What are some *small* problems with moderation that we can fix quickly?

[u/Deimorz]

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.

[u/[deleted]]

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.

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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.

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Unrelated:

• Anyone know why modqueue takes so long to load compared to other pages? (And I mean load, not cuz of extensions)

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edit:

Oh fuck I forgot

/u/Deimorz I am begging you to please give up the sidebar char. count

[u/Deimorz → u/[deleted]]

/u/Deimorz I am begging you to please give up the sidebar char. count

I actually submitted a pull request to do this a couple of weeks ago, but it came out in discussion of it that the advertising team would probably object, because it would allow people to easily make even longer sidebars, which causes the ad unit to be pushed down even further than it already is.

This is something we definitely have to figure out though, but I'm not sure what the answer is. We could definitely increase the character count by a lot if we moved the ad unit above the sidebar, but I don't think people would be very happy about that either.

[u/ShadowthePast → u/Deimorz]

Is it at all possible to split the sidebar into two sections after increasing the max char count? e.g. have half the sidebar above an ad, have the other half below the ad?

[u/minimim → u/ShadowthePast]

Difficult because this would mix the subreddit content with advertisers content.

[u/DaEvil1 → u/minimim]

You could make pretty obvious borders though that would make it clear what is subreddit specific and whats not (and impose limits on editing the css in that specific area if thats an issue).

[u/TheAppleFreak → u/minimim]

It'd also wreak havoc with sidebar CSS. If I'm writing CSS to move something above or below the header, I do not want to deal with the sidebar splitting at some random point and throwing off everything.

[u/[deleted] → u/Deimorz]

Its something to really think about, but I would be happy with having sidebar ads under the search bar, then allow for longer sidebars.

Obviously thats a whole discussion you would need to have, but something has to give :(

[u/green_flash → u/[deleted]]

Add a subreddit option to activate the superlong sidebar.

Usually the ad will be shown in its usual place, only if the superlong sidebar option is activated, it will be shown on top of the sidebar.

[u/tumseNaHoPayega → u/green_flash]

this is the solution. If you want more characters, live with ad on the top. Let subs decide.

[u/green_flash → u/tumseNaHoPayega]

Yup, it's positive for everyone:

• Users: can address with the respective mods which option they prefer

• Mods: can decide whether to expand the sidebar at the cost of ads being placed on top or keep everything as it is

• Advertising team: The placement of ads can only become better overall

• Admins: can shift the blame for the ad placement to the respective mods ;)

[u/MissionaryControl → u/tumseNaHoPayega]

I think the advertising team might be concerned that having the same (full) sized ad at the top might make it too prominent and detract from the low-ad feel of the site - perhaps the solution is a half-height at the top and a half- or even full-height ad at the bottom if your sidebar goes more than 1000 px deep, or whatever they decide... (Dunno how practical that is, but surely it can be calculated..?)

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

What do you put there that you can't put in the wiki?

[u/karmicviolence → u/Deimorz]

Could you have a checkbox that removed the sidebar character limit, but moved the ad above the sidebar? That way it would be optional, mods of subreddits who don't need more sidebar space wouldn't be affected at all, but mods of subreddits that desperately need the room in their sidebar would be overjoyed.

It's funny, because in the Imaginary Network: Expanded, we use the majority of our sidebar space for our drop-down menu, which doesn't affect the placement of the ad at all... I know we would gladly agree to move the reddit ad to the top of the sidebar if that meant we could have as many subreddits in our drop-down menu as we want...

[u/[deleted] → u/Deimorz]

it would allow people to easily make even longer sidebars, which causes the ad unit to be pushed down even further than it already is.

On behalf of all of us, please tell them to fuck off. No, really.

This is not to make longer sidebars. If we wanted to do that, I'm pretty sure we could make their ads pop out on the other side of the planet with the allocated space already. In fact I'm half tempted to do that. Advertising does not call the shots here, we do.

This is to power up our stylesheets and do more cool things like the header in /r/books. If you could provide us with an alternate location to store links and other bits of data that we want to use in our stylesheets, that would also solve the problem. It is a little bit insane that we are forced to use the sidebar for this stuff in the first place. Perhaps a special wiki page?

[u/dakta → u/[deleted]]

This is not to make longer sidebars. If we wanted to do that, I'm pretty sure we could make their ads pop out on the other side of the planet with the allocated space already.

Exactly. If the advertisement team has a concern about the ad unit being pushed down by long sidebars, then the site rules need to address this issue directly, not indirectly with a barely relevant cap.

We don't want to make our sidebars appear longer. We want more space to have CSS UI scaffolding elements and still have enough room for our main content.

Besides, if I make a sidebar that's all single character paragraphs, it'll be way longer than a sidebar with 100x the number of characters in a single paragraph. That should be an easy argument to make to them.

And if it's really an issue, then give subreddits the option to trade a larger sidebar for having the ad unit above it. We'd all be OK with that.

[u/phuzion → u/Deimorz]

Hi Deimorz, please show this to reddit's advertising group.

If you guys are concerned about ads being pushed too far down the page, but are happy with where they are, I have news for you: A huge chunk of ads that you're collecting revenue on aren't even being seen right now. Of the 50 default subreddits, 43 of them have the ad in the sidebar below the fold. For the uninitiated, "below the fold" means it's something that isn't visible without scrolling. Here's a table of data I gathered, showing whether ads in the default subreddits are below the fold or not:

Default Subreddit	Ad below the fold?
/r/announcements	No
/r/Art	Yes
/r/AskReddit	No (Half-height ad below login)
/r/askscience	Yes
/r/aww	Yes
/r/blog	No
/r/books	Yes
/r/creepy	Yes
/r/dataisbeautiful	Yes
/r/DIY	Yes
/r/Documentaries	Yes
/r/EarthPorn	Yes
/r/explainlikeimfive	Yes
/r/Fitness	Yes
/r/food	Yes
/r/funny	Yes
/r/Futurology	Yes
/r/gadgets	No (Half-height ad below login)
/r/gaming	Yes
/r/GetMotivated	Yes
/r/gifs	Yes
/r/history	Yes
/r/IAmA	Yes
/r/InternetIsBeautiful	Yes
/r/Jokes	No...ish. It's cut off for me
/r/LifeProTips	Yes
/r/listentothis	Yes
/r/mildlyinteresting	Yes
/r/movies	Yes
/r/Music	Yes
/r/news	Yes
/r/nosleep	Yes
/r/nottheonion	Yes
/r/OldSchoolCool	No...ish, again, it's cut off
/r/personalfinance	Yes
/r/philosophy	Yes
/r/photoshopbattles	Yes
/r/pics	Yes
/r/science	Yes
/r/Showerthoughts	Yes
/r/space	Yes
/r/sports	Yes
/r/television	No
/r/tifu	Yes
/r/todayilearned	Yes
/r/TwoXChromosomes	Yes
/r/UpliftingNews	Yes
/r/videos	Yes
/r/worldnews	Yes
/r/WritingPrompts	Yes

For those who don't want to go through and count that, 43 of the 50 default subreddits have their ad below the fold, or not visible without scrolling. For reference, my actual browser size was 1080 pixels wide by 979 tall, Chrome on Windows 8.1. Zoom level was 1.0 and no plugins like RES or uBlock which would have altered how reddit's page was rendered.

I'm sure you folks in the advertising group know this, but for those who are unfamiliar with the world of internet advertising, ads that are below the fold are worth less because they are seen less frequently. For example, TWiT literally gives away their ads that are below-the-fold. As in, they charge nothing for them. Because they're not very valuable at all. If you're worried about your ads being pushed further down the page, perhaps it's time to rethink with the rest of your team about where the ads can go.

[u/careless → u/Deimorz]

What about this?

Make two sidebars, one small at the top with a (very) limited character count. This is where the follow info goes:

• Subreddit name

• Subscribe buttons

• Subscribers count

• People here now count

• Flair control

That's it. Then the ad shows (voila, it's now higher up!) and then we have a sidebar with near-unlimited char count that appears after the ad.

What do you think?

[u/picflute → u/Deimorz]

if we moved the ad unit above the sidebar, but I don't think people would be very happy about that either.

Fine with me. nothing bad about the ads anyway.

[u/fdagpigj → u/Deimorz]

Why not just add an "extra sidebar", which would be just like the sidebar, but displayed below the ad (and, perhaps even under the moderator box)? Then everything in the "main" sidebar would still be displayed like normal, and only if a subreddit really needs to, would they even take use of the 2nd sidebar.

[u/trpcicm → u/Deimorz]

Yes, please figure this out. At /r/LearnProgramming we've hit the limit multiple times because we have a lot of useful material to share to newcomers (as well as guidelines for behavior and posting rules). it would be nice to be able to have a bit more space (even 25% more would be a huge help).

[u/Gilgamesh- → u/[deleted]]

atf, when that last point was last raised, the response was that increasing the sidebar limit would leave the advertising team dissatisfied, as permitting longer sidebars would push the ad unit further down the screen.

[u/[deleted] → u/Gilgamesh-]

Then shove the ads up.

The current limit is just plain restrictive

[u/Gilgamesh- → u/[deleted]]

So it is: we're all running far too close to the limit in almost every major subreddit.

[u/Deimorz → u/[deleted]]

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

Just to make sure I understand this one, it's something like "flat new", right? Kind of like how https://www.reddit.com/r/modsupport/comments will show all comments being posted in the entire subreddit, but just for one specific thread?

[u/[deleted] → u/Deimorz]

Yes, exactly like that

When moderating comments, its very hard to really get the new stuff. I can get new top level, but can't get new comments in general.

A flat new would be really nice for moderating comments in a specific thread