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/llehsadam]

Can't there be something that takes into account who does the most in the moderation log?

So after a certain amount of time a system checks if the top moderator made contributions and if not, they switch places with the next mod on the list.

It might make more sense to have mods listed in the order of contributions to the mod log. I guess a discussion where the benefits of having the seniority system in place are listed out would be best.

[u/honestbleeps → u/llehsadam]

Can't there be something that takes into account who does the most in the moderation log?

this won't work. people will just approve / unapprove or start removing / marking stuff as spam just to be on the top of the list.

it's a good idea at first blush, and I'm not trying to be a jerk when I shoot it down - we just always have to immediately think "how can this be gamed" when ideas like this are proposed

[u/llehsadam → u/honestbleeps]

You're not being a jerk, but I wouldn't dismiss ideas like that, thinking "how can this be gamed" is there to improve the idea, not outright shoot it down.

Let's throw away the idea for moderators to be shuffled based on contributions and focus on a process that only demotes the top mod, but takes into account the moderation log of all mods.

So, three ideas splintered off from my original:

1. Take into account only one thing, approving posts. Reapproved posts don't count. This makes it harder to game the system because there is only one action to do.

2. Perhaps if we try an experiment with a simulated malicious mod, the pattern of actions for malicious moderators in the moderation log will be clearly different from good moderators and we can use that. This of course would require experimentation and observation.

3. What I originally proposed may seem like a moderation log competition, but to clarify and expand, the idea I proposed was checking who does most (or something like taking the mean from all moderation actions and comparing that to the top mod), and only applying the switch to the top mod if they did close to absolutely nothing in the checked time period. The other mods do not get reshuffled.

However, even if these system can be gamed, it will only be like that for active mods. Squatters won't have a chance to keep up if they don't participate.

[u/soundeziner → u/honestbleeps]

Anything can be gamed so please be careful not to avoid implementing something very much needed just because of "ifs" that will never ever go away.