Removal Reasons

Platforms: Old Reddit and New Reddit · Default: Enabled

Removal Reasons wires up the removal button to display a dialog with your subreddit’s configured removal reasons, letting you select a reason and send a removal message to the author in one step.

Overview

When you click the remove button on a post or comment, Removal Reasons intercepts the action and shows a panel listing your subreddit’s configured reasons. Select one, fill in any interactive fields, and confirm — the item is removed and the message is sent in the configured reply method. If a subreddit has no removal reasons configured, Removal Reasons can still show an empty box for a custom message.

Removal reasons are configured per-subreddit in the Config overlay (Removal Reasons tab).

Features

Drawer or popup display — the removal reason dialog can appear as a side drawer (default) or a modal popup. The drawer keeps the removed content visible alongside the dialog.

Interactive fill-in fields — reasons can include {input:…}, {textarea:…}, and {select:…} tokens that become fill-in fields in the dialog (see Removal reason format).

Substitution tokens — reason text is processed for substitution tokens ({author}, {subreddit}, etc.) before sending.

Multiple reply methods — configure per-subreddit whether the removal message is sent as a comment reply, a PM, both, or only logged to the log subreddit.

Send as subreddit — optionally send the removal message as the subreddit account.

Auto-archive PM — optionally archive the removal PM after sending.

Sticky and distinguish — optionally sticky and/or distinguish the removal comment.

Reply as ModTeam — send the removal comment as /u/subreddit-ModTeam.

Lock thread after removal — optionally lock the post or comment thread at the same time.

Comment reasons — optionally enable removal reasons for comments, not just posts.

Silent removal for deleted users — skip the removal dialog and silently remove items authored by deleted accounts.

Suggested removal reasons — map report text to removal reasons so the right reasons are pre-selected when you open the overlay on a reported item (see Suggested removal reasons).

Sync Reddit’s removal reasons — import the removal reasons configured in Reddit’s own Mod Tools and keep them up to date, so you only maintain them in one place (see Syncing Reddit’s removal reasons).

Fall back to Reddit’s removal reasons — in subreddits with no toolbox reasons at all, offer Reddit’s native ones rather than nothing (see Falling back to Reddit’s removal reasons).

Removal reason format

Reason text supports two kinds of tokens:

Substitution tokens

These are replaced with contextual values before the message is sent:

Token	Value
{subreddit}	Subreddit name
{author}	Username of the removed item’s author
{mod}	Username of the acting moderator
{title}	Post title
{url}	Post URL
{permalink}	Permalink to the post or comment
{domain}	Link domain
{body}	Post or comment body text

Interactive tokens

These become fill-in fields in the removal dialog:

Token	Result
{input: placeholder}	Single-line text field
{textarea: placeholder}	Multi-line text field
{select:name}	Dropdown menu; options defined in the reason’s selects array

A stable field ID can be appended for persistence between dialog opens: {input#flightnum: Flight number}.

Suggested removal reasons

Suggested removal reasons connect the reports on a queue item to your removal reasons. When you open the removal overlay on an item whose report matches one of your mappings, the mapped reason(s) are pre-selected for you — you can remove with one confirm, adjust the selection first, or clear the suggestions entirely.

You configure mappings per-subreddit in the Config overlay, on the Suggested removal reasons tab. Each mapping has:

• When a report contains — the text to look for in a report, matched as a case-insensitive substring. AutoMod is the common case, so you can pick a reason straight from your AutoMod config with the Insert from AutoMod… dropdown next to the field.

• Suggest these removal reason(s) — one or more of your configured removal reasons to pre-select when the pattern matches.

• Also match user reports — off by default. Reports filed by any moderator or bot always match; enable this to also match reports filed by users (both rule selections and free-text reports).

Each mapping is its own card with its own Save mapping button; use Add new suggestion at the bottom to create one. Removal reasons must already exist (on the Edit removal reasons tab) before you can map reports to them.

In the queue and overlay:

• The toolbox remove button reads remove (suggestions) on items that have a matching suggestion, so you can tell at a glance before opening the overlay.

• Inside the overlay, suggested reasons are pre-checked and marked with a Suggested badge, and a notice at the top lets you Clear suggested in one click.

Pre-selection is a personal preference: turn off Pre-select suggested removal reasons in this module’s settings to ignore mappings entirely (no pre-selection and no “(suggestions)” label), without changing the subreddit’s configuration.

Syncing Reddit’s removal reasons

Reddit has its own removal reasons, configured in the new mod tools under Saved Responses → Removals (https://sh.reddit.com/mod/<subreddit>/saved-responses/removals). Note that these are not your community rules - having rules configured does not give you removal reasons, and a subreddit that has never created one has nothing for toolbox to import. If your subreddit already maintains them there, toolbox can import them instead of making you write everything out a second time.

Turn on Import Reddit’s removal reasons and keep them up to date at the top of the Edit removal reasons tab in the toolbox config editor, next to the reasons it manages. Imported reasons then appear alongside your own, marked with a Native chip.

What Reddit owns, and what you own. The sync is one way. Reddit owns each imported reason’s title and message — both are read-only in the toolbox editor, and any change you make in Mod Tools replaces them on the next sync. Everything else belongs to toolbox and is preserved across syncs:

• post flair to apply on removal

• the default usernote and note type

• whether the reason applies to posts, comments, or both

So the normal workflow is to write the wording in Mod Tools and attach the toolbox-only extras here.

Reddit’s macros. A native removal reason can use Reddit’s own macros, and toolbox fills them in the same way Reddit would, so what you see in the preview is what the author receives:

Macro	Filled with
{content_type}	post or comment
{content_title}	the post’s title
{content_body}	the removed item’s text
{content_link}	permalink to the removed item
{content_domain}	the link’s domain (empty for text posts)
{community_name}	the subreddit’s display title
{community_link}	r/yoursubreddit
{community_description}	the subreddit’s public description
{community_rules_url}	link to the subreddit’s rules page
{community_rule_1}, {community_rule_2}, …	that numbered rule, name and description

Toolbox’s own tokens ({author}, {subreddit}, {input:…} and the rest) work in these reasons too, and the two sets cannot clash.

Note

{linked_community_rule} is the one macro toolbox cannot fill in. It means “the rule this removal reason is attached to”, and Reddit does not tell toolbox which rule that is.

Rather than delete it silently, toolbox leaves it in place and warns you in the removal dialog before you send, naming the macro. Use a numbered {community_rule_1} in Reddit’s mod tools instead. If you send anyway, the author receives the macro exactly as written.

Staying in sync. Toolbox re-checks in the background when you open the removal drawer or the config editor, at most once every 15 minutes per subreddit, and only writes when something actually changed upstream. Because the check happens in the background, an edit you just made in Mod Tools usually appears the next time you open the drawer. Press Sync from Reddit, beside the toggle, to pull changes immediately; it also shows when a change was last imported.

Two times are shown under the setting, and they mean different things. Last imported a change is the last time a sync actually brought something across; an old date there just means Reddit’s reasons have not changed since, which is the normal state for a settled subreddit. Last checked is the last time your browser read Reddit’s list at all, so it keeps moving even when nothing changes — that is the one to look at to confirm syncing is working. It is local to you, so a moderator who has not opened the subreddit recently will see an older time than a colleague who has.

If a background sync fails — Reddit is unreachable, or your account cannot edit the config wiki page — the failure is reported here in red, with what went wrong and when. Background syncing never interrupts a removal to tell you, so this is where a persistently broken sync shows up. The message clears itself as soon as a run succeeds.

A failure to write is treated as the more serious kind, because the usual cause is an account without the wiki moderator permission, which will not fix itself. Toolbox stops retrying that subreddit for half a day rather than re-checking every 15 minutes to fail the same way. A failure to read is assumed to be a passing network problem and retries normally. Sync from Reddit ignores the backoff, so once the permission is granted you can retry straight away.

Making an imported reason your own. If you want to keep a reason but take over its wording, press the link button on its card in the Edit removal reasons tab. It becomes an ordinary toolbox reason: the title and message are editable again and stop being overwritten, and the Native chip goes away. The reason on Reddit is untouched, and it will not be imported a second time.

Toolbox warns you first, because the conversion is one way — later edits in Reddit’s mod tools will no longer reach that reason.

Note

Turning syncing off and on again after converting a reason re-imports the Reddit original, so you would end up with both it and your converted copy. Delete whichever you don’t want.

Deleting. Deleting a reason in Mod Tools removes the toolbox copy on the next sync. Deleting an imported reason in the toolbox editor keeps it out — it will not be re-imported — but leaves it untouched on Reddit.

Turning it off. Switching Import Reddit’s removal reasons and keep them up to date back off removes the imported reasons from toolbox, along with any flair and usernote settings you attached to them. Your hand-written reasons are untouched, and nothing changes on Reddit’s side. Toolbox asks for confirmation first, and tells you how many reasons will go.

This is also how you undo a deletion you did not mean: turn syncing off and then on again, and the whole set is imported afresh, including anything you had previously deleted.

Removals are recorded in Reddit’s mod log. Because an imported reason keeps its link to Reddit’s reason, removing something with it also registers that reason against the item in Reddit’s own mod log, which a hand-written toolbox reason does not do.

Note

Imported reasons are not written to the legacy toolbox 6.x config page, so moderators still using toolbox 6.x will not see them. If every reason in your subreddit is imported, 6.x users will see no removal reasons at all.

Note

A subreddit that pulls its removal reasons from another subreddit (the Get reasons from advanced setting) is never synced into — its own reason list is unused. Turn syncing on in the source subreddit instead.

Falling back to Reddit’s removal reasons

Syncing is something a subreddit opts into, and it writes to that subreddit’s config. The fallback is the opposite: it is your own setting, it changes nothing for anyone else, and it needs no configuration at all.

In a subreddit that has no toolbox removal reasons, the overlay offers Reddit’s native ones instead of coming up empty. This is on by default; turn off Use Reddit’s removal reasons as a fallback in this module’s settings to go back to the empty box.

It is deliberately either/or — you never see toolbox reasons and native ones mixed together. As soon as a subreddit has a single toolbox reason configured, the fallback stops applying there and syncing becomes the way to combine the two.

Fallback reasons behave like your own in most respects. Fill-in fields ({input:…}, {textarea:…}, {select:…}) and substitution tokens ({author}, {subreddit}, …) work exactly as they do in configured reasons, and if your subreddit has a message template — header, footer, modmail subject, removal-log settings — it is applied to them too. Only the reason list itself is coming from Reddit.

They are more limited in two ways:

• they are read-only: Reddit owns the wording, so they cannot be edited or reordered from the overlay

• no post flair, usernote default, or post/comment restriction is attached, because those live in a toolbox reason and these are not stored anywhere

A subreddit with no toolbox config at all has no message template to apply, so there the message is just the reason text.

As with imported reasons, removing something with a native reason registers that reason against the item in Reddit’s own mod log.

Settings

Setting	Default	Description
Enable comment removal reasons	Off	Show removal reasons when removing comments
Always show empty removal box	Off	Show the dialog even for subreddits with no configured reasons
Use Reddit’s removal reasons as a fallback	On	Offer Reddit’s native removal reasons in subreddits that have no toolbox reasons
Display mode	Drawer	Show reasons as a side drawer or legacy popup
Silent removal for deleted users	Off	Skip the dialog and silently remove deleted-user content
Reply method	Comment reply	How the removal message is sent (comment, PM, both, or none)
Send as subreddit	Off	Send removal messages as the subreddit account
Auto-archive sent PM	Off	Archive the removal PM after sending
Sticky removal comment	Off	Sticky the removal reason comment
Reply as /u/subreddit-ModTeam	Off	Send removal comment as ModTeam account
Lock thread after removal	Off	Lock the thread when removing
Lock removal comment	Off	Lock the removal reason comment
Disable remove button after removal	Off	Grey out the remove button after an item is removed
Pre-select suggested removal reasons	On	Pre-select reasons mapped from an item’s reports, and flag matching items with “(suggestions)” on the remove button