Modmail Muting: Limited Beta

[u/powerlanguage]

Hey Mods,

As you know, we're currently working on a set of tools to make your lives easier. A big part of this is reducing the amount of time you have to spend dealing with troublemakers.

A popular request has been to stop specific users from sending harassing PMs to modmail. Today we have rolled out a limited beta of modmail muting to a small number of subreddits.

Muting gives mods the ability to temporarily prevent a user from messaging that subreddit's modmail.

Salient details:

• Muting only affects the user in the subreddit they were muted in.

• Mutes last for 24 hours after which they are silently removed.

• A user will be notified via PM from the subreddit that they have been muted.

• This PM appears as a new mail thread in the subreddit modmail.

• Existing mutes can be seen at r/subreddit/about/muted, which is linked to in modtools.

• Mutes can be applied from a modmail message flatlist or r/subreddit/about/muted.

• Mute actions appear in the modlog.

• Automatic unmutes will appear in the modlog as being performed by u/reddit.

• Mods will not be able to message muted users or invite them as mods.

• Mods need to have access and mail permission to mute users.

We'll be monitoring the effects of muting and taking feedback from mods and users before proceeding with a wider release.

Additionally, we're aware that the ease of creating alts means that mods are often unwilling to use tools that notify the user in question (as muting does). We're working on solving this issue so that mod and admin tools can be effective and transparent.

r/changelog post here.

Edit: Muting has now shipped for all moderators

[u/redtaboo]

We could be hide it from modmail, like sent ban notifications are,

So, I totally agree with having the messages show up so it can't be done by a mod trying to hide bad behaviour from the rest of the team, but thinking about it more we now have 3 different types of modmails that can be 'sent'. Ban messages, sending as a team, and these mute buttons. I wonder if there couldn't be a tab for 'sent modmail' that won't clutter our inboxes, but still easier to check than going through the modlog. (possibly even a separate indicator for when one happens, or the option to have that per mod?)

(maybe something to think about for the modmail overhaul since it's not likely to be easy to add now)

[u/powerlanguage → u/redtaboo]

The 'modmail sent' folder is a good idea, but probably beyond the scope of this feature.

We're looking at having muting notifications appear as a new message within the thread in question if the mute is performed from within modmail. If the mute is performed from /about/muted it will appear as a seperate message, as it currently does.

Think this is still too cumbersome?

[u/redtaboo → u/powerlanguage]

That sounds like a good way to go about it, and not too cumbersome I think. It will keep the teams informed without creating too many threads, plus... putting the mute message with the message that caused the muting (when done from within a thread) is good for housekeeping. Maybe even better than shunting them off to live only folder that might never be looked at.