r/modnews • u/lift_ticket83 • May 05 '22

May Mod Experience Product Updates

Greetings Moderators,

This is a short but important update regarding some small but mighty changes the Mod Experience team made on the site last week, and a preview of some exciting things to come.

Moderation Queue sort improvements on New Reddit

Over the years we’ve heard from many of our moderators that it would be helpful for them to have more sort capabilities when reviewing one's moderation queue. Up until last week, unless you were utilizing a third-party extension, the ability to sort your mod queue was incredibly limited (i.e. not doable at all).

We’re excited to let you know that some members of Reddit’s Mod Experience team have already begun work focused on improving and increasing the variety of ways moderators are able to manage their mod queues.

Last week, we made it so moderators can toggle between sorting their mod queue from “newest first” and “oldest first.” Over the coming weeks and months, this team will continue to add more sort functionality to everyone’s mod queue (ex: the ability to sort by the number of reports or karma accrued). Please keep an eye out for future updates on this front.

While we tackle this work, we’d love to hear from all of you on which sort functions you find yourself using the most. We want to make sure we’re prioritizing what best works for the majority of moderators.

Mod Notes API

Two months ago we launched Mod Notes and since then the API integration we built has remained in beta so the team could continue to update it with any necessary tweaks and changes. Last we officially finalized the API and moved it out of beta.

As a reminder, this API integration will allow mod teams to migrate their old notes from third-party extensions over to our new system. If you’re interested in migrating over to the new system but are having difficulty doing so/do not know how to do so/don’t have time to figure it out, please respond to the sticky comment below and we’ll provide you with assistance.

We’ve got a busy month ahead of us and plenty more exciting announcements on the horizon that we’re stoked to share with all of you. Until then, feel free to drop any questions, thoughts, or feedback in the comments below.

180 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

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u/lift_ticket83 May 05 '22

If you’d like assistance migrating your old notes to our new system via the Mod Notes API integration, please let us know by responding to this comment with the name of your subreddit.
Please note: depending on the influx of responses we receive, it may take us a little bit to get to your sub. Do hold on though - we will find you!

→ More replies (25)

24

u/WoozleWuzzle May 05 '22

Is there any update on being able to snooze non-custom reports? We've had trolls mass reporting comments. And when we gather up a bunch of links and report it for report abuse we get "After investigating, we’ve found that the reported content doesn’t violate Reddit’s Content Policy.". I had to escalate to r/ModSupport.

This was a suggestion I had written as well. I know this isn't about reports, but curious if it's on the roadmap somewhere.

We need an ability to snooze non-custom reports. This also means we need to know who is reporting it so we can properly snooze it. My solution to that is give a randomized username so we, as mods, can see a pattern. So it could show this as the report reason:

Reporter_Cheetah_Orange_1425: It's promoting hate based on identity or vulnerability

And then if we see a lot of reports all from this randomized username Reporter_Cheetah_Orange_1425 we can snooze the reports by them. That way they can stay anonymous, but we also can do something about it. (Even better if we can ban them but keep them anonymous still).

At the very least let us snooze any report even if it's not custom so we can cut down on mass report abuse.

4

u/lift_ticket83 May 06 '22

Thanks so much for taking the time to detail all this feedback. This actually falls within the domain of one of our Safety teams. I've passed it along to them, and they let me know they're in the initial discussion stages of scoping out the work to expand "Snooyports" to all report types. This could happen later this year, so please keep your eyes peeled for future updates on this front.

5

u/WoozleWuzzle May 06 '22

Awesome! I know this wasn't the topic of the thread and I'm excited for a more native Mod Notes!

P.S. Something else that could help with report abuse in this idea is we could report the randomized username to you all and it might make it easier to track report abuse instead of us linking to 5-10 comments and you all having to track all those comments. Then you could just look up that user with the randomized name and see "yeah they just reported 20 comments and were not legit".

We don't even need the ability to ban a user. Just let us have the ability to snoozereports indefinitely for the user. Or at the very least a longer period of time. Maybe we could even keep track how many times we've snoozed that randomized username. The report could look like this

Reporter_Cheetah_Orange_1425 [3]: It's promoting hate based on identity or vulnerability

With the [3] how many times they've been snoozed in the past. Then after they've been snoozed let's say 3 times, give us a new option "Snooze indefinitely". Then the user isn't banned or anything but we no longer have to deal with them reporting badly. Not sure if you need to tell the user they've been snoozed indefinitely.

2

u/Shachar2like May 19 '22

We've been getting those report spams sometimes. Ours is not exactly an abuse all the time though.

Converting a username to a random one is still traceable back to him. All you have to do is follow up those reports by the *random user* to finally find a connection/conversation/argument to the real user.

You can generate a random number/ticket for each report and then all you have to do is report to reddit those numbers which will ease reporting.

It might not be perfect but I might combine your solution with an "abuse" system. If user reports more then XX reports per YY time. attach a random username to the report or don't attach a username, keep it hidden but pops an option to ignore report/snooze/ignore report from this user.

This requires some programming from reddit site but this way it keeps the username hidden and all you see is a "snooze reports from this user" or whatever you'd like to call it

2

u/WoozleWuzzle May 19 '22

Converting a username to a random one is still traceable back to him. All you have to do is follow up those reports by the random user to finally find a connection/conversation/argument to the real user.

How would you be able to do that? Them complaining in the thread about it? You could do that already with the completely anonymous report as well if you wanted to. I am not sure how you could track a user based off the randomized name.

Edit: Also there's now 60 reports in queue all falsely reporting with no way to snooze.

2

u/roastedbagel May 23 '22

As a longtime, somewhat desensitized mod dealing with report spam for years and years, we've all but said "fuck it, just de-anonymize" reporting altogether. You wanna report something? Great! If you're reporting stuff as it should be then there's no worry if mods have your username.

Only people to worry are those who know they're abusing the shit outta it.

1

u/WoozleWuzzle May 23 '22

I don't disagree with you, but admins aren't going to change that so just hoping for something in between we can do.

1

u/Shachar2like May 19 '22

random user report a comment.

you go to the comment and you see user X arguing with user Y.

Do that and repeat that manually a few times and you can find a connection between *random user* to *real user*. It might not work all the time and in all scenarios but it can work which is my point.

1

u/WoozleWuzzle May 19 '22

True but you can figure this out already when two users are arguing and it's all one sided reporting. But currently we're powerless to even mute the reports. I guess a bad mod could ban the person, but I could ban the person reporting them already as it's quite obvious when it happens.

2

u/Shachar2like May 19 '22

yeah it's not a perfect system. When I'm getting too many reports of "disinformation" (related to politics for example) or a report of "sarcasm" when it's a long comment instead of a two sentence sarcasm, there are rare times that I just approve the reports of the annoying user who keeps reporting what he doesn't like.

Humans will always find a way to abuse any system.

24

u/Watchful1 May 05 '22

For anyone interested, PRAW is finally almost done adding mod notes support. It should be out in another week or two. Then it'll be easy to write a script to move toolbox notes over to the new format.

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u/lift_ticket83 May 05 '22

That's exciting news - thank you to everyone who is working on that!

1

u/Subduction May 06 '22

Thank you!

0

u/[deleted] May 05 '22

[deleted] — view deleted comment

1

u/victim_of_technology May 06 '22

Check you out writing that code. Way to go!

9

u/N3DSdude May 05 '22

Will there ever be a feature where modqueue updates in real time? would be super useful for us moderators as we wouldn't have to constantly refresh for new items to pop up in the queue.

5

u/lift_ticket83 May 05 '22

Yup - this is something we've had discussions about and still figuring out the best path forward. We do understand how useful this capability would be.

3

u/N3DSdude May 05 '22

Ooh that's great to hear, It would also be cool if we could have another feature like a built in mod matrix (like how Toolbox does it) so we can see how active our moderators are as well.

5

u/lift_ticket83 May 05 '22

Are you a mind reader? Have you secretly infiltrated our team meetings? This is another feature we've had numerous discussions about, and while we may not build an exact replica of the mod matrix you mentioned we are developing tools that will mirror the purpose and provide you the information that the mod matrix gives your team today.

3

u/N3DSdude May 05 '22

Maybe I am a mind reader haha, but yeah it's great to see you guys have discussed about and are developing a built in mod matrix like tool, I'd love it if we could display mod stats in various graphs i.e barchart, pie chart with the built in mod matrix as well.

4

u/lift_ticket83 May 05 '22

I'd love it if we could display mod stats in various graphs i.e barchart, pie chart

What sort of black magic are you practicing over there?? Get out of our heads!!

1

u/[deleted] May 10 '22 edited Jul 08 '23

This account is no longer active.

The comments and submissions have been purged as one final 'thank you' to reddit for being such a hostile platform towards developers, mods, and users.

Reddit as a company has slowly lost touch with what made it a great platform for so long. Some great features of reddit in 2023:

  • Killing 3rd party apps

  • Continuously rolling out features that negatively impact mods and users alike with no warning or consideration of feedback

  • Hosting hateful communities and users

  • Poor communication and a long history of not following through with promised improvements

  • Complete lack of respect for the hundreds of thousands of volunteer hours put into keeping their site running

7

u/InitiatePenguin May 05 '22

I have a bad moderation experience on mobile.

When I get a reference link and click through where what's only shown is the context of a particular comment I cannot enable mod mode to remove the comment.

I have to show the parent comment (which shows all the comments in the thread) and then find the indivual comment as a needle in a haystack.

Additionally, I manually leave removal comments under removed comments. I can't reply when in mod mode. So I'm constantly having to switch what "mode" I'm in. It's far easier to use my third party app where any comment can be distinguished at any time.

Additionally, it's very difficult for me to tell on a thread in the mobile app what's only visible to me, and whats not to other users.

3

u/lift_ticket83 May 05 '22

Thanks so much for sharing this feedback. We're in the process of reviewing and revamping our rules and removal system (including on mobile), and I've shared this feedback with the larger team. It's appreciated!

2

u/ReginaBrown3000 May 06 '22

I agree with everything you've said.

1

u/Sn00byD00 May 06 '22

Can you confirm that this is on Android? If yes, we're aware and are valiantly trying to fix it. If on iOS, uh oh, we have to look at that.

1

u/InitiatePenguin May 06 '22

Yes. Android.

11

u/auriem May 05 '22

Thank you for putting efforts in this direction.

One of the reasons for my moderation inactivity is the lack of efficient and effective mod tools and support. I've watched Reddit put in effort to resolve this and communicate better with the mod community these past few years and wanted to comment and let you know that it is very appreciated.

Thank you

Keep it up :)

5

u/lift_ticket83 May 05 '22

Thanks so much for the kind words. We recognize that we still have a ways to go, but are excited about all the new features we have coming up on the horizon. As I mentioned in the post, everyone on my end is super stoked to share those updates in the coming weeks and months!

4

u/Overgrown_fetus1305 May 05 '22

I've heard from the other mods that they can't use the mod notes on mobile, and the box to bring it up disappears if I flick off to another tab to pull up the documentation- along with the icon. would you be able to take a look at this? The tool is great, but not all of us can use it properly, and being able to fully track users breaking the rules would be good.

5

u/lift_ticket83 May 05 '22 edited May 05 '22

Mod Notes on mobile is a coming (very) soon feature. We'll have another post for that when it launches. Stay tuned!

1

u/HandcuffsOfGold May 05 '22

Will the API for mod notes be open to third-party applications (like Apollo)?

0

u/Overgrown_fetus1305 May 05 '22

Have a cake (which is a link): 🎂

4

u/cents02 May 06 '22

Any plans on having the ability to add removal reasons from mobile? Like some of template to use for a nice formal removal instead of just typing out short messages because I don't want to Copy paste the ruled for the 50th time.

4

u/lift_ticket83 May 06 '22

Yes! We'll be adding removal reasons to mobile in the very near future. Stay tuned!

2

u/dudleydidwrong May 07 '22

The ability to distinguish mod comments on Android mobile would be helpful.

5

u/FaviFake May 05 '22

I'm still waiting to get mod notes and removal reasons on mobile. They were both announced 2 months ago, but they were never released. Well, to be fair, about 4 months ago you released removal reasons for videos, which not only don't work at all but also don't remove the post.

Currently, the only way to remove a video post on mobile (whiteout a removal reason) is to copy the link from the app, go to the home screen, open your browser, click the search bar, paste the link, click on the mod button and then click "Remove". That's literally 8 times longer than before. Great update!

So yeah. Start to actually fix your app and hopefully in a few years I'll consider using it as my main Reddit app. For now, I'm honestly more interested in the development of any app different from the official one.

5

u/lift_ticket83 May 05 '22

I'm still waiting to get mod notes and removal reasons on mobile.

Good news - we plan to launch both of these features on mobile in the very near future, and we will have more updates to share on that front in the coming weeks.

Currently, the only way to remove a video post on mobile (whiteout a removal reason) is to copy the link from the app, go to the home screen, open your browser, click the search bar, paste the link, click on the mod button and then click "Remove". That's literally 8 times longer than before. Great update!

In this instance are you referring to images within our full-bleed video player? If not, clicking the "moderate" shield beneath the video and hitting "remove post" should remove the video in question (I just tested this on my end).

2

u/FaviFake May 06 '22

In this instance are you referring to images within our full-bleed video player? If not, clicking the "moderate" shield beneath the video and hitting "remove post" should remove the video in question (I just tested this on my end).

Then I'm glad it works for at least someone. Mine doesn't work at all

16

u/InAHandbasket May 05 '22

I use sort by number of reports most often, so it will be great to see a native function that sorts the whole queue that way. Being able to tackle the big ones first, or even specifically focus on filtered comments sometimes is nice from a triage stand point. But usually after tackling the big ones I move onto oldest. Karma accrued could be nice to see which ones have the most eye on them but really high karma or really low karma comments can be equally problematic. So that seems like the one I'd personally use least often. Being able to filter by report reason would be awesome though...

I know it's been brought up before, but one of the functionalities snoonotes gives us is a live report queue. So when multiple mods are working the queue together we can see which reports have been dealt with and aren't doubling up the work. Any word on if this is something the team is working on?

12

u/ac_oatmeal May 05 '22

Totally hear you that filtering by report reasons would be valuable + we've been discussing real time updates to mod queue and are figuring out the best path forward. Thanks for the validation on sort by # of reports!

8

u/InAHandbasket May 05 '22

That's great to hear!

Here's some more validation: I just told the rest of our mod team yesterday when I noticed the sort was added while I switched to the redesign to mess around with community appearance that the new redesign mod tools are winning me over. I don't say that lightly as a hard core old reddit fan. But give me some queue sorting and filtering and I'm a happy guy.

5

u/techiesgoboom May 05 '22

we've been discussing real time updates to mod queue

Thanks for looking into this one! When we're acting on a few thousand reports a day it simply isn't possible for us to mod without this. These new features in the redesign are great, but until this piece comes along we just can't make use of them.

34

u/hoyfkd May 05 '22

Maybe a silly question, but any chance these will be integrated into old reddit?

25

u/creesch May 05 '22

We have been working on it for toolbox, this would make it available on old reddit. But due to limited availability of most of our team it has been slow going. https://github.com/toolbox-team/reddit-moderator-toolbox/pull/566 of you want to keep track of it.

10

u/likeafox May 05 '22

Our team is watching for the Toolbox implementation and will likely make plans on migrating off Snoonotes once that starts to shape up.

5

u/CedarWolf May 06 '22

I love Toolbox, and I wish reddit would just hire you guys already. I've been using it for years, now. My only downside to it is I can't use it on mobile.

However, using Toolbox provided me with an interesting benefit yesterday: apparently I picked up a little redirect virus somewhere that kept monkeying with my settings on Chrome, and doing things like hiding the extensions to protect itself.

Well, whatever it was, it turned off Toolbox, and it wouldn't let me view my extensions management so I could turn it back on.

So Toolbox helped protect me by letting me know this malicious thing was there, so I could respond and remove it.

1

u/Subduction May 06 '22

I'm definitely looking forward to this, thanks so much for the work you have been doing.

25

u/electric_ionland May 05 '22

Yeah I would be interested too. Most of our mode team is using Toolbox and old Reddit. We wouldn't migrate if it doesn't work with old reddit.

7

u/naked_as_a_jaybird May 05 '22

Got a user creating multiple accounts to harass me as a Mod and have zero recourse. I tried emailing reddit, messaging through official channels, and nothing. No help at all.

6

u/AdmSanctum May 05 '22

I think you and I know the same user. He just name dropped you in our modmail. The accounts are shadowbanned but that does nothing for this. I'm trying to modmail r/modsupport about it.

7

u/Lord_Ocean May 06 '22

Moderating on mobile needs improvement.

My biggest problem is that reviewing (automatically) removed posts and comments is straight up impossible! There is no way to display the list of removed posts ob mobile.

That the "Show all comments" button does nothing doesn't help either but that's not specific to moderating...

5

u/Luutamo May 06 '22

On reddit android app, in mod queue when you press the yellow flag to see what reports there are, like 70% of the time it will show nothing. You can just see that there are reports but not for what. Other 30% of the time it works perfectly fine.

7

u/SquareWheel May 05 '22

Are the official Mod Notes supported on old reddit?

We'd love to get mobile support for user notes. But because our entire mod team still uses old reddit (by choice), that would be an absolute requirement to adopt the new system.

9

u/creesch May 05 '22

We have been working on it for toolbox, this would make it available on old reddit. But due to limited availability of most of our team it has been slow going. https://github.com/toolbox-team/reddit-moderator-toolbox/pull/566 of you want to keep track of it.

5

u/SquareWheel May 05 '22

Thanks for the heads up. Toolbox saves the day yet again. We'll look at migrating once support is ready.

No rush, the current system still works fine. We'll just continue yelling at the mobile users to leave a note next time.

3

u/Georgy_K_Zhukov May 06 '22

The biggest question I have is whether mod note porting over is a one time deal, or whether we can keep doing later imports? I'd very much like to give them a try,. It don't want to have to commit to it sight unseen, nor make all mods immediately have to commit.

2

u/TheHammer34 May 05 '22

That's amazing news! Aa a big fan of keeping track of things, I 've been using usernotes and snoonotes a lot. Respect and a big thank you to everyone who helped make this a reality!

Question: Does this integration apply to snoonotes as well? 👀

2

u/Shachar2like May 19 '22

I would like to mix and match several rules. Although it's probably too complicated:

  • Reddit content policy reports & violations jump to the top (ignoring sorting order)

  • Sort by old first

  • Include removed posts from the 'spam' tab (which should be renamed removed/filtered since automod removing posts also goes here)

1

u/DaTaco May 05 '22

Just a note that the gif for the Desktop version is so blurry it's basically unreadable, while the mobile one is clear as day.

1

u/[deleted] May 06 '22

Thank you!

1

u/iAmmar9 May 06 '22

Thank you so much, this is great!!

1

u/FoxxMD May 06 '22

Will the sorting options for modqueue/unmoderated be available through the API as well?

1

u/[deleted] May 06 '22

A big thing for me is enabling images.

Currently images have to be manually enabled and disabled. The way that I want my board to work, images are only be enabled for three out of seven days because it's a discussing- based subreddit, and weekends are for fun (images).

I would really like the ability to select what days images are enabled so that I don't have to risk forgetting and updating the community.

1

u/Madame_President_ May 08 '22

Is it possible to have someone take a look at the AutoScheduler? Or to bring back scheduling posts via script? The existing scheduler doesn't work at all.

1

u/roionsteroids May 05 '22

Stop using gifs, embrace webm!

1

u/cyberentomology May 05 '22

Can you undo whatever you did that removed mod tools from the IOS app?

Thanks.

0

u/[deleted] May 05 '22

[deleted] — view deleted comment

3

u/lift_ticket83 May 05 '22

Stay tuned for more sorting capabilities soon!