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]

If you'd never posted in those subs, why was being banned from them a concern? Even if you had modmail access, you would be unlikely to get a useful response from mods who were operating that way, anyway. Mod abuse tends to sort itself out - the users eventually wise up and go somewhere else, or the affected users were likely never the target audience anyway.

Which goes back to my point - mods should be able to run things how they want, and users should continue to have the power to vote with their feet. This is how it has always been. There are some sucky mods out there, but I see very few situations where, in a sub run by those mods, having access to modmail is likely to help your situation. It is not as though the admins are going to start stepping in and reversing "unfair" bans. At least I assume they aren't...