Feature proposal: Real-time moderation transparency page (vote in comments)
Proposal:
Create a new page where all users can view all moderation actions. This would make transparency a core part of the platform, hopefully avoiding any misunderstandings about mod actions.
A new page, maybe called tildes.net/moderation, is available to all registered users. I am not sure where the link to should appear on the site, maybe on the user's profile sidebar?
This page contains a table of all possible moderation actions. The actions may include: deleted topics, deleted comments, tag modification, moved topics, edited topic titles, banned user, locked topics. (this begs the question, what are the possible mod actions, and that they must be codified.)
Very roughly, the table columns might include: Date, User(being mod'ed), Mod Action(a list of possible mod actions), Mod Action Reason (either a text field, or a list of possible reasons for this action), Link (null if action is a deleted topic.)
I think that the user who did the moderating should not be publicly listed for now, to avoid drama?
Some of the related Topics: (please make a top-level comment with any others)
Could we have a stickied list of all bans with reasons included?
Daily Tildes discussion - our first ban
Please vote for the comment which best reflects your position on this proposal.
As a bonus question, please make a top-level comment if you have general comment about my format of voting on comments. Would you prefer a straw poll on a 3rd party platform? Is there a cleaner way to do this?
Edit: added "banned user" to actions list, I probably missed others, let me know. Also added the obvious locked topics.
Vote for this if you are ambivalent about this proposal.
I'm not neccisarily opposed to having some degree of public record explaining individual bans or removal/locking of posts that had been on top of the frontpage but have devolved. But with a fair degree of caveats.
In my experience these ideas, while well-intended, tend not to get looked at by laymen users but instead by users who have a disproportionate interest in the community's moderation. Meaning they often scrutinize the logs for data points to support their views rather then examine them, and rather then act as a check on power become consumed with conspiratory rethoric.
This can become especially troublesome when these people start looking for patterns in the logs to justify witch hunts against specific moderators because of their personal dislike of them, or because they feel slighted by them.
I also don't like the notion of revealing too much about anti-spam or anti-social-engineering measures in place, as the intended targets tend to study this to become more effective.
First let's take a look at exactly what you are asking for. Here is a day's worth of the /r/listentothis mod log and also the moderation matrix for all actions since Jan 1 2018. That's what you say you'd like to see on Tildes here.
I have to ask... what's wrong with the Topic Log? It's right over there. -->
I find I prefer having it all in the topic log. You have to be reading the thread so there's no taking it out of context. It doesn't display long-term patterns of behavior and stats about mods - it just shows which mods did which things in any given thread.
Context matters. It's very easy for someone to point to a wall of stats and cry foul, and looking at that wall of stats you can't tell if they are right or not, but oh, look at the numbers, something's off maybe? It must be true! Some people are that stupid, and lots of those people are also LOUD. They make a fuss over nothing, and then when they won't let it go we have to ban them, and the next batch, and so it goes. This is goldfish in a nutshell, by the way. All this fuss over meaningless internet-bits that honestly mean fuck all to anyone, three days later when they've moved on to the latest two minutes hate topic.
The topic log sidesteps all of that just by being accessible from the thread view, and only containing actions for that thread. It's only ever visible in-context. Building a better site really is about the little things - presentation is so often overlooked. Just where something is on a page can have a staggering impact.
Topic logs won't help us with spotting deleted threads. We could have a [removed] tab/tag/view that shows the deleted posts, but that doesn't solve the problems others have mentioned where something in the title of the thread literally breaks the law. Sometimes the thread has to be deleted, full stop. I'll remind everyone that this site is a Canadian non-profit, so their hate speech laws very much apply here. Don't worry, I'm pretty sure we all intend to go way past Canada's bare minimums with hate speech. :)
If the logs have a line that looks like this...
The problem here is you've given everyone the perfect boogeyman to point at. Oh, and this won't be a rare occurrence, either. The logs will fill right the fuck up with that stuff, all day, every day, and the bigger the site gets the more common it'll all become. In fact, it'll become so commonplace and boring that the people who should be watching that for abuse will nope out of doing it because it's too much like a job sifting hundreds of pages a day. It'll only get dragged into the open when someone with a bone to pick decides to go fishing for it. I know this because listentothis had public mod logs for years until the bots broke. Absolutely nobody cared, except for trolls. Nobody cared when it turned off, either.
We already have transparency of the 'moderation' activities. If you want to see what users are banned, that's a sitewide administrative log. I may be crazy but I don't think anyone has ever made that kind of information public before. It certainly doesn't exist in any form in any modern online service. We can talk about that, but it's quite an ask.
What might work there is a sort of 'tombstone' on the user's inactive account page. A lot of sites just do a [user deleted] but we could just show the current user page and toss a [ban citation and reasons] section in the sidebar of any banned user's page. It's not a long list of banned users scrolling by at dozens per hour (which will happen), but it does provide the reason why and the context.
In fact having a full disciplinary record on the user's page is a fascinating idea. If you bristle at the concept of a 'report card' on your user profile being a public display of your past bullshit, then imagine how mods feel with those massive logs sitting out there waiting to cause trouble. By the way - on reddit, we do have those report cards on all of the users thanks to modtools. You just can't ever see them. That was added as a browser extension and everyone uses it. It'll happen here too, as part of the site or as an extension. May as well bake it right in.
This dovetails with another issue we've skirted around. Do we allow ~groups to ban people? Think carefully before you answer that question. Someone else here on Tildes said "supermarkets don't kick you out of the produce section, they kick you out of the store" and I had to laugh because it's true. Take a good look at all the subreddits wholesale banning massive numbers of users from other subreddits on reddit lately. That's insane behavior, and reddit enables it twice - first by giving people the ability, second by not preventing them from abusing it.
I think we want to give groups the ability to mute users for specific time periods (up into the 2-3 month range I'd guess) but if the user is still coming back after that to cause problems, they get kicked out of the supermarket. Hitting someone with a mute action is tricky - where does that get reported? User's report card? Mod log where no one is paying attention?
Honestly I'm not that worried about a mod log, but I do worry if everyone has unfettered access to it. The mods/admins need it for themselves. Everyone on a mod team of hundreds or thousands will need it just to keep up on each other's actions. I think the top tier trusted users should get access to it before they earn moderator status so they can get used to watching it scroll by and see how/why moderation takes place in that group. It's also damn handy for reporting, analysis... the data is useful.
If that's going on in ~science, I see no reason a new user or someone who has only ever been active in ~sports needs to see it. Federate the access towards the trusted users of ~science instead, because they've been around a couple of months (or longer) and understand the community norms. That's enough eyes to keep everyone honest and enough secrecy that trolls can't easily mine everything for rage bait.
Apologies if this is a bit long and rambling, I'm around 7/10 right now.
This is the best argument against this proposal, as it was written, and maybe in general. Thanks!
I'm not really against it per se... we do want some accountability. Let's just not jump to extremes of 'full public access' or 'no logs' at all. Showing it to trusted users in their own groups seems like the best compromise to me. Those are the people who have a use for that kind of log. Everyone else can use the user pages and the topic logs.
Showing a centralized log to trusted users makes a ton of sense to minimize drama, and keep some level of accountability.
All hail Amarok! I love this explanation. Thank you.
It could be good for transparency but It could also result in drama/harassment so I'm not really sure
Vote for this comment if you support this proposal.
Vote for this even if you have qualifications. Please add your qualifications in a comment.
Vote for this comment if you are completely against this proposal.
Please add a comment why you entirely disagree with this proposal.
I can fully say, as a former moderator of a big community on Reddit, transparency logs can be a complicated idea. I moderated r/SpaceX in a past life. The number of times we needed to remove content that was both illegal to disperse (ITAR), and commercially sensitive was far too high. How would you propose to work around this, when the title itself often contains information that shouldn't be known or discussed? [deleted title]?
It also tends to have the opposite effect that you describe ("avoid drama"). It puts moderation drama left, front, and centre. Someone can find a way to take issue with nearly every action performed; and it also gives trolls "evidence" that singular mods can be "biased"; and if I do say so myself, moderation drama is one of the reasons I actually left reddit, and now browse places like HackerNews. You may disagree with HackerNews' moderation policy, but for the most part, it's out of the way, and focused on the content.
I don't particularly care if the administrators there are not transparent, and to be honest I don't care if Deimos/moderators here are transparent either. My personal view is Tildes shouldn't be a bastion of free speech. It should be a controlled, sensible community, where users have implicit trust in Deimos and any moderators (we're building a discussion board here, not declaring a new country), and they should be able to get out of the way and let people discuss, without injecting meta-commentary every fifth thread because some user takes issue with a removed post.
My 2c.
Hey, thanks for r/spacex, that sub is why I finally made a reddit account a couple years back.
Yes that would be fine by me. As long as it had some context, like the date, user, oh... and maybe ~group that is was in. Deleted topics have never happened on Tildes AFAIK, so far, though I'm sure that they will occur in the future. To me, a big part of the transparency concept is just to know the volume of censorship/moderation. I personally don't need to focus on the individual item.
I understand the drama front and center argument. I must admit that I come at this topic from strictly a user POV. I almost added a half-joke somewhere in this proposal "The one trick that all mods hate" for this reason. This is truly a proposal of just an idea, I will not take negative comments personally.
I want to call attention to something you specifically stated :
A report on the volume of moderation actions is very distinct from a continously updated log. I would be far less opposed to a monthly moderation report then to an open list.
That would be a great compromise from my POV. It would minimize real-time drama, and yet provide transparency. As long as it was posted via the platform’s code, and not dependent on mods’ hand crafting.
Edit: iOS auto misspelled
If you think just deleted topics, not something deleted and illegal to show - several topics were already removed. I'm sure that if you use @Kat as search engine you can find some :-)
Btw the moderation actions are visible in each post topic log. Do you mean some centralized log? It may be useful for something like user bans and topic removals, but I don't think that it's necessary.
Yes, they have. I've seen at least two.
I happen to be fairly active on the internet. In any moderation team I've ever been part of, I'm usually one of the most active moderators. This doesn't necessarily mean I'm a stricter moderator than my fellow mods, it's just a reflection of the fact that I spend more hours on the internet than they do (I simply have more time on my hands). So, in a given week, I might spend 10 hours on the internet compared to another moderator's 5 hours that week (just to make up some numbers). Let's assume that we each ban 1 person per hour (why not?). Therefore, over the course of a week, I'll ban 10 people and my fellow mod will ban 5 people.
Now... show that moderation log to people: Algernon banned 10 people this week but Jack banned only 5 people. "Algernon's a ban-happy evil mod!!!" No. Algernon's just a mod with more time on his hands. But, Algernon will still end up copping flak for being the bad moderator. He's doing exactly the same things as the other mods, he just happens to do them more often because he spends more time modding than they do.
I don't see why I should be subjected to the inevitable attacks this would cause simply because I spend more time on the internet than other people.
I have experienced exactly this too. We used to publish moderation statistics occasionally, and I would inevitably be the one with more post removals, comment removals, and bans than other mods. I would also have more approvals than other mods. I still copped flak for being trigger happy.
Oh, I don’t want make mods’ jobs even harder and more thankless. You are the glue that makes online forums work after all. I did say that the specific mod should not be mentioned to avoid that.
So, if this isn't about
subjecting individual moderators to witchhuntsholding individual moderators accountable, what's the point of this public moderation log?The goal of transparency, in my public implementation, is to hold the entire platform accountable.
I would hope that if a user was a mod, the same page would include the specific moderator in the table, so that you all could hold each other accountable.
That's a nice vague general statement. What does it mean in practice? What will actually happen as a result of these moderation logs being published?
For one, the system I described would preferably codify reasons for mod actions. This could help to prevent personal score-settling, or paid shill-modding, or just vague personal dislike moderation. If there is no public accountability, then what is to prevent the same issues which we all find disgusting in our countries’ governance from occurring in online forums?
I realize that none of these issue are a problem while we live in our invite-only, benevolent dictatorship utopia (and I really like it), but once the platform scales I feel that transparency is something that should scale as well. Right now @Deimos makes a post each time someone is banned, or even sometimes when a thread is locked. He is doing this for reasons of transparency, right? I am asking: how can we make this scale?
How? You'll see that <anonymous_mod> banned @HypotheticalUser for reason "Trolling". How does that help you, as a non-moderator, to prevent personal score-settling, or paid shill-modding, or just vague personal dislike moderation?
I'm still trying to figure out what this "public accountability" consists of, and how it would work.
Nope! He's banned many more people than he's told us about! He said that explicitly a while ago. He announced the first few bans because they were the first few bans and he was using them as object examples to explain his approach. After that, I assume they became business as usual. I would estimate that he's announced less than half, possibly as little as a third, of the bans he's imposed. This site is already being run without transparency.
I honestly can’t believe I’m having to argue why accountability is a good thing. Fine you win, accountability is awful, and no one wants it. We all prefer non-accountable governance.
I just googled it and:
Let’s say I was a mod, and I decided that you were being argumentative and talking in circles. I could ban you. Who would hold me accountable for that? My fellow mods who feel my pain? This is why IRL, good police governance includes a civilian overview board. I honestly feel like I’m taking the crazy pills right now. Can you really not see the benefits of even anonymous public accountability in all forms of governance?
Well that’s not good.
Edit: I should clarify that keeping the mod report/log anonymized regarding the mods is a step to protect the individual mods. The public record is to keep the entire platform accountable.
I have not said that. Do not put words in my
mouthfingers.Sure, I'm starting out with a negative attitude towards your proposal because, in my experience, "accountability" is just another way of saying "let's incite witchhunts against moderators". However, I'm still trying to figure how your proposed accountability will actually work. I've asked you for a specific concrete explanation a couple of times, but you just keep throwing vague phrases and assertions at me. Tell me how a public moderation log will enable this desired accountability without becoming a witchhunt against well-intentioned moderators.
Here on Tildes, it'll be more senior moderators. Read this discussion a few of us were having yesterday. For context: Amarok and cfabbro are two of Deimos' advisers. They're part of his inner circle, who have been discussing how Tildes will work for the past year. They know what's planned.
No, because you simply keep asserting that it has benefits, without actually demonstrating how those benefits will arise.
I must head to bed, and “just relax” about this whole thing. I will respond tomorrow with citations and examples of how public accountability is a net benefit.
Btw, I sympathize with the mod experience. I kinda assume you all have mild forms of PTSD from the crap you all have had thrown at you. I don’t want to make that a bigger problem at all. Again, I’ll respond tomorrow. Cheers!
That's not what I want! FTSOF. I want you to explain to me how your proposal of a public, but anonymous, moderation log will lead to accountability. I've asked you this specific question a few times in this thread, and you just keep not answering.
I don't want proof of the principle of accountability, I want to know how your proposal would work in practice.
I'm not the OP, but in my opinion, an anonymous moderation log (just showing the actions taken, not the specific moderators) could make patterns of bad moderation more obvious, and allow the issue to be brought to the moderation team, or site admins, who could then deal with the accountability aspect.
How? What evidence would there be in the mod log to show these patterns?
When you see that <anonymous_mod> banned @HypotheticalUser for reason "Trolling", how does this indicate bad moderating? Even if you have a hundred records, showing that various anonymous moderators banned various users for various reasons, what patterns will you be able to see that indicate bad moderating?
I'm looking for specific explanations about how this will work, not just vague assertions.
Well, hopefully the mod log would show more than just 'trolling.' It should show the specific rule broken, what content broke it (or if it was illegal/copyrighted content, some sort of [illegal/copyrighted content] filler). And then if you see one type of content consistently removed, even though it doesn't really break a rule, you could escalate the situation. Also simply requiring moderators to publicly post the reason why an action was taken could hopefully result in better moderation. I know this isn't super specific, but to know if it would actually help would require an actual test run of the feature.
Thank you! I don't know why @Adams couldn't explain this.
I might change my vote from "against" to "ambivalent".
I would like to add that accountability is not the only goal of transparency. It also provides a simple understanding of the difficulties that the platform is facing.
Aside/rant:
I must say that I find it odd that folks are so against transparency in the governance of an online forum, while I assume that we all would give our right arm for more transparency in our countries’ governance. It seems that we would all likely understand the benefits of transparency in that regard more readily. Is this just because none of us have ever been in real political power? Would we all tend towards opaque power if we were the ones in charge?
How? How will a public moderation log give people an understanding of the difficulties that Tildes is facing?
Maybe because I've been on the receiving end of this so-called "transparency". I've been subjected to the attacks that result from this transparency. So, I need you to provide a bloody good reason why I and/or other potential future moderators should be subjected to that here.
If you were not named, as I described, wouldn’t this avoid the problem of personal persecution?
All moderation actions at a topic level are already shown in that topic's Log (in the sidebar). So, if it was moved or locked or re-tagged or removed, that is shown in the Topic Log, complete with who did it. There's no reason to double up on that.