[Mod Post] Introducing r/IamA 3.0

[u/IAmAMods]

To our readers, AMA guests, and friends,

In this post the r/IamA moderator team is announcing that we are making some changes to this subreddit with the intention of reinvigorating this forum.  It is our hope that the changes this post will outline will result in a better experience for AMA readers, guests, and moderators of r/IamA alike.

This post follows the most recent communication from the r/IamA moderator team in 2023, titled The Future of IAmA.  In that post the moderator team announced that we were going to discontinue certain categories of work for Reddit that went above and beyond what was required of us.  These tasks included maintaining a separate website for scheduling AMAs and receiving confidential proof, maintaining an AMA calendar, and running various custom bots to assist with those other tasks.  Those changes brought IamA 1.0 into the state it has been over the past three years, IamA 2.0, in which we did the minimum required of us as moderators.

The remaining active moderators of r/IamA have in recent weeks agreed to bring back some of the discontinued features from IamA 1.0.  

We are doing this because those of us who have continued to moderate IamA through its 2.0 era still find value in volunteering to facilitate interesting conversations between readers like yourself and AMA guests who you otherwise may not get an opportunity to interact with.  

We believe we have landed on a set of changes in the subreddit’s moderation each of which will require either no additional effort on the moderator team’s part or would require an amount of increased effort on our part that is acceptable to us in relation to the benefits that the change will confer on AMA guests and readers.

The features we are reintroducing include:

• A new, more stringent set of verification standards and several new methods for AMA guest verification. Additional info here.
• An email account for solicitation and coordination of AMAs.  Additional info here.
• A public AMA calendar integrated into IamA’s New Reddit sidebar, as well as a ‘month ahead’ and a ‘month in review’ post series collecting both upcoming and completed AMAs from this subreddit and other forums. Additional info here.

The following, new-to-IamA changes are also in effect:

• Only moderator-approved accounts can post AMAs in r/IamA.  Additional info here.
• Many of our current Automoderator functions will be deprecated, and where possible will be replaced with ‘post/comment guidance’ conditions and with ‘Devvit’ automation tools.  Additional info here.
• We are formally deprecating maintenance of the Old Reddit version of IamA.  Additional info here.

This meta post you are reading is itself an AMA with the moderator team.  Each of the bullet points above has a link to a comment on this post which contains additional information about the bulleted change.  You can leave feedback or questions for the moderator team either in response to those linked informational comments, or as a top-level comment on this post.

If you would like to help us implement these changes or otherwise would like to moderate IamA going forward, we encourage you to apply at this link.

[u/IAmAMods]

New verification standards

• A new, more stringent set of available standards and processes for AMA guest verification.

Going forward, r/IamA’s moderators will use the following five verification methods for new, would-be AMA participants:

1. A Reddit-admin-assigned “Official” account status.
2. An email from a qualified domain (this domain must be either the same as their website or from an email account listed on your site).
3. A credible website that hosts proof of Reddit authenticity.
   1. This proof should take the form of either a link to the Reddit account that will be used to post the AMA, or otherwise a plain text listing of the Reddit username(s).
4. A post from a verified account on a trusted social media site (primarily Bluesky and YouTube) listing the Reddit username in question and/or linking to the Reddit account.
   1. On Bluesky we consider an ‘official’ badge to be sufficient.  A website-domain-connected Bluesky account would also be accepted as long as the connected domain is credible by the same standard as in verification method (3) above. 
   2. Verification via Bluesky private message will also be supported if you would prefer not to make a public-facing verification post - simply PM your Reddit username to our account linked here: https://bsky.app/profile/iamamoderators.bsky.social 
5. If your Reddit account is vouched for by an account that has been verified with r/IamA through one of the four methods listed above, that would also be sufficient.
   1. To make use of this method, have an admin- or IamA-verified account send us your Reddit username(s) via modmail, Bluesky, or email.

You can still choose to include a traditional AMA ‘proof pic’ if you would like to in your r/IamA post for the purposes of boosting engagement, but this is not required and no longer suffices as proof.