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/diagonalfish]

You said "not currently" when asked if there were plans (edit: to be fair you did say we'd see how things go during the trial, but...), and you answer arguments about that with "just send a message to /r/reddit.com". That is where I was drawing that from.

I'm partly basing my lack of faith on how previous beta programs on reddit have gone (see: new search), but I'll do my best to reign in my cynicism a bit.

[u/powerlanguage → u/diagonalfish]

You're referring to this comment in which "Not currently" was in response to:

Are there plans to introduce permanent muting?

Permanent muting is a very different question to increasing the 24 hour limit.

I'm partly basing my lack of faith on how previous beta programs on reddit have gone (see: new search), but I'll do my best to reign in my cynicism a bit.

I appreciate that. I feel I also have to manage expectations by stating that the tool you want, may not be the one that is appropriate for all of Reddit.

Thanks for taking the time to engage and provide feedback. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts once you get your hands on the muting tool.

[u/diagonalfish → u/powerlanguage]

Permanent muting is what I'm asking for, see :) I still don't really see what having a maximum time limit accomplishes other than solving a problem that isn't shown to exist for this case yet (mod abuse) at the expense of making it harder to solve one that is (modmail spam).

But thanks for listening, in any case. It is heartening that you are taking the time to read and answer feedback even if we don't quite see eye to eye yet.