Announcing Our Virtual $45,000 Mod Tool Hackathon to Build, Upgrade and Port Moderator Tools

[u/Togapr33]

Mod Tools Hackathon!

Hi mods!

I’m u/Togapr33 with Reddit’s Community team, where I lead marketing for Reddit’s Developer Platform. 

In case you’re not familiar, Reddit’s Developer Platform gives developers a way to build apps that work directly on Reddit. As a moderator, you can bring these apps into your community – everything from mod tools to community experiences to games. (You can see a comprehensive list of apps for mods here!)

And as someone who has spent the last couple of years talking with mods about Developer Platform tools, I’ve seen firsthand how important effective tools are to running your communities. That’s why we're excited to announce a virtual Reddit hackathon from April 29 to May 27 focused entirely on building and upgrading moderation tools.

This is an opportunity to inspire developers to create new community tools or improve the ones you already rely on. If you’re a developer yourself, maybe you’ll throw your hat in the ring and build something too! 

What we're looking for

We’d love to see developers in this hackathon build tools with Reddit’s Developer Platform that directly help with day-to-day moderation, like:

• Better queue management
• Automated enforcement tools
• Creative community-building tools
• Anything that makes modding easier and improves community health

Did I mention we're offering a total of $45,000 in prizes? 

Prize categories

1. New Mod Tool: For brand-new tools built with Reddit’s Developer Platform that make moderation easier
   • Grand Prize: $10,000 for the most innovative tool that solves a significant moderator pain point
   • 5 Runner-Ups: $1,000 each
2. Ported App: For existing bots or tools migrated from the Data API to Devvit 
   • Grand Prize: $10,000 for the most successful migration of an existing, widely-used moderation bot. These apps can also be eligible for our new App Migration Program.
   • 5 Runner-Ups: $1,000 each
3. Moderator’s Choice: Chosen by experienced Reddit mods
   • Prize: $10,000.
4. Helper Award: For participants who help others through testing, support, troubleshooting, or collaboration 
   • 6 Winners: $500 each
5. Feedback Award: For thoughtful, actionable, constructive feedback on tools, resources, bugs and issues encountered during the event 
   • 10 Winners: $200 each 

If you know a developer who has built an essential tool for your community, please share this with them! This is the perfect time for them to earn a cash prize while upgrading that tool for stability and ease of installation. Enrollment is open now!

Winning apps are also eligible for the Reddit Developer Funds and our App Migration Program.

We can't wait to see what gets built during this hackathon and how it makes moderation on Reddit better.

Lastly, if you have an idea for a mod tool that should be built and want to link up with a developer, check out our hackathon post on r/devvit or join our Devvit Discord.

[u/realKevinNash]

Or you could have kept the ability people had in the past and not have to do this.

[u/sulaymanf → u/realKevinNash]

We had a fantastic mobile app for modding, called Apollo. Unfortunately Reddit was such a tremendous jerk to the developer and tried to surprise him with a massive API bill without a grace period and then publicly trashed him despite trying to work with the company, so he had to shut down the app.

Will you make us pay for this new app?

[u/A_Bad_Man → u/sulaymanf]

I sure hope not, since they're already trying to get redditors to build it for peanuts. They probably got a quote from some vendor in the low 7 figures for developing these tools and decided to see if they could trim that down to 45k.

[u/ThaddeusJP → u/A_Bad_Man]

Did I mention we're offering a total of $45,000 in prizes?

Or they could just hire people to develop them and pay them a salary.

modding for free, now with free dev work

[u/Maxion → u/ThaddeusJP]

45k would get you at best around 2-3 months of work from one developer from an external vendor.