https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/1css2xx/wrapping_the_golden_upvote_pilot_newish_and/
created by SmEllen_Fresh on 15/05/2024 at 18:31 UTC
8 upvotes, 26 top-level comments (showing 25)
Hi Mods,
I’m u/SmEllen_Fresh from the product team and I’m here with an (overdue) update on the gold and Contributor Program. We’ve reflected on how we rolled out these features, and want to rethink how we approach rewarding good contributions on Reddit. So, to close the loop on the pilot, we’re sharing some big news: today we’re launching new(ish) and improved awards. Rollout starts today on reddit.com and Reddit’s iOS and Android apps.
I’ll walk you through what’s coming, and how we got here. But first…
ICYMI, last year we released new features[1] that we thought would make the experience of rewarding high-quality posts and comments even better. To address feedback that awards were starting to clutter posts and feeds, we replaced legacy awards with a simplified experience where users could purchase “new” gold – displayed as a golden upvote – directly with cash, rather than having to purchase coins first.
1: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/16ryhv9/celebrating_great_content_is_as_good_as_gold/
While the golden upvote was certainly simpler in theory, in practice, it missed the mark. It wasn’t as fun or expressive as legacy awards, and it was unclear how it benefited the recipient.
As part of the launch of the golden upvote, we also introduced the Contributor Program[2] in the US. The program allows eligible users to earn cash for gold and eligible karma. (It’s worth noting that although there were understandable concerns about the Contributor Program leading to karma farming or other spam and fraud issues, we haven’t seen an increase in this behavior since the rollout 6 months ago). Unlike the golden upvote, interest in the program has grown… more on that in a second.
2: https://www.reddit.com/contributor-program
Finally, as part of this launch, we sunset coins. We gave those with a balance three months to spend their coins before we cleared balances and removed the monthly drip as a benefit of Reddit Premium.
Our goal is to make Reddit a place where people who make quality posts and comments get real value for their contributions, and create incentives for better comments and posts to keep your communities healthy and vibrant.
Your feedback has been spot-on throughout the process; here’s what we learned:
We’re shouting from the rafters: Awards are back! Our goal with this refreshed experience is to bring back the fun of awards while minimizing in-feed clutter. The new experience features iconic expressions you’ll recognize in addition to new, uniquely Reddity ones. We’re also launching a leaderboard that shows the top awards for a post or comment.
To give an award, click the award icon underneath the content you’d like to recognize, select the award you want from a digestible set of fun options, and click Give Award. If you don’t have enough gold for the award, you can buy some on the same screen and give the award. Any redditor can view the awards you give in the awards leaderboard of a post or comment, unless the award is given anonymously.
Tap on the awards button in a post or comment to give an award and purchase gold
View the top awards and gold earned by a post or comment in the awards leaderboard
Gold has meant a lot of things in Reddit history. It's referred to coins, Reddit Premium, and more. With the new version of Awards, gold both purchased and received will be stored as a balance on Reddit. Redditors can buy gold in bulk and spend down their balance to award content, or buy gold at the time of giving the award.
We’re expanding beyond the US. Eligible redditors in 35 countries[3] can now earn cash for gold and karma earned through their contributions to the community. While we haven’t seen an increase in spam, fraud, or moderator burden to date, we’ll continue to monitor it as we scale the program to new countries.
If redditors notice potentially harmful awards on a post or comment, they can report it to you for removal if needed. Safety is paramount to us for refreshed awards - so please don’t be shy (we know you won’t be) if there are other ways we can ensure safety for your communities as awards roll back out. NSFW subreddits, trauma and addiction support subreddits, and subreddits with mature content are not eligible for awards.
If you had a balance when we announced that coins were going away, you’ll have access to a number of exclusive awards to give for free when we launch this week. No action required, those eligible will see a balance of these awards when awarding a post or comment starting May 15.
Exclusive awards available to coin holders
For more info, you can check out the help articles for awards[4], gold [5]and Contributor Program[6]. Comment with any questions!
4: https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/articles/26465598697876
5: https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/17331548463764
6: https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/17331620007572
Comment by SmEllen_Fresh at 15/05/2024 at 18:34 UTC*
1 upvotes, 1 direct replies
A: Your award and the amount of gold associated with your award will reflect in the awards leaderboard that can be accessed from the awards button on the post or comment.When a poster or commenter gets an award, they will be notified of the award including a private message from you if you choose to add one. If eligible for the Contributor Program, they may be eligible for a cash payout based on the total amount of gold and karma they have earned.
A: Eligibility criteria here[1]. Note: Any golden upvotes you’ve earned will count toward eligibility. Reddit will convert the number of golden upvotes you’ve earned to the new gold amount.
1: https://www.reddit.com/contributor-program
A: The type and number of free awards you get is based on your coins balance as of July 13, 2023, the day we announced that we were sunsetting coins and awards. Folks with higher balances get more free rewards to give, and a greater variety of awards. Past coins balance holders will see these awards automatically in their account. There’s nothing they need to do to get them. Free awards will expire on December 31, 2024 at 11:59pm PT, so be sure to use them before then.
A: Redditors could historically buy coins, earn coins, or get them for free and use them exclusively to give awards. Now, gold can only be bought to give awards and earned gold will be used as part of the calculation for earnings in the Contributor Program. Therefore, converting the coin balance to gold wouldn't have resulted in similar outcomes. However, regardless of how the coins were attained, they represented a deep commitment to Reddit which we want to acknowledge through these awards.
A: No. Moderators cannot disable the awards experience or specific awards for their community. Moderators do have the option to remove an award from a specific comment or post if it has been reported. If removed, redditors won’t be able to give that award to the post or comment moving forward.Awards will not be available for communities that are Not Safe for Work (NSFW), mature, trauma support, and addiction support.
A: This release doesn’t change the benefits of Premium subscriptions. Learn more[2] about what comes with Reddit Premium.
2: https://www.reddit.com/premium
Comment by ternera at 15/05/2024 at 20:34 UTC
45 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Not very nice to make us all waste our piles of coins because the program was going away, only to bring it back and make us pay to get more "gold"/coins...
Comment by nerdshark at 15/05/2024 at 18:41 UTC
45 upvotes, 2 direct replies
If redditors notice potentially harmful awards on a post or comment, they can report it to you for removal if needed. Safety is paramount to us for refreshed awards - so please don’t be shy (we know you won’t be) if there are other ways we can ensure safety for your communities as awards roll back out. NSFW subreddits, trauma and addiction support subreddits, and subreddits with mature content are not eligible for awards.
Does this also include general mental health support subreddits like /r/adhd? Because it needs to. We mods don't want this on /r/adhd whatsoever.
Comment by ___Vii___ at 15/05/2024 at 22:16 UTC
19 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Question: You say moderators can remove content that inappropriately applies an “award”
• Are these “awards” anonymous, or can we, as mods, see who gives them so we can take **proper** actions? Is there a way to remove the awards from comments, or would we need to just remove the comment as a whole?
• Is there any compensation for these removed awards? Partial refunds, refunds to use them again somewhere else if it’s within X timeframe? Although mods may find them inappropriate, someone may provide them in good faith. This goes for removed posts/comments too. Someone providing an award may not realize the content breaks rules, and they’ve wasted money.
Comment by The_King_of_Okay at 15/05/2024 at 23:33 UTC
18 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I'd rather just have the gold I paid for back. Stealing it and then ignoring all my requests for a refund still feels really crappy of you guys even if you're now gonna give some free awards. The whole experience has put me off giving any more money to reddit like I did in the past.
Comment by drecz at 15/05/2024 at 19:32 UTC
11 upvotes, 2 direct replies
Will community awards ever make a comeback?
Comment by enfrozt at 15/05/2024 at 19:42 UTC*
34 upvotes, 2 direct replies
I remember getting gold years and years ago on various comments/posts and it always felt special. Someone recognized you helped them or did some good. You'd get tangible upgrades on the website. I wanted to share that feeling with others, and bought gold for them.
The elephant in the room is the reputation of the website from last year's protests, CEO's lack of good will, abandonment of old.reddit, the IPO, yanking peoples coins away, the staggering amount of spam/bots/reposts lately (partly because of the paid program), and people generally moving away or engaging less with the website due to last year.
I can't think of a single person I know, who were once die hard reddit fans ever spending a cent on this website anymore because of all of the above. The sentiment I get from friends is it's embarrassing to still be a redditor, and that the site is overrun with bots, and ChatGPT comments.
What I'm saying is there was once a special feeling about posting, commenting, and awards/gold. I really think that rekindling that feeling is part of the equation. I *get* that feeling on Twitch or Discord when considering subscribing for tangible benefits. Discord's profile effects, banners, animated profile pictures, and the vast amount of beautiful emotes is a no brainer for a lot of people.
The current proposed emotes feel a bit... facebook-y/juvenile? This isn't the first update that I immediately thought "facebook", and I can only assume it's intentional to have Reddit start making money like Facebook does. I appreciate the galaxy brain, heart, and popcorn/kermit etc... but they lack a certain visual excitement such as twitch or discord emotes would have. I would much rather prefer a clean 2d drawn image, than a low-fidelity 2.5d blender image of a generic emoji reddit-ified (although I'll admit the popcorn image looks very clean).
Not that twitch is profitable either, but people are willing to spend a lot of money there with subscriptions, emotes, and cheer bits.
Maybe my feedback about the lack of spending money atmosphere, as well as the emotes not really resonating might be somewhat helpful.
Comment by kc2syk at 16/05/2024 at 18:57 UTC*
11 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Is there json API support for knowing what awards are on posts/comments?
Edit: I found a comment with awards[1]. The award is only visible on sh.reddit.com. Not on new.reddit.com or old.reddit.com. The JSON API[2] has award-related fields, but the values are empty:
1: https://sh.reddit.com/r/datingoverforty/comments/1cu9yk2/comment/l4hc0zx/
2: https://www.reddit.com/r/datingoverforty/comments/1cu9yk2/am_i_unreasonable/l4hc0zx/.json
total_awards_received: 0
awarders: []
all_awardings: []
top_awarded_type: null
associated_award: null
gilded: 0
gildings: {}
Not cool.
Comment by shiruken at 15/05/2024 at 19:04 UTC
21 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Just out of curiosity, what was the adoption rate for the Golden Upvote program? I feel like I barely saw it enabled anywhere.
Comment by alleybetwixt at 15/05/2024 at 19:46 UTC*
22 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Funny that the example animation is granting the snake award. That’s the one I would disable immediately for my communities because it only gets used maliciously. But now we can’t disable individual awards.
Can users literally report a maliciously granted award within the reporting flow? Or they would have to report the comment/post broadly and we’d have to guess that’s what they were reporting?
Comment by MrTommyPickles at 15/05/2024 at 20:10 UTC
21 upvotes, 1 direct replies
When are moderators going to receive credit towards the contributor program for the awards our subs generate?
Comment by RandommUser at 15/05/2024 at 20:24 UTC
8 upvotes, 0 direct replies
they can report it to you for removal if needed.
is there automod support coming for this? Also can they be reinstated?
Comment by Lord_TheJc at 15/05/2024 at 19:46 UTC
10 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Hello, I’m just gonna repeat here the same concerns I already wrote about in the other thread, just with a moderation focus:
Q: As a mod, can we disable this feature from our community? Or can we disable specific awards from our community?
A: No. Moderators cannot disable the awards experience or specific awards for their community.
I understand not allowing to disable the feature altogether, fine.
But why not even allow some finetuning over single specific awards?
Look I have yet to see the new list of awards, but are you that confident those will not be abusable?
Maybe I’m too pessimist. Actually I know I am since I don’t remember any “award abuse” on my sub (but we did disable some!), still I notice this is a missing setting that could very much be useful.
Please consider adding the possibility to disable specific awards.
Comment by GroundbreakingDot872 at 15/05/2024 at 18:49 UTC*
20 upvotes, 1 direct replies
So essentially, it's going back to the way it used to be, and it was pointless to take awards away in the first place.
Comment by rebcart at 15/05/2024 at 19:29 UTC
22 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Why wouldn’t you re-enable this on old.reddit to make visible historically gilded/awarded posts?
When are you bringing back the /gilded page? How am I supposed to report/moderate bad awards if you’re not going to make them visible to me on old.reddit which is the ONLY functional moderation UI for me?
For those of us NOT eligible for the contributor program, for whatever reason (including adamant refusal to sign up), why wouldn’t you allow us to re-spend any gold we might earn to buy awards for someone else? Is it just going to languish on a page somewhere forever?
Comment by Monoking2 at 16/05/2024 at 13:00 UTC
4 upvotes, 0 direct replies
i appreciate the transparency/recognition that taking away the visual aspect of rewards was a bad idea. to be honest, it's made tons of reddit threads/comments stop having context, because their original context was directly related to awards. not even older threads, either, fairly new ones. it made the site feel really ... empty.
Comment by GreamDesu at 16/05/2024 at 22:16 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
No awards for mods as always
Comment by 7hr0wn at 15/05/2024 at 18:37 UTC
19 upvotes, 2 direct replies
Not available on old.reddit?
Are there plans to add it, or are those of us who mod exclusively on the original platform going to be left behind?
Comment by AoyagiAichou at 16/05/2024 at 08:53 UTC*
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I love community awards making a comeback, but one question - are these going to work in old Reddit? You (as in Reddit development) seems to be phasing it out now that the log in link in old Reddit redirects to new Reddit. So there is no way to log in without going to new Reddit now.
Edit: Ah, apologies, you already responded below. It won't be available on old.reddit.
Comment by ternera at 16/05/2024 at 12:13 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Are you brining back the guilding trophies for this?
Comment by Icy-Book2999 at 16/05/2024 at 20:09 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Two questions:
1. Private subs? I see some of mine have awards, others don't. Or is this just part of the nature of things slowly still rolling out?
2. You mention the coin balance for June 2023, a lot of coins were spent just after that timeframe when things were sunsetted. So presumably any awarded coins that would have come with Gold/Platinum/Argentum/etc at the time that we're never awarded due to the sunsetting of the cons still won't be rewarded?
Comment by 9Ghillie at 17/05/2024 at 07:16 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Will the community wallet be making a comeback? It was a great way to reward winners of contests and otherwise good contributors.
Comment by YannisALT at 15/05/2024 at 20:58 UTC
5 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Do we need to re-install reddit app or has this just not rolled out yet? Because I don't see it and I just scrolled Popular and don't see anyone else using it yet.
Comment by anonboxis at 16/05/2024 at 05:44 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Love this update and awesome to see that the Contributor Program is expanding! Hoping to earn 1,000 gold soon to get in!
Comment by Shachar2like at 16/05/2024 at 06:41 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I'm a bit curious how's the eligibility of countries being done? is it dependent on specific laws, rules, regulations and 'minimal diplomacy status' (meaning not being sanctioned) of those countries?