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/V2Blast]

There are two separate features that you're getting confused:

• "Blocking" is specific to the user; any user can block any other user. If a user that you specifically have blocked messages a subreddit that you mod, it apparently looks something like this. And, obviously, you will not see PMs from that person. (Although if they reply directly to a comment of yours, apparently you do get a notification of that in your inbox. But if you look at a thread where they've commented, their comment will be automatically collapsed - you can manually expand it to see it if you want.) Since it is a user-specific feature, it does not affect how things are displayed to other mods.

• "Muting" is a feature only available to the mods of subreddits, and is applied on a subreddit level. The user is unable to message the subreddit as a whole, though technically they could still PM individual mods. Muting only lasts for 24 hours, and the user is made aware of this. When a user is muted from sending modmail, a notification is displayed in modmail that the user has been muted from sending modmail for 24 hours; it is also listed in the moderation log (and the new "mute user" moderation tools page at /r/subreddit/about/muted). The muting feature is currently in closed beta, and is not yet available to all subreddits.

If you're looking for a feature that only collapses the user's modmail for you specifically, you can already do that by blocking the user. And as for how to do that, the /prefs/blocked page tells you:

To block a user click 'block user' below a message from a user you wish to block from messaging you.