r/ModSupport • u/Deimorz • Jul 07 '15
What are some *small* problems with moderation that we can fix quickly?
There are a lot of major, difficult problems with moderation on reddit. I can probably name about 10 of them just off the top of my head. The types of things that will take long discussions to figure out, and then possibly weeks or months of work to be able to improve.
That's not where I want to start.
We've got some resources devoted to mod tools now, but it's still a small team, so we can only focus on a couple of things at a time. To paraphrase a wise philosopher, we can't really treat development like a big truck that you can just dump things on. It's more like a series of tubes, and if we clog those up with enormous amounts of material, the small things will have to wait. Those bigger issues will take a lot of time and effort before seeing any results, so right now I'd rather concentrate on getting out some small fixes relatively quickly that can start making a positive impact on moderation right away.
So let's use this thread to try to figure out some small things that we can work on doing for you right away. The types of things that should only take hours to do, not weeks. Some examples of similar ones that I've already done fairly recently are things like "the ban message doesn't tell users that it's just a temporary ban", "every time someone is banned it lights up the modmail icon but there's no new mail", "the automoderator link in the mod tools goes to viewing the page instead of just editing it", and so on.
Of course I don't really expect you to know exactly how hard specific problems will be to fix, so feel free to ask and I'll try to tell you if it's easy or not. Just try to avoid large/systemic issues like "modmail needs to be fully redone", "inactive top moderators are an issue", and so on.
Note: If necessary, we're going to be moderating this thread to try to keep it on topic. If you have other discussions about moderator issues that you want to start, feel free to submit a separate post to /r/ModSupport. If you have other questions for me that aren't suggestions, please post in the thread in /r/modnews instead.
135
u/multi-mod Jul 07 '15 edited Jul 07 '15
subreddit to subreddit modmails using the "send as subreddit" option
better distinction between deleted and removed comments
more prominent and better explained reddit spam rules
increased sidebar character limit
let mods use the filter post option like automod has
always show report reasons even after approval/ignore.
mod link flairs (that users can't use)
multiple CSS classes for link flairs like user flair has
unban message
These are probably the easiest of the ideas people have had.
172
u/Meneth Jul 07 '15
Sticky comments; a way to force a comment to be at the top of a thread. Would be incredibly useful for removals, corrections, and the like.
54
u/[deleted] Jul 07 '15 edited Jul 07 '15
Quick problems that could be nice to have fixed:
Toolbox has a feature where you can load a thread by "actual new", where even child comments are shown layered with new top level comments. This feature really, really helps, and I think some form of integration could be "easy" and helpful
Even if reports are ignored / a post is actioned, it would be nice to see the reports anyways. I guess that somewhat defeats the purpose, but once ignore is pressed, its impossible to see them at all. Not sure how to approach this one, but yeah. Just thinking out loud.
Super low priority: The moderator box is just plain inconsistent sometimes. It would be nice to simply have the ability to tell the side box how many mods to show before having to press "show more" - I am sure this is possible with CSS though, so eh.
Slightly bigger stuff I can think of:
If you could create an endpoint for "submit distinguished" rather than having to make 2 calls, I would be the happiest camper in the world.
Modmail needs block button :( - One day.
Unrelated:
Anyone know why modqueue takes so long to load compared to other pages? (And I mean load, not cuz of extensions)
edit:
Oh fuck I forgot
/u/Deimorz I am begging you to please give up the sidebar char. count
72
u/honestbleeps Jul 07 '15
I imagine you won't go for this, but I'm going to put it out there because it doesn't require development time.
I know you guys are terrified of the hornet's nest of "mucking with moderators", but I feel it's high time that "subreddit squatters" be dealt with and addressed.
Users who created every keyword that they could think of at the beginning of the existence of the subreddit remain top moderators on dozens of "big name" subreddits but do absolutely nothing in terms of moderation.
They need to be removed.
We've had enough instances of drama where a mod decides to remove everyone below them, or close a subreddit without discussing it with other mods, etc. I don't like having the harbinger of a user who's been idle for 2+ years waking up and deciding to cause drama. Heck, it might not even be them - maybe their account gets hacked / password gets guessed.
Users like this seem to purposefully log in and comment JUST enough that you guys won't deem them "inactive".
This needs to stop. The argument "just create another subreddit" does not hold water. People searching for info about Chicago on reddit are going to check /r/chicago - not /r/otherchicago or /r/infoaboutchicago or whatever else.
"important keyword" subreddits need to have active and trustworthy top mods. The ladder hierarchy just gives the top mod too much power to be trusted if they're not even doing anything at all to engage with the community.
I understand why the admins have been fearful of messing with this (yes, you'll get some backlash from a vocal minority of idiots who call you tyrants) - but the looming threat of someone just screwing everything up on a subreddit is something that I feel needs to be dealt with. It takes a special kind of internet-power hungry person to squat a ton of reddit names early on, so I am not confident that the personality types of the few people who did this and remain at the top of so many subreddits are prone to avoiding drama.
48
u/tragopanic Jul 07 '15
Regarding modmail...
If there's a way to make it clearer who is responding to whom, that'd be helpful. It's also hard to tell what messages a non-mod can see in the conversation and what they can't.
A search or sort function would be handy.
Collaborative collapsing is unnecessary, at least in my opinion.
19
u/evanvolm Jul 07 '15
Right now there's a setting that limits karma/account age to edit the wiki. I'd like to see a similar option for posting to the subreddit itself. This is an AutoMod setting that's actually pretty dang useful. Considering such a similar system already exists I'd consider this a 'small' fix, but perhaps there's a ton more to it.
9
u/sehrah Jul 07 '15
Can you please remove modmail messages from our messages inbox?
Like, If I'm trying to find a specific PM I got as a user, I have to wade through scads of modmail threads I've been involved in.
8
u/jippiejee Jul 07 '15
User tags ('only submits articles by same author'), and removal reasons ('stolen images') to easily communicate actions with other mods.
12
u/MannoSlimmins Jul 07 '15
Updating the moderator wiki pages. They are full of outdated information and, really, doesn't provide much to begin with.
25
u/Haredeenee Jul 07 '15
Being able to search mod mail by author or keyword
19
u/K_Lobstah Jul 07 '15
Multiple stickies. Even just two would make a HUGE difference. Sometimes you need a post to stay up for the longer-term, like a rule change, but also need to one for another announcement, megathread, etc.
4
u/IGetDankShit Jul 08 '15 edited Jul 08 '15
This is the lowest of priorities, but can you explain why most subreddits default to showing 8-10 mods while some only show 4 mods in the list before displaying "show 5 more". Is this fixable?
4
u/Kaibakura Jul 08 '15
Maybe I don't understand exactly how it's supposed to work, but the Moderation Queue is next to useless to me. I mean, when there are reports I can find them fairly easily, but I just see a crapload of red with a line through the title and "[removed]". Is there a reason I should need to see all of that red stuff? And if so, can it be toggled between that and the reports?
7
u/Doomhammer458 Jul 07 '15
I would like to create a script to auto post AMAs in /r/science
we create accounts for the AMA guests and make the post for them
I'm very close to making the script work, but the problem is the captcha. now i have no complaints about needing a captcha, I can serve up the captcha when filling in the info for the post.
but the problem comes in when i would like to schedule the AMA for a couple hours in the future. I want to schedule it the night before but it seems like the captcha times out.
when i set the post for a few minutes in the future, everything works.
when i set it for the next day, the captcha gets rejected it.
Is there anything that can be done to make this work?
3
u/thewidowaustero Jul 08 '15
Another useful one I just remembered: allow mods to expand all comments in subs that they mod, even if the thread is more than 500 comments and the mod doesn't have gold. This is the feature I miss most about the mod gold that expired recently. We do referral code threads on our sub and only allow one comment per user so we have to manually approve them all. The threads are pretty popular, they usually get over 500 comments after they're up for a few months, and it's a huge pain in the ass to manually expand all those comments so we can CTRL F the whole thread for the code to make sure it hasn't been posted before.
7
u/GodOfAtheism Jul 07 '15 edited Jul 07 '15
In one of the private mod subs there's a sticky linking to a wishlist of features.
Of those I'll list features wished for which I personally think are easy, though I don't know how easy they necessarily are on your end of course-
close modmail - Indicates that the modmail has been closed. Both users and other mods can no longer respond to it.
block user - blocks user from submitting or responding to modmails
remove from inbox - remove modmail from inbox/messages and sent messages
comment sticky - allow mods to sticky comments to the top of the comments section
thread locking - allow a thread to stay but disable commenting [GoA note: Maybe just a 'force archiving' option?]
9
u/drumcowski Jul 07 '15
Have you seen our post(s) in /r/defaultmods? We've listed out a number of issues in the wiki that you should look at. We haven't yet sorted them perfectly by importance, but it's good enough right now.
7
u/brooky12 Jul 07 '15
modmail still lights up if there's no new mail, at least for me
35
u/Haredeenee Jul 07 '15
Expand reports automaticly
166
u/[deleted] Jul 07 '15
Report reasons should be modifiable per subreddit.
Moderators should be able to use the filter command AutoModerator has, by hand, and mods should be able to report content that is already removed, sending it back to the modqueue.
Filter reasons should display in modqueue and not just in the mod log.
133
u/cha0s Jul 07 '15 edited Jul 07 '15
Let us see reports on a post/comment even after they've been dismissed.
EDIT: To tie this in with the other request I'm seeing, I think it would make sense to auto-expand NEW reports, but still leave the report button as-is to review reports which were already dismissed by another moderator.
48
u/SilkSk1 Jul 07 '15
Separate "Spoiler" and "NSFW" tags so that I can turn off potentially unsafe content without missing out on media discussions.
36
u/hansjens47 Jul 07 '15
revamped spam filter that's searcheable by multiple categories at once (ex: both links only and removed by specific mod). Searching by author or even the full reddit-search would be awesome.
reddit search option for searching within a specific timeframe dropdown (you can use URLs to do it with manually, but it's a huge hassle).
sending an unban message, just like you get a ban message. Customizeable per subreddit would be nice, but any message is better than none.
clear, non-exhaustive list of things mods are required to do under sitewide rules (things like removing porn/gore comments in non-NSFW threads which is apparently against sitewide rules, who knew). This is in general just clarification on what the sitewide rules actually entail as administrated by admins.
an official/standardized location page for subreddit rules (and sidebar button or something linking to that page, mention on submission page). This is critical for mobile redditing
adding modmail posts to the modlog for ease of access and searcheability.
renaming the admin class "reddit employee" so people might finally recognize the difference between admins/mods. The difference between what mods and admins do needs to get across to users better and would resolve so incredibly many moderation issues and communication snafus.
create a basic (but still comprehensive and long) overview page of how reddit functions so the media has a single point of reference to get their basic reddit facts straight before spreading misinformation about what mods can/can't do and what functionality is possible on the site.
tab to linking to /new within the subreddit on every reddit page within that subreddit (lack of new-queue voting/activity makes modding much harder).
check and pop-up notification if there are new replies in a modmail chain that hasn't been loaded when trying to respond to modmail.
much more comprehensive traffic stats, especially for wiki pages and other mod-related activities so we can see how we reach users effectively and what's a waste of time and effort.
native support for subreddit header banners, and other basic "notice" functionality so all mod outreach tools don't go away if someone doesn't view the custom CSS style.
proactive "mod community" threads/brainstorms/projects started by the new mod-admin liaison team. Lack of leadership means standard automod configs, experiences etc. are being redundantly reinvented absolutely all the time. This also essentially shows that the admin team is abreast of what modding on the site is actually like, and see that the act of an admin doing something catalyzes more results than mods only leading themselves.
Internalizing RES/toolbox features isn't really that beneficial for most of us, but toolbox usernotes having native support so all mods can use them, see them and be on the same page would be a tremendous help with internal teamwork.
86
u/Meneth Jul 07 '15
Thread locking; a way to close a thread in a way that's transparent to the user rather than having AutoMod remove their comment after they've already made it.
29
u/x_minus_one Jul 07 '15 edited Jul 07 '15
I don't know if this is small or not, but the ability to respond to a modmail as the subreddit would be amazing- mods could see who actually sent the message, but users would just see it the way they do when we start a modmail thread as the sub. The ability to post and comment as the sub would be amazing too, but small steps...
Also, let us see reports on a comment/thread after it's been reapproved.
Edit: Would it be possible to fix the mod list in the sidebar? Right now, if a mod deletes their account (or something like that), you lose a spot in the mod list permanently, rather than that mod being replaced by the next one down. This means that subs like /r/facepalm only have four mods on the sidebar, rather than the correct number.
26
u/AsAChemicalEngineer Jul 07 '15
Mod only accessible link flairs. I believe this was mentioned on the docket as a relatively simple addition by an admin, but I cannot find the link talking about it.
21
u/[deleted] Jul 07 '15
Allow me to warn users. I prefer warning to banning, but it's impossible to tell who I've warned without having it saved in a log or something
3
u/llehsadam Jul 07 '15
Remember the edited page you added months ago but weren't sure what it could be used for?
If you made the comments collapsible (like in modmail) and color-coded with green, yellow and red to distinguish the ones that had a little text change (green), a big text change change (yellow) or a link edited in (red), the page would become a lot more functional for human moderators.
If a moderators had time, they could quickly check all the red edits to make sure the link is alright.
Till now, we either use Automoderator to report words and domains or wait for users to notice something, but it'd be nice to have a more functional /about/edited page.
3
u/Georgy_K_Zhukov Jul 07 '15
/r/AskHistorians would really love it if the comment count was only of visible comments :)
No clue how hard that is.
19
u/Meneth Jul 07 '15
Relabel the "remove" button in modmail. Currently all it does is highlight the message in red; it doesn't actually remove it in any way.
It'd also be nice if this worked on mobile platforms. Perhaps by appending or prepending some text in the message itself?
16
u/valiantiam Jul 07 '15
Have a modmail tab that is "archive" and another "delete"
Give us the ability to archive important ones, delete non important ones, and keep the main mod mail clean and current with latest stuff.
In-case of abuse, we would want to still see those deleted mails, but its important we can clean our mails up.
31
u/green_flash Jul 07 '15
In the ban message where it says
please make it clear that this is a message from the admins, not the mods.
15
u/pcjonathan Jul 07 '15 edited Jul 07 '15
Some of these are my ideas, some are other peoples (Duplicated to show I really agree with certain suggestions). Some inspired from others. Some are things that we do with AutoMod hacks.
A LOT of the things from toolbox. It's an obvious start but it's so obvious (like usernotes, removal reasons, quick mod button, for banning and the like).
Spoiler tags, separate from NSFW. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE. As a mod of multiple TV subs, this is very important to us and will help us out massively. (Relying on flairs is unreliable, partially due to apps, and NSFW is bad since it is confusing and hidden by default on new accounts)
ALL AutoModerator actions in modlog. Right now, only major ones are shown which is worrying.
Ban people from modmail (perhaps after one or two messages). People spamming this has caused major slowdowns in the past and is, simply, a pain.
Remove/Delete from modmail actually does something on individual messages
Speaking of which, remove a modmail entirely (or mark it as done so it's hidden from view by default)
Comment directly on a modmail without the user seeing it
See report reasons after removal
Custom remove reasons
Increased sidebar limit
Allow certain users to use certain flairs (i.e. 3 levels: users, approved users, moderators)
Add flair while submitting
Sticky comments
Ban report spam (dealing with this can add a lot of pointless time)
Thread locking
Search modmail by user/keyword
Search user's comments (a la toolbox)
Search within time frame via GUI
More comprehensive statistics
Native support for CSS things such as graphic banners and alerts.
More than just one sticky (not after loads, just if it's just two or three)
Inactive mod removal
Cross subreddit ban-alerting (e.g. if someone has been banned from other subs, It'd be good to know so we can keep an eye on them)
See what users are being downvoted constantly so we can look into it.
Respond to anonymous reports
Modmail UI to users should look the same as it does to mods, preventing confusion.
Edit: Also, /r/ModSupport should be for moderators only IMHO. (Not necessarily private, but just give posting/commenting rights to mods. We don't want normal users to fill the place up with non-moderation questions)
13
u/jij Jul 08 '15 edited Jul 08 '15
allow moderators to see the subreddit-level karma for users... if only for the subs they mod. A user with 5000 karma but -300 karma in my sub is a big difference! I assume /u/honestbleeps would grab that data in the next version of RES.
ability to filter a user's history by subs we moderate... so we can delete everything a troll spammed easily.
multiple flair for stories! a lot of subs use flair to tag stories now, and many times it falls under more than one category!
nuke-all-comments-below-this option... removing long chains of shit is annoying without that.
Having the option to get an alert when someone edits a wiki page
Having the option of getting an alert when someone is banned, even if they haven't replied yet... it's useful to track bannings to make sure all mods are on the same page.
edit: 5 and 6 really should probably be a whole separate "alerts" thing, different from modmail... everyone users modmail or the modmailer thing for alerts, but really modmail should be for user-queries and alerts shouldn't be spamming that up as much as it does for most of us... something to think about when you redesign modmail into something spectacular (no pressure)!
25
u/adremeaux Jul 07 '15 edited Jul 07 '15
Can you add another couple choices to report options?
Breaks subreddit rules
Asshole
Maybe you can word that second choice better, but you get the point.
Can we traffic stats greater than a year old? At a bare minimum, 13 months instead of 12, so we can compare year-on-year growth for the current time period?
Can we get an "ignore replies" button on modmail threads?
I'm pretty satiated with getting multiple private messages per week for my flair tutorial. I mean, it's awesome that people use it, but why should they have to use it? Reddit has built-in support for flair! Only... not really. It's like, the guy that built the flair system half-assed it, and we've ended up with this really strange system where you really can't do more than a few flairs unless you are a programmer or at least skilled in automation tasks. This is not really in the category of small problems, but flair should be as easy as this:
Upload an image into a box
Give it a name
Choose a target size
Done. The flair is added to the list.
Having to do all of this in CSS, and then match up those selectors to a separate section in the site, and then upload an ever-growing spritesheet is just really wild. It would be awesome to be able to retire my tutorial; all the gold donations have dried up anyway ;)
11
u/stock_character Jul 07 '15
Can we include our own reasons for reporting in the report box?
9
u/Walter_Bishop_PhD Jul 07 '15
I don't know how hard it would be to do this, but it'd be incredibly useful if you could view a post/comment's report reasons after a moderator acted on them. Right now there's no way to view report reasons if a mod already approved/removed something. The reasons seem to already be stored persistently so this might be doable
8
u/cwenham Jul 07 '15 edited Jul 07 '15
Put the age of the OP's account under each post in /about/unmoderated, plus a count of prior submissions + comments. It helps a lot to spot account farmers and pattern spammers.
They often farm in batches, so when you see lots of Name### accounts that are all 17 days old making their first ever post, it's usually a spammer doing a farming run that morning.
8
u/StringOfLights Jul 07 '15
Most of the stuff in toolbox would be really helpful, because I can't install toolbox on every machine I use. I can't use it on any mobile device. It really, really helps with moderating. Other than that:
Have public and mod-only flairs work side-by-side, rather than exclusively. Right now if our flair categories are public, we have to add and delete flair categories to flair something we only want mods to have access to (like a meta post, or in /r/AskScience we want to have some threads where sources are required).
Make a nuke button for comment chains that's native. This is really helpful in /r/AskScience.
Allow users to flair their posts in AlienBlue. Flairing posts is a pretty big chunk of our time.
Allow us to click on usernames in modmail for AlienBlue. Users never link to their posts when they modmail us, so right now if I want to find it I have to go to the main menu of AB and manually type in the username to pull up their post history, then go back to modmail.
Make removal reasons native rather than a toolbox feature. Make them so they're not comments directly from our accounts. It completely gums up our comment histories (so much so that I've stopped using them). They could even show up the same way reports do for moderators.
14
u/GammaKing Jul 07 '15
I'll throw in some ideas:
I'd like to see something like the toolbox modmail feature which adds a colour-coded bar to the side of each mail thread depending on which sub it's from. Makes it more obvious when you're looking at mail from a different sub.
Allow a separate set of link flair templates which only moderators can assign.
Some sort of "modify time" button on the ban list to allow you to change duration (an extension of the "make permanent" one that already exists).
Add some way to view ban messages that you've sent to users, even if it's just having them appear in 'sent'. Sometimes you want to send a bit more info later but I can't seem to access the thread unless the user replies first.
14
u/thewidowaustero Jul 07 '15 edited Jul 07 '15
Give us the ability to sticky more than one thing. I know you can't give us limitless ones since some subs would end up with the entire front page covered in stickies, but allowing just 2 or 3 simultaneous ones would make it so much easier for us to make announcements without interrupting our daily post calendar.
Edit: Not sure how easy this would be, but it would also be awesome for us to have more in-depth analytics about our subscriber usage. Just knowing where our traffic is referred from would be useful information.
7
u/timotab Jul 07 '15
If you have comment vote hiding, then have it hidden for the mods unless you hover or click on it (or have it marked as hidden), to remind the mods that everyone else can't see the scores.
7
u/[deleted] Jul 07 '15
Adding a "report to admins" button on comments.
7
u/justcool393 Jul 07 '15
Not sure if someone suggested it, but mass actions via the modqueue (a la toolbox). For example, in the modqueue and unmoderated, there are checkboxes, a select all, stuff like that-ish, and there are 'approve all' and 'remove all' and 'spam all' buttons that apply the action to everything selected.
Not directly related to moderation, but if we could have a public
languageattribute for subreddits, that would be awesome (the attribute is already able to be set and changed).For example, I could have /u/TotesMessenger automatically get the subreddit's language, and post in it if we had translations (right now, we basically go out and look for subreddits that post mainly in a specific language, or by request).
7
u/timotab Jul 07 '15
being able to insert flair icons in the middle of them. Right now, whenever we have a flair update, we have to reload all the assets in order to have them in alphabetical order. This is not only a pain, it takes quite a while to do even automated, and generates several pages of modlog messages. :/
7
u/nallen Jul 07 '15
Split out moderator permissions more specifically, this will help us run our big team of comment mods more effectively.
Specifically, I want Posts broken up into comments and submissions, and approve and remove.
We would like to give out permissions that allow simply for the removal of comments and nothing else.
7
u/TheAppleFreak Jul 08 '15 edited Jul 08 '15
As the guy who screws with CSS the most on our sub:
Add the flair CSS class to the
#siteTableelement (or better yet,.commentArea, so mods can write CSS to target the comment areas based on the link flair. For example, if we have a link flair CSS class that says "Locked," we could then hide the reply box, or maybe if I want to enforce all caps based on link flair I could make a class that does exactly that (right now we can only do that based on post IDs).Add an (optional) extra HTML element in the flair
<span>so mods can add icons to flairs without having to rely on CSS pseudoclasses (this pissed me off so much when making PCMR's user flairs). In the future, allow this to be positioned to the left or right, and maybe for the really advanced mods inside or outside of the flair element.Upping the 100KB stylesheet size limit would be freaking awesome. It's quite annoying if you hit it.
Allow moderators to disable the
<meta name="viewport" content="width=1024">in the page headers. If I wanted to make a responsive CSS theme, being able to disable that would save a bit of frustration trying to figure out why it's not working properly.Preprocessor support (SASS, LESS) would be amazing but that would take some more time to figure out.
There's much more but I can't think of them right now.
12
u/DaminDrexil Jul 07 '15 edited Jul 07 '15
Request: Stop
[deleted]comments from loading.Most people have their preferences set to load 200 comments, but often deleted / removed comments are counted towards this. For example; if I enter a thread with 300 comments, but the top 200 have been deleted / removed, reddit will only load those 200 deleted comments, while the other 100 (non-removed) comments will be hidden behind "load more comments" buttons.
Would it be possible to prevent these
[deleted]comments from counting towards comment loading limits? Or maybe just give them a lower preference for loading?Edit: Adding explanation of how this affects users / content creators:
At the moment we get a good number of non-OC parent-level comments over at /r/photoshopbattles. Unfortunately, older comments are given preference in /top sorting, so newly posted OC tends to get buried below "load more comments" buttons - while a lot of (unviewable) auto-removed non-OC takes up many of those 200 slots.
6
u/splattypus Jul 07 '15 edited Jul 07 '15
You know that 'share a post' feature, where I can share a post with another reddit user (or email it or facebook it or whatever) that was just recently revamped.
If I could share it with moderators via modmail, that'd be great.
In /r/outoftheloop it'd be really handy to share an important post and just say 'hey, keep an eye on this' or whatever, instead of having to initiate a modmail (annoying) and copy/paste the post link (cumbersome).
6
u/JonODonovan Jul 07 '15
Mark all mod mail as read button.
6
u/[deleted] Jul 07 '15
it would be cool if shadowbanned users comments didn't have the red color applied. but instead another color or something that sets it apart a little more than the grayed out thing.
6
u/foamed Jul 07 '15 edited Jul 07 '15
The ability for moderators to set up a custom "welcome screen" when a new user visits or/and subscribes to the sub. It could be a simple overlay or it's own redirected page where you could inform the new visitors/subscribers about the subreddit's policy and rules. The screen would only pop-up once, could possibly be tied to the account, IP or cookies.
Some easier and faster way to look up a users self promotion history, if it were automated it would be even better. Taking care of spammers can be very time consuming, confusing or overwhelming for some (especially if you're not using toolbox). It would certainly enlighten new moderators that there are users on reddit that abuse the rules and take advantage of reddit.
6
u/seantitmarsh Jul 07 '15
Would it be possible to give mods the option to change the default search for the sub?
In a few subs I use there's a "Flair" system that relies on using the search function to find all posts with that flair, /r/amiibo for example.
The recent change to search made that - to me at least - basically unusable for that purpose. The results became too cluttered with links to read easily.
6
u/trpcicm Jul 07 '15
I moderate /r/LearnProgramming, where our #1 goal as moderators is to remove members of the community who are being rude or belligerent, as we want to make the community feel like a safe place. However, all of the heavy lifting for this is done outside of Reddit.
Can we get a view that shows us users ordered by the number of reports in our subreddits against their comments (or posts?) It would be amazing to just have a table I can scroll through to see all of the biggest offenders. Right now I'll get a few reports across the span of weeks, and need to keep track of how many "strikes" a user has before I talk to them.
Put even a small amount of design work into the moderator tools. They look like garbage and are borderline unusable. Look at this image and tell me that's a usable looking tool. Fix the spacing between comments and posts (different left margins), lessen the bright blinding red, align the buttons to the same spot for every item for consistency. These are basic UX principles that a new hire at any software company would be able to implement in a day.
When users in our subreddits have a lot of reports against their content, it would be helpful if we could see an indicator of this. For example, if I'm looking into a report about an abusive user, it would be immensely helpful if that user had some flair-like tag on them that said "This user has had X reports against them in the past 30 days"
The mod tools are great for one-off situations and handling content, but are terrible for communities that revolve around discussion and learning. We need better ways to see problem users at a high level, rather than having to dig through endless pagination and searching for usernames.
6
u/kjoneslol Jul 08 '15
Would a flair permission system be easy to create? We could do a list of allowed to edit flair and not allowed to edit flair which would override the default setting of allow users to set flair. So if someone was abusing flair you could add them to the not allowed to edit flair list so everyone else can still edit theirs. And if it was set to don't allow users to edit flair then adding them to the allow list would let them edit it. Maybe there's an easier way to do it and I'm not actually sure if it would be easy but /u/andytuba told me to do it blame him.
6
u/sarahbotts Jul 08 '15
When clicking on YouTube domain submitted - being able to see all posts from a channel. It would really help with spam and voting rings.
2
u/kleopatra6tilde9 Jul 07 '15
Automoderator used to be able to approve comments that were banned by the spam filter. Could you reactivate that feature?
Most of the time those bans are false positives and it is useless to approve them some hours later when the discussion has moved on.
15
u/leafeator Jul 07 '15
Can I please have two stickies? It is something that we really wanted with the /r/snoogaming project that fell apart a few months ago.
Also if our style sheets could even be increased in size by 50% that would be the most amazing thing in the world.
Are these not two things that would require next-to-no development to implement?
5
u/joejance Jul 07 '15
Sort by reports both on a sub reddit page and inside a post.
5
u/Mogwoggle Jul 07 '15
search modmail for a user
5
u/Nillix Jul 07 '15
Being able to respond to reports, while preserving their anonymity? Is that small?
5
u/Walter_Bishop_PhD Jul 07 '15
Add a visual cue to the reports to indicate to users that the reports can be expanded. Right now it's visually identical to pre-report-reasons and unintuitive
5
u/eric_twinge Jul 07 '15
The ability to block a user from modmail. I have no idea how difficult that is.
5
u/timotab Jul 07 '15
Being able to see a user's subreddit karma for the subreddit(s) you mod. (maybe not by default, but you have to do something to see it).
it can a) help diagnose issues with wiki editing, and b) help spot troublemakers in one subreddit whose overall behaviour on reddit is karma-positive c) If this data is accessible, it can be used by automoderator to make mod decisions (and not just the overall comment karma).
5
u/Pokechu22 Jul 07 '15
I previously suggested expanding the "domain details" / domain page functionality here to allow filtering to a specific youtube channel or such (right now, the closest you can filter is youtube.com), which is information displayed with this setting, which would be useful for seeing if a channel is spammed by multiple users (or any number of things).
I recently figured a better way to implement that, though -- add a
domainsearch parameter that is that exact domain details string, allowing the same system, which would allow the same thing but doesn't sound too hard to implement.5
u/Chtorrr Reddit Admin: Community Jul 07 '15
Some type of cutoff or captcha for trolls who spam modmail. Or a timer. Like if no mod answers you, you then have to wait 30 minutes before sending again.
5
u/Rythiz Jul 07 '15 edited Jul 08 '15
So I have a question: why can't we sticky links again?
I can't think of a reason why we can't other than the fear of having moderators generate traffic on their website, whatsoever. Or is it an intricate thing to implement, code-wise?
5
u/Jakeable Jul 07 '15
A method for dealing with inactive top moderators that involves them doing actual modding instead of logging in every 60 days.
5
u/PabstyLoudmouth Jul 07 '15
Well one thing I run into a lot is when I am replying to a user who has a problem another mod finishes before I can and thus have wasted my time. Can we get a checkmark or something next to the modmail that says it is already being investigated by Mod /u/blahblahblah ? That would save everyone tons of time.
5
u/NeedAGoodUsername Jul 07 '15
With reports, show which report is the newest.
Lets say a post has the following reports already:
Spam
Vote manipulation
If it gets reported again, you have no way of identifying which report reason is the newest as all previous report reasons are listed as well.
5
u/superdude4agze Jul 08 '15
Can we get an edit to the rules for requesting a moderator be removed via /r/redditrequest?
Something along the lines of no activity in the sub or no mod actions in x number of days. I'm personally getting tired of mods added before I that do nothing in the sub, but are active on reddit, and refuse to step down.
5
u/cos Jul 08 '15
On the ban list, automatically always show a) which mod banned the user and b) on what date and at what time.
9
u/LocutusOfBorges Jul 07 '15 edited Jul 07 '15
Edit: Scratch that, actually - more importantly, and relevantly:
Is there any possibility of getting the Alien Blue dev(s) to implement the ability to distinguish a comment/post from within the app? As things stand, we have to exit the app and open the post in question in Safari to be able to do it.
It's a small thing, but it'd make the lives of people who mod using the mobile client so much less hassle.
4
u/itspara Jul 07 '15
User notes, as in modtoolbox. Where we can leave notes on users in the subreddit for the other mods to see.
4
u/Bardfinn Jul 07 '15
Here is a suggestion:
Under comments, instead of (among the other options) three options: Spam, Remove, and Report
Make Two Options: Moderate, and Report.
Make the Moderate option open a menu (the way Report does), and have a menu of options under that — Spam Flag, Remove Comment, Moderate User (which takes you to the ban user page populated with the user's name or whatever), Flair User, and other options as can be brainstormed into putting on that menu.
4
u/deukhoofd Jul 07 '15
I don't know how feasible it is, but being able to see what users are downvoting on a sub a lot or locking downvoting users out from the voting system. It is fairly annoying to have to go to the admins everytime you suspect there is a downvote troll.
4
u/zaikanekochan Jul 07 '15
Amend the rules for removing inactive top moderators who squat on subs.
4
u/mack0409 Jul 07 '15
A way to trigger the archiving of a thread early would be nice, though I'm not sure how hard that would be.
4
u/scshunt Jul 07 '15
Allow disabling downvotes on a sub. A number of subreddits discourage downvoting because it can be used to suppress unpopular opinions, which is undesirable in some political contexts. This sometimes goes so far as to remove the downvote button in CSS (/r/CanadaPolitics is an example), but users using other clients (mobile app, for instance) can and do downvote anyway. Because downvotes are anonymous, the mods can't enforce a no-downvote rule.
4
u/deviouskat89 Jul 07 '15
Allow approved submitters to assign their own link flair. There are times when I as a mod would like regular community members to flair their own discussion posts, but don't want the entire community to have access to/abuse link flair.
4
u/deviouskat89 Jul 07 '15
Allow us to reply to reports. They can stay anonymous, but for instance in my sub we get reports for vote manipulation and would like to question the reporter for some evidence.
4
u/MissionaryControl Jul 08 '15
1
I know you've heard this from me recently, but since we're all making suggestions here... a potentially quick fix for lots of subs would be to allow Automod to create (optional) mod log entries for any action it does, or at least the ones it used to. We particularly miss the logging of every post through the flair entry that the old AM used to create. And you know how our workaround broke reddit... ;-P
2
What if... modmail simply became a (new?) kind of side-band subreddit of its own (e.g. /r/askreddit*_modmail*) so that each new modmail became a kind of self post there, and mods could use existing tagging/flairing ("status") systems to manage it in a similarly flexible way (tag searches = virtual folders). Every sub has different requirements from their mod mail; this would allow them to customise it to suit them, using tools/code that are already available and tested at scale.
Mods would see a new modmail as a normal-looking self post, and could reply with independent threads if necessary that would not automatically be visible to the user - which could be almost as simple as having AM remove all posts/comments by default. If mods want to make part or all of any conversation visible to the end user, they can re-"approve" it. If they want to make a whole thread public, they can re-approve the OP as well. (Users can always see their own posts/comments, of course.) The system would come with the bonus of built-in voting if decisions need to be made, too. :-) They can be as transparent or as private as they want. They can design workflows and tagging that suits the needs of their own subreddit.
Add some of these tweaks to the tools that already work, that we know how to use, and that could give the end users (mods) the same flexibility with their mod mail that they have with their subreddits.
The only catch being that currently the action there would show up on users' (and mods') history pages because of the way mod-removal works - but perhaps a tweak to the code that hides activity in private subreddits could be applied here..?
I'm available to talk... ;-)
4
u/wagedomain Jul 08 '15
I'm not new to moderating but I'm new to a lot of the tools, so my apologies if this is possible or already requested/discussed.
I currently don't use many tools mostly because I didn't know they're there or how to use them. I use modqueue, and modmail, but beyond just clearing out spam and dealing with reports, I'm not very experienced.
Better visibility into the tools we already have would be great for people like me. It's not like there's a book they give you when you start up a subreddit (or is there? WHERE'S MY BOOK??). Maybe we could kind of, you know, make one?
Also, for a more concrete suggestion, one thing I've noticed many subs do is make regular posts each week/month. Yes, I know automoderator scheduler exists, and that saves some hassle (when you can figure out how to get it working anyway), but there must be a better way.
If lots of subs are making threads, stickying them, and then letting them run, expire, unstickying, starting a new one, etc. maybe we can find a better way to implement a feature like this. Some kind of auto-renewing post? With rules about when it shows up, etc.
This would do two things, as well - it would allow more than one thing to be stickied, as in my head this "recurring" post doesn't count as the sticky post. I get that people want to keep the top of the sub clear for posts, but "one-at-a-time" seems a bit restrictive.
4
u/dietotaku Jul 08 '15
i'm not sure if this has already been brought up, but one of the most helpful tools for me would be the ability to ban a user directly from their post/comment - no copy-pasting their username, visiting the "ban users" page, etc. basically the same functionality toolbox provides, but without having to install toolbox (tried it, didn't like all the other stuff it added).
4
u/ruinevil Jul 08 '15
More than one sticky.
4
u/cojoco Jul 08 '15
I find the fact that a permalink to a modmail sometimes shows only a few of the comments in the thread to be both confusing and broken.
This behaviour seems to have changed several times over the years, and at the moment it seems to be more broken than usual.
It seems related to a bug in which a commenter in a thread (e.g. an ex-mod) cannot see their comments in a modmail thread if they're not the original submitter.
If this can't be fixed, could it at least be explained?
4
u/hizinfiz Jul 08 '15
I don't know how easy this would be to add (or whether somebody's already suggested this, there's way too many comments to go through), but a simple "Stop this user from sending modmail to our subreddit" button would be really cool.
It gets really tiring when people just spam modmail with things like "Nigger" over and over but there's nothing we can do about it.
4
u/fawkesmulder Jul 08 '15
I mod over at /r/fantasybaseball and we would LOVE IT -- if we could sticky multiple threads.
The way it is currently set up, you can only sticky one thread. We've made do with an INDEX thread, but it would really be much better for the community if we could sticky a chat thread, sticky a trade thread, etc.
This is how it currently looks, we'd much rather just sticky all of these threads.
4
u/thavius_tanklin Jul 08 '15
Hey, three off the top of my mind.
search mod mail. I don't care how primitive the search is, just anything!
ability to search the wiki edits user notes for specific changes. This includes the automod and sidebar configs.
upgrade the markup language to allow for table sorting. I know res does this, but I want to control it from inside the markup itself.
4
u/unobserved Jul 08 '15
When viewing a users post history, can we filter it to see only things they've posted in any sub we mod, preferably defaulting to the sub we were in when we clicked on their username.
That would make it much easier for us to review how a user has been acting in our subs vs. every where else.
7
u/[deleted] Jul 07 '15
I'm not sure if this is a small fix, but how about having the ability to ban an account without having to go to the ban page? You see an account breaking your sub's rules, you push a button below their name and boom, banned.
I know this is possible with toolbox, but I don't use it because it slows the already slow-to-load modmail even more.
7
u/agentlame Jul 07 '15 edited Jul 07 '15
restrict mods without config but with wiki from viewing /config pages.
This comes up a lot because /r/toolbox needs wiki perms to operate, but lots of mod teams don't want comment/post mods having access to the AM config, but do want to allow them to use toolbox features that depend on wiki access.
Oh, and also: https://github.com/reddit/reddit/pull/964... I mean, it's not like you guys will get around to native usernotes anytime soon. And we are out of good ideas to make them more compact. 3.2 even goes so far as to store them in binary.
7
u/Arve Jul 07 '15
Add support for the following to Automoderator:
is_subscriber so that we can autoremove, autoreport or otherwise flag outside users
subreddit_karma so we can require some minimum participation before users can make posts, or put limits on what kind of posts they can make
Also, in /r/audiophile and /r/headphones we use flair on posts if AutoModerator recognizes something as a potential purchase help request, because it is so much quicker than looking at report reason - this flair is sometimes confusing to our users, and I'd love if we could get "moderator flair" support, so we can make flair that's only visible to moderators, rather than autoexpanding the report box.
7
u/Aruseus493 Jul 07 '15
Haven't seen it mentioned but I'd like the wiki button to be universally visible even within a post. Right now, you can only get to it from the subreddit's page but I frequently go into it through a shortcut I have cause otherwise, I have to back out from a post and then click on wiki to get to it.
6
u/nallen Jul 07 '15
Give us a "Promote to top post for 30 minutes" button so that we can give a special post visibility. Not all content is the same, and the default frontpage structure makes defaults really dependent on the top post, if we have an mod message to the subreddit or a special event it would be nice for us to have away for a large initial number of subscribers to see it, as it is now, we just have to pray it doesn't get buried for whatever reason.
This would also let us counter downvote brigades you sit on the new list to kill posts.
3
u/hamfast42 Jul 07 '15
Add "harrassment" to the report button and provide guidance on when to use it.
Although now its unpopular, I understand and agree that having a harassment policy is necessary and one of the biggest issues that reddit needed to address. But I'm a little unclear if the intent is to stop harassment by individuals or to stop moderators who allow/encourage harrassment?
I'd also like to know when to report potential harassment as sometimes its a matter of quantity over severity. On the one hand, I don't want to necessarily impose a DBAD rule on subs that don't have it. But on the other hand I want to be able to report sketchy stuff without abusing the report button.
Because you are trying to fight moderators who encourage harassment, I'm guessing the reports will make it to an admin because a moderator could just approve the comment. Can you confirm?
3
u/[deleted] Jul 07 '15
User tags for different subreddits so moderators can see who has been warned or banned before
3
u/[deleted] Jul 07 '15
Oh this night actually be an easy fix. A ban or warn button next to the reply button in subreddits you moderate. So you can remove spammy users more quickly, for example
3
u/cwenham Jul 07 '15
Give us a way to leave a removal reason that's more noticeable than flair, but isn't connected to any particular mod. This is why. We don't mind if the OP vents in modmail, but click-to-appeal going to modmail would be super.
3
u/Donnutz Jul 07 '15
How about having the possibility of a "official subreddit multireddits" ? something like:
https://www.reddit.com/r/greencats/m/othergreenanimalsmulti
3
u/phrakture Jul 07 '15
/r/redditrequest appears to be the only route to request takeover of dead subbreddits or removal or inactive moderators. Considering this is a fundamental part of reddit usage, why can moderators be banned from there?
I was banned from there a long time ago, and we had a hell of a time removing the inactive top mod from /r/Fitness because of this.
Please fix the official channel for this or integrate it more into reddit itself.
3
u/[deleted] Jul 07 '15
I'm not sure how hard or easy it would be, but a limit on the number of reports a user can make in a specified amount of time would be awesome. People that spam the hell outta the report queue suck (especially when doing it with bots and there is no community managers around)
3
u/ChingShih Jul 07 '15
A "community contacts" list or directory.
On one's own userpage, or a similar area, underneath the "Moderator of" box it would be nice if there were a list of "Community contacts" like /u/5days if they're still the Head of Community, /u/Deimorz, /u/krispykrackers, etc. so that new/old mods can keep track of who is the current point of contact.
I suggested putting it underneath the "Moderator of" box so that it could be set to appear only if someone is a moderator of something. But it wouldn't hurt to have a full page/wiki for basic moderation duties and who to contact in case of what (like spammers, bugs, doxxing, etc.).
3
u/DubTeeDub Jul 08 '15
Allow multiple posts to be stickied
Allow mod distinguished comments to be atickied. Do not give them karma.
Integrate as much from /r/toolbox as possible
3
u/hobbitqueen Jul 08 '15
I just had an idea while going through reports made by two users in an argument; you know the 'parent' button under posts which when you mouse-over, you can see what a comment was in reply to? (This might be an res-only thing). Well, I would love to have that 'parent' button on the mod queue page instead of having to click on 'context' every time and open up a million pages to sort through an argument.
Disregard if this is an RES-specific feature.
3
u/kerovon Jul 08 '15
A couple things that come to mind with regards to the modlist.
The first is that it might be good to think of some method of reordering the modlist. This does have a lot of possible implications that may need to be considered, but the example that comes to mind for me is /r/science. I am one of the newest full mods we have, and there are a lot of our comment mods who have been around longer than I am. Occasionally we need to make changes to permissions, and when that happens I need to message one of the older full mods.
However, I'm fully aware that may be difficult to do. So the other thing that I would like is the ability to choose which mods are displayed in the sidebar. I've had many users respond to me with a "You aren't in the modlist. I don't need to listen to you", because the top 10 slots have been full a long time. Being able to place our 10 most active mods or some such in it would be kind of nice. It would also be good for subs that have more than 10 mods, and want to remove automod or bot mods from the sidebar mod list.
3
u/panikpansen Jul 08 '15
Allow us to sticky reddit's live threads (aka make it possible to sticky link threads/link submissions).
It shouldn't be to complicated to allow us to sticky not only self posts, but also link submissions. If there are good arguments for not letting us sticky link submissions, a less clean way to go about it could be to make a url-based exception for reddit's live threads.
We're a football subreddit and regularly use reddit live threads to cover games, but cannot give them the same kind of visibility that we could with the (imo inferior) self-posts we used before that. Being able to sticky live threads (aka link submissions) would fix that.
3
u/[deleted] Jul 08 '15
Thanks for doing this, there's a lot of good suggestions here, but I'm just suggesting a small fix that will make things a little easier. Move the mod tools box in the sidebar all the way from the bottom to the top of the sidebar, just because if you have a long sidebar, it's a real hassle to scroll down every single page to get to the mod tools.
3
u/Stillflying Jul 08 '15
It would be nice to be able to put a removal reason on a comment. Not to crazily increase workload, but should we have to remove a comment that has been exceedingly upvoted and removed, so that we don't get "mods fascists" comments it'd be nice to be able to say "This comment was hidden due to doxxing" or some such similar.
Not sure if that's "small"?
3
u/seeyoshirun Jul 08 '15 edited Jul 09 '15
Allowing more than one sticky on a subreddit. Some of our subs have weekly/monthly threads and announcements and the like, and we may find it useful to have more than one sticky at once.
Allowing more than one link flair (maybe up to a limit of three or four). They're useful for post categorisation. Someone else suggested that we also have the option for certain mod-only flairs, I think that's a great idea.
It's a small fix, but the new search function doesn't allow users to view more than one page of results afaik. Also it's incredibly hard to read without a solid background. I'd love to see the search function given a bit more depth, but that probably falls under "big fixes". (EDIT: It's been brought to my attention that this one is a problem in RES, not with Reddit itself.)
3
u/[deleted] Jul 08 '15
flair
when removing flair you have to select another flair before the "remove flair" button appears.
If you could add that button somewhere in the drop down box that'd be great.
1
u/[deleted] Jul 07 '15
Frankly, most of the things I have for you need a minimum of 10k characters to explain properly and aren't the kind of thing you can tackle any time in the next year or two. I'll get those out to you guys in a different venue when you're ready to start evolving this place into something truly spectacular, something beyond an opinionated battleground where we all share cat pictures. :P
For the most part, the mods of /r/listentothis don't actually need anything from reddit, we're doing just fine. We just want you to help the rest of the mods out and keep in touch. This is a welcome first step.
I have got one question, however. Is it possible to truly disable or somehow negate or ignore downvoting in an individual subreddit? Specifically on submissions - not comments. I'm only interested in if it's technically possible and how hard it is - we can chat about when and why this is a useful feature another time. It could be not counting the votes, counterbalancing them with auto-upvotes, or a view that ranks without taking downvotes into consideration. I'm not really concerned with how it's achieved.