Hello Everyone -

I am looking for some additional mods for this community. Over the last year or so I’ve taken on moderation for a lot of cat communities in an effort to fight the spam and bot problem cat subs are hit with. I’ve stabilized most of these communities and am looking for more partners in each to help with the modding load and ensure the safety of our community culture.

I am asking that new mods be willing to join a private Discord server that I’ve created for the subs I mod. You will be given specific roles and access to the channels dedicated to the sub yous you mod in the group. This is to help with onboarding, training, and general communication.

Some basic tenants of all communities I mod that I expect new mods to be in alignment on:

• These subs are Original Content Only and AI Free, meaning all content posted must be created by the person posting and must not be AI.
• We have a zero tolerance for participation from spam and bot accounts - this includes NSFW promotion or heavy adult content accounts.
• Disagreements must be civil no matter who is “in the right”; harassment of community members or mods is not tolerated.
• Submitted content must be relevant. We do not do “one time exceptions” for content a mod happens to like/want; that is a slippery slope. Consistent enforcement matters for a healthy community.  

Some specifics about modding in this community:

• We have a karma and age filter in the Automod on this sub which means reviewing content from new accounts.
• While disagreements aren't super common in this sub they tend to blow up FAST, you'll need to have an objective view of disagreements and be ready to quickly lock/remove/ban when arguments get out of hand.

What you’ll be spending most of your time doing in this community:

• Reviewing posts from new/low karma users - doing reverse image searches to check for OC content and doing account checks for bot red flags. If you aren't familiar with this I will teach you how to do it.

Before applying to mod:

• Please take some time to read the sub rules and familiarize yourself with them and ensure you feel comfortable enforcing these rules.
• Consider how much time you’re able and willing to mod. I don’t expect highly active mods, I can continue taking on the bulk. But if you go “inactive” you will be removed during my quarterly mod maintenance days.

Apply by modmailing me here to start a conversation. You do not need to have prior modding experience but if you don’t or you have little we expect you to be curious about learning new things. You are also welcome to check out other subs I mod and apply to multiples!

Feel free to ask questions publicly below!

Hello Folks -

I wanted to provide a community update on a rule change I made today. I know this is a controversial topic but I've decided to move forward with no longer allowing mourning content on r/orangecats. This rule is in effect as of posting this and won't retroactively result in post removals.

Losing a pet is difficult, and people do deserve support. But mourning posts can also be distressing for people and can be difficult as a mod to sometimes discern the authenticity of. We also have folks who like to regularly memorialize their pets months or years later as just a regular posting type. When these get a lot of attention they become catnip for the repost bots.

We will be directing mourning posts to the r/petloss subreddit which is a community specifically for support and mourning. In the past other moderators in cat communities haven't wanted to do this because of it being a slower subreddit. Based on some regular pulse checks that isn't the case anymore - and the sub will be more active and supportive if more people start using it for its intended purpose.

For the folks who often just want to share their pet and have them appreciated - you can still post about them, you just can't make it a mourning post/a post about their death/a celebration of their life because they died. We will use moderator discretion with handling these kinds of posts and comments. If it comes up organically that a pet has passed away we aren't going to remove it. If it's showing a pattern we likely will.

Please report these posts moving forward if you see them. As long as the poster is respectful and doesn't start attacking the mods for removal it's not going to have any consequences beyond removal - you aren't getting someone in trouble. The only way they'll get banned (temporarily or permanently) is if they react uncivilly which is a different problem.

I do apologize for folks for will be unhappy with this decision - but it's time for this community to make this change.