cursory glance.

- List all reported messages and see whether they're acceptable.

Then, because most of the sub-reddits I'm currently contributing to are about projects I'm working on, I generally answer any questions people have or problems they're facing.

However, this is just for me. It really truly depends on the type of sub-reddit you're looking to moderate as to what work you're required to do.

Look for a job and move out of their parents' basement.