How to deal with big news events

From time to time, there might be a big news event that will create an unexpected, massive influx of activity into your community. You can prepare for these situations of sudden growth by using the tips in the Mod Helpcenter.

These unpredictable spikes can often seem overburdening and too much to handle, especially if it involves a lot of new users that may not be familiar with your community rules. To better equip you for such cases, we want to share a few best practices.

• Try to contain everything into a single megathread. This makes it easier to control the flow of comments, as you will have everything on one page and can monitor one post instead of multiple ones. Rule breaking comments can be recognized before they end up in the mod queue, which means that fewer users will see them and get a wrong impression about the tone of the discussion in the community.
  • In this megathread, it can be practical to create a sticky comment clarifying the most important rules. Users that come to a community they are not a member of to discuss a hot topic probably won’t take the time to read through the subreddit rules, so be concise.
• Don’t be afraid to ask for help if you feel overwhelmed. Use this mod network and ask if any other moderators are willing to help out as temporary mods in your community until things settle down.
• Always put yourself first. We are all moderating voluntarily, and if you start to realize that the stress of moderating is getting to you, take a break and try to take your mind off of reddit.

Protip: Add a short summary in English of what is happening and what the subreddits rules are to that sticky comment, in case the thread appears in one of the international feeds and international users show up, wondering what the fuss is about.