Moderator tools: what do you have and what should be the immediate priorities?
I don't want to get too high in the clouds with moderating philosophy. Instead I want to talk about action steps that can be taken in the very near term to improve moderating. Especially so long as Deimos is the only one with most of the moderating tools at their disposal, I think it's crucial to make sure it's as painless as possible.
So far it looks like Deimos has these moderating tools available to him:
- User bans
- Comment removal
- Thread locking/removal
- Title/tag editing (and this ability is shared by many of us as well)
Am I missing anything?
The three next tools I would hope are coming next are:
- A reporting mechanism, where users can report comments and threads that they think should be removed.
- A feedback mechanism for reports, telling users that a report they gave was acted on.
- A note taking system for the moderator-type person, shareable with all other moderator-type persons at that level, with an expiration date probably around 30 days.
Now I'll talk about why. First, the reporting mechanism. While it's still possible to keep up with everything that gets posted, I don't necessarily think it's the best use of Deimos' time to read literally everything, especially as the site expands its userbase and presumably activity level and depth. The reporting system at first should probably just be a button, maybe eventually with a pop-up field allowing the user a brief description why their reporting, and a queue that gets populated with comments and threads that get reported.
Coinciding with a report queue/option should probably be an easy, rudimentary system for providing feedback to those whose reports led to moderating action. At first, an automated message saying something like "thank you for reporting recently. Action has been taken on one of your recent reports" without any relevant links would do fine, and we can leave the particulars of how much detail to add for later discussions.
The last thing I think should help things considerably in the immediate term is a time-limited user tracking tool for the moderator-type person. As things scale, it isn't always going to be feasible to use mental bandwidth remembering each username and the relevant history associated with their behavior. A good note-taking tool with an auto-timed expiration date on notes would be a good way to address what can easily become a hugely mentally taxing role at almost any scale. This tool should let Deimos take a discrete note for himself (and other moderators at that permission level and higher) connected to a user regarding any questionable threads or comments that were yellow/red flags, or any other moderator action taken against a user within the last X days/months (the particulars don't matter to me as much as that there is an expiration date to these notes). This should let the moderator type person focus on the broader history of the users they're looking at before making a decision, without having to go searching for every relevant comment from the past 30 days. Fewer problematic users at scale should fall through the cracks and more users that might just be having a bad day can be let off with comment removals and/or warnings.
Are these priorities fair? Are there design elements you would want to see in the immediate term that would help reduce the burden of moderating? Are there problems with these tools I'm suggesting that you would want to see addressed?
Honestly...? I think that having the ability to have other people moderate is a higher priority than everything you've mentioned here. At the moment the full weight of moderating a site with nearly 6,000 users is falling on one person - and there are starting to be signs that one person isn't enough (especially because that one person is trying to do other things as well, such as write code for the site and, well, eat and sleep). Deimos needs helpers. He needs to be able to give the ability to lock topics and remove topics/comments to other people.
Then, when there are multiple active moderators, the next highest
reportpriority is a report function to tell those moderators where the trouble-spots are.That's what we need to get this site to the next level, and to prevent it falling into shit-posting anarchy in the short-term.
I don't believe feedback to reporters or shared mod notes are a high priority at all.
EDIT: "report" => "priority". I had a brainfart!
Picking those moderators is easier said than done. There's so much to consider and so much that can go wrong.
It definitely has to happen though or signups need to close for a while, because right now it's only getting harder to manage.
That's beside the point. The point is that this site is becoming too big and too active for one person to moderate by themself. Deimos needs people to help with this. We can't dismiss that need because it might be hard to find the right people - and giving Deimos more tools to work with, as suggested by @BuckeyeSundae here, won't change the fact that he is only one person. At the very least, we need coverage for the times Deimos sleeps!
That said, I know that Deimos has a small hand-picked group of associates who he's been discussing Tildes with for the past year or so. There seem to be about 3 to 5 of these people around the place. They're obvious choices for the first group of content-mods here. Even adding 3 more content-mods will greatly improve the situation.
Beyond that, there are a lot of people here who have moderated on other forums - I know there are a lot of Reddit moderators here, for instance (and probably some moderators from other forums). If Deimos wants to implement now the decentralised moderation model that is planned for the future, there's already a largish pool of people with moderation experience for him to choose from.
And remember that Deimos can and will remove mod-abilities from anyone who abuses them. He said that in his post where he implemented tag-editing and topic-moving abilities, and it's implied by the decay mechanic that's planned for Tildes' future moderation mechanisms. So it's not like a bad mod will stay in place, like happens on Reddit.
I wasn't aware there were others involved like Deimos, in that case I wonder why it hasn't been done yet.
Deimos is The One True God of Tildes: he owns the site, he writes the code, he approves all code submitted by others. The others are more like his apostles than being other members of the pantheon.
I assume the reason Deimos hasn't added them as content-mods is two-fold:
He hasn't yet built the tools which would allow other people to lock topics or remove topics/comments. The only way to do this at the moment is to give someone full developer access, thereby deifying them as full gods when they only need to be demigods.
He hasn't yet seen the need to have multiple content-mods. He's indicated over in Zekka's thread about racists that he hasn't been moderating this site as strongly as he could have (or, possibly, should have). Our god has been withholding his wrath. If he starts moderating to the standards he actually wants here, he may find the workload getting too much for one person.
I don't suppose you'd be willing to mod here, Algernon...?
Please don't take my opinion that Deimos needs more helpers as me trying to position myself to be one of those helpers. I don't care who helps Deimos (within reason), as long as someone does.
For instance, I know that Deimos has a small hand-picked group of associates who he's been discussing Tildes with for the past year or so. There seem to be about 3 to 5 of these people around the place. They're obvious choices to be the first content-mods here.
How do others feel about a public facing moderator log?
I personally would like to see some way for moderation to be held accountable by having a moderator action log viewable by the public.
I think some accountability is necessary. Mods give feedback on users, users give feedback on mods. The issue here is how we handle this accountability.
Here is the past 24 hours of the /r/listentothis mod log and also the moderation matrix for all actions since Jan 1 2018. This is how reddit does it, though if you aren't a moderator you don't have access to these pages. The matrix comes from modtoolbox which is a user-created extension. Without modtoolbox I doubt reddit would have any moderators anymore.
L2t is a pretty tame/safe/unbusy example where as you can see, bots are doing the vast majority of the work. It's infinitely worse/busier in places like /r/science or /r/askreddit where bots can't handle 98% of all cases. You don't even want to know what goes on in the logs of places like /r/suicidewatch. Make some of that info public and people can die.
I already like the way Tildes does this better than reddit. I like having a topic log for each thread, and all of the actions taken on that thread shown in that thread, rather than having some sort of massive public log for the entire ~group like reddit does that's just begging for trolls and witch hunters to peck it apart. We may have that sort of overview log here someday, but I don't think making it public access for everyone is a good idea. Perhaps trusted users get access as part of graduating to moderator/curator status.
I think these tools are all natural and will definitely come with time. As the userbase of tildes grows I'd like to see a move to some type of subgroup for discussing moderator actions, including appeals. With as many trusted users as the site will eventually have it'll be important to set up an appropriate infrastructure to handle disagreements.
I like the note taking thing for mods to keep track of users, perhaps this is as simple as a tag next to their name (like https://github.com/theCrius/tildes-extended), or a dedicated space on the user profile for mods only.
Even as I finish writing that post, I think of a criticism of it. Namely, that by making a queue we would be taking away some of the direct person-to-person interactions that currently happen to draw a moderator-type person's attention. An easy-to-access solution in the immediate term could be just to encourage people experiencing bad behavior to PM deimos directly, rather than responding to the behavior. We all know that for now he's the only person with the ability to take action against a comment or thread, so for now it makes sense to have the 'centralized location' be solely Deimos' inbox. And future trusted individuals' inboxes will likely be a main source of reports for bad behaviors. So maybe it isn't a feature that is really worth the effort right now.
The note taking thing though seems crucial if it doesn't exist already.
From what I've read, this is what people are doing already, so good on that front.
For sure. I'm not looking to really reinvent any wheels where a system is already in place. Just defining it and making it easier is good enough for me.
Noble goals, keep it up!
Deimos is the only moderator on this site. If you don't tell him about problems, those problems will not be addressed.
I agree that a reporting mechanism would be easier and better all around, but we don't have that now. So PMs to Deimos are the only option.
I think people are far too hesitant, really. This is still a very small site, and I'm almost always around all day. I really don't mind getting messages.
I think I need to build a simple reporting system though, just having it as an actual function will probably make people more comfortable doing it.
Would you use a 'report' button if that was available?
If you would, then you do think your issues are important enough to bother him with.
Also keep in mind that everything that happens on this site is important to Deimos. This is his personal project, and everything here reflects on him to some degree. In that context, it would be remiss of us not to let him know about problems we see.
If there are people given more moderation powers then I'd totally agree, as it'd be silly to have to "ping your favorite mod."
Yup, agreed, and I think your last sentence is especially important as many other people are interested in transparent moderating.
I already do this, in the absence of a reporting mechanism.
I have imagined what I would imagine a useful moderation tool that seems like it would be useful for this site. A softer form of moderation that acts as a step that is less extreme than banning and less emotionally exhausting than giving written warnings.
What I am proposing is a way to de-emphasize comment threads. Deimos and future mods can have a comment and it's children collapsed by default, just like Reddit already does. Doing this would act as a warning to the person who wrote the comment and help mods keep the conversation on point.
The reporting mechanism is on the right side of the bar. It provides a list of what was moderated. Thankfully @Deimos implemented editing topics/titles on such posts that are literally breaking news and such. He has edited a few of my titles to better reflect what I posted a few hours after the fact. I even thanked him for that.
Isn't that just the topic log, for recording what actions are taken on a thread, and who did them? I understand that a few of us have the ability now to edit titles and tags for people (and that those actions are publicly available on the right hand side bar), but that's not really what I mean by reporting. What I mean is that a user would be able to use a feature instead of commenting, tagging deimos, sending a PM to deimos or one of the more onerous ways that you can currently draw attention to problematic comments and threads.