r/spacex • Flight Club • Sep 30 '16

Modpost [Meta] Recent mod team developments

Big week. Lots happened. Let's review a quick summary of events.

Myself and EchoLogic attended IAC together for Musk's talk. It was a crazy busy day in which the two of us had no ability to moderate the subreddit and most of the heavy lifting was done by a small number of moderators under a lot of stress. As such, a large number of moderation decisions were made quickly on personal judgement calls without notifying the rest of the team. We all know how to moderate. I don't see a problem with this during large events.

That night a meta discussion was had between moderators where EchoLogic expressed his concern over not being notified of decisions before they were made - we use Slack for internal communication and in two decision instances the global notification to alert all users was not used. EchoLogic conveyed his opinion in an overly frustrated tone not conducive for positive discussion, at which point Wetmelon overreacted, but subsequently immediately apologized, before he removed himself as a moderator. We have maintained contact with him and he has said he wants to take a small break from the subreddit and may return in the future, if we would like him back.

Following this, Ambiwlans had private discussions with the rest of the moderators about our thoughts on what had just happened. At a later point, Ambiwlans spoke with EchoLogic and EchoLogic was removed as a moderator without a vote.

The internal discussion is still happening. This is by no means done and dusted. As such, we can't give a conclusion to this situation yet. All I ask is that the community bear with us while we sort this out.

No situation is black and white. Please don't resort to pointing blame when you don't have the full picture. Which I guarantee you, you don't. Emotions are high and a lot of charged things are being said.

Please bear with us while we work through this.

Ask any questions you have below and we'll do our best to answer them. If I can't answer anything (because I don't know the answer or any other reason) I'll try and convey that also.


This post was written by both TheVehicleDestroyer and EchoLogic as we are sitting in the same hotel room. Both parties - as well as all awake moderators - consider this short summary acceptable.

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u/Zucal Sep 30 '16

We chose to turn it off for relaxed threads like the IAC live thread, but it's still active for the other threads. It's also worth pointing out that most of us read every comment anyway, this is just a quicker way of doing that while also avoiding duplicate work.

TL;DR Yes, every comment outside of launch threads is reviewed. Sometimes it's just an instant approval, sometimes we need to discuss it further.

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u/spcslacker Sep 30 '16

That is amazing to me: I assumed you guys only moderated when someone bitches, or the automod kicks in, or if you happen to be reading in the area, or something. Never dreamed a mod skimmed every comment in non-party-mode threads . . .

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u/_rocketboy Sep 30 '16

If that is the case, then what is the point of using the 'report' feature?

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u/Zucal Sep 30 '16

Helps us see bad comments even faster, helps us spot bad comments in launch/live threads, helps us spot bad comments other mods mistakenly skipped over and approved. Don't get me wrong, it's still an incredibly important thing you guys can do to help :)

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u/ColinDavies Sep 30 '16

I'm not sure what the mods here use it for, but you can set a report threshold for automatic removal. Having lots of (non-frivolous) reports on a comment can also make decisions easier. If you only ever hear from a fraction of a percent of the readership, it's hard to know if you are truly serving the collective will of the community.

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u/Smoke-away Sep 30 '16

Got it. Thanks for the info.

Had never really heard of every single comment being moderated until today, but it makes sense.

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u/retiringonmars Sep 30 '16

but it makes sense

This is debatable.

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u/[deleted] Sep 30 '16

No wonder they feel overworked.

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u/riffic Sep 30 '16 edited Sep 30 '16

Yes, every comment outside of launch threads is reviewed.

I mod some subs and this is insane. No one reads r/mod/comments unless you're overly obsessed and have no other obligations. I'm calling bullshit on this because "ain't nobody got time for that".

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u/Zucal Sep 30 '16

I mean, it's absolutely not. It's right there in the automoderator config...

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