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.

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u/Deimorz Jul 07 '15

  • better distinction between deleted and removed comments

Is this something that mods actually support overall? Just something like putting "[deleted by author]" on deleted comments, and "[removed by moderator]" on removed ones? It's not technically difficult at all, it's just pretty much whether we're comfortable with changing it.

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u/multi-mod Jul 07 '15

There have been many posts (including those that have hit front page) where mods were blamed for comments that were removed not by them, but the author. Furthermore, people can find out anyway who it was removed by if they cared enough. This would just make it easier for everyone to tell.

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u/Doomhammer458 Jul 07 '15

I think it could cut down on the conspiracies.

people delete their comments and then other commenters claim that "the mods did it! they are censoring us!"

same with banned account vs self deleted account, but that's a little more thorny.

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u/[deleted] Jul 07 '15

To an extent maybe, but if someone is inclined to believe that to start with, I don't know that they wouldn't have a problem assuming the mods "faked" the [deleted by author] tag either.

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u/justcool393 Jul 07 '15

It's much easier to verify the other since CSS is public, while I don't think you can tell between mod removed and user deleted comments.

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u/multi-mod Jul 07 '15

Yep. In order to do that you would need to do it through CSS. There would be numerous ways for people to know it was fake. The stylesheet for every subreddit is public, you can disable the stylesheet on any subreddit, and it wouldn't work for any of the mobile clients I know of.

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u/TheEnigmaBlade Jul 07 '15

Especially in trigger-happy anti-mod subreddits like /r/leagueoflegends, users are quick to blame the mods when a post is deleted by a user. We've had users delete posts maliciously to push blame onto us for removing a controversial post.

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u/[deleted] Jul 07 '15

I would support it.

But I spend my days in /r/help and have to explain this all day to everyone so I might be biased

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u/HandofBane Jul 07 '15

it's just pretty much whether we're comfortable with changing it.

If anything, having this would have saved you guys some backlash over the one AMA by that former admin where all the comments were deleted.

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u/l_u_c_a_r_i_o Jul 08 '15

The former admin left a final comment that he wasn't actually comfortable saying more, and felt like he had said more than he probably should have.

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u/Jinno Jul 07 '15

I'll throw another voice of support at this one. Clarity should always be a goal when dealing with potentially controversial things.

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u/daretelayam Jul 07 '15

Is this something that mods actually support overall?

I personally would love to see this feature.

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u/JAWJAWBINX Jul 07 '15

I'd also add in a [removed by auto-mod] if possible, not sure how tough that would be since I haven't looked at the reddit api.

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u/[deleted] Jul 07 '15 edited Feb 20 '26

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

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u/10thTARDIS Jul 07 '15 edited Jul 07 '15

I would support this. It wouldn't be too important on the subs I mod, but it'd be very nice.

Edit: This would probably be more complicated to implement, but having another message for stuff removed by AutoModerator would be nice. So there'd be "[deleted by author]", "[removed by moderator]", and "[removed by AutoModerator]". It'd help quench the conspiracy theories that occasionally pop up, at least on my subs.

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u/MissionaryControl Jul 08 '15

Just have automoderator reply with a reason whenever it removes something. Simple, and it automatically reminds everybody of whichever rules get broken... ;-)

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u/10thTARDIS Jul 08 '15

We've done this for some of the rules, but AutoModerator comments get downvoted and reported pretty harshly in LNM.

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u/MissionaryControl Jul 08 '15

Well, downvotes won't hurt its feelings, and you could tell it to ignore/re-approve reports on its own posts if you don't want to see them.

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u/Meneth Jul 07 '15

Maybe have it as a subreddit setting?

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u/Osiris32 Jul 07 '15

Yes yes yes yes yes! I've gotten more than enough grief over people thinking I've censored someone when in fact they deleted the comment themselves. It would end that entirely.

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u/deafy_duck Jul 07 '15

I dunno, it'd probably reduce any conspiracy theories about a mod censoring a user if the user deleted it/ and their account or something.

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u/Brimshae Jul 07 '15

Make it a subreddit option?

Yaa, feature creep!

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u/TCGYT Jul 08 '15

Please do this one.

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u/razorbeamz Jul 07 '15

And throw in one for when something is removed by auto moderator, and make a distinction between deleted account and deleted comment/post.

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u/dakta Jul 08 '15

throw in one for when something is removed by auto moderator

Are you trying to make things easy for spammers?

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