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I mod a medium-size (250k subscribers) subreddit. And... no, we do not have time to give personalized individual hand-holding attention to every single person

I mod a medium-size (250k subscribers) subreddit. And... no, we do not have time to give personalized individual hand-holding attention to every single person who can't be bothered to read a simple set of rules linked from our sidebar. We use AutoModerator for a lot, and will be using it even more in the future. It's a very impersonal tool, but in any but the smallest subreddits it's simply not possible to scale up personalized moderation like what you're asking for. At some point you have to show some initiative and read subreddit rules or linked wiki pages/guides/FAQs for yourself rather than relying on the goodwill of volunteer moderators to do it for you.

TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
Does the, or can the, automated moderation tools privately message the user and let them know why their post was moderated? Even if it just said the post was removed because it didn't meet the rules, here's a link please read??
- ubernostrum 9y ago
  It can, and I've set it up to do that with some of the obvious stuff. Also working on reorganizing things to make it easier for AutoModerator to detect those things. But even then it's an impersonal deletion with a "copypasta message", which is what the parent comment was complaining is unacceptable.
eecc 9y ago
The set of rules isn’t always “simple & obvious” particularly to those new or only tangentially interested in the sub. Not everyone is OCD about a particular topic but it’s handy to toss a genuine question and perhaps catalogue it more appropriately at a later stage. Most of these draconian rules reek of tribal fallout from some earlier - totally unrelated - war. “And no, we do not have the time to...” then dude, you’re investing waaay more effort than you can afford, you’re burning out, take a step back, chill and let other people shoulder the community. You’re not paid to do it, neither in monetary nor in “gratitude” so chill and keep it best effort
- detaro 9y ago
  So first you complain that mods don't give enough effort in their messages, and now you say "chill and keep it best effort"? "Just get more moderators" isn't easy in many communities.
  - eecc 9y ago
    No, I complain that mods are too eager establishing excessively draconian - and rather elaborate, probably subjective - rules on a general and broad topic sub. Keep it to the minimum (behave, be civil) and that’s that. Not this: 1 try. No direct images, only Imgur links (first auto-delete) 2 try. No request for advice. (Second delete) 3 try. No what’s this (we have decided that it goes to another sub, there it’s documented in article nn of our faq) 4... (whatever, take your meds, I’ve wasted enough time...)
- ubernostrum 9y ago
  So, the subreddit I mod basically uses its rules to tell people not to throw insults at each other, to avoid low-effort types of posts (like memes) and to stay on-topic. That's not terribly difficult to follow. But it still ends up taking a lot of words to express, largely because so many people will come in with an attitude of "well my post is special and shouldn't have to be subject to that". Plus, of course, lots of people are just assholes on the internet. We use AutoModerator to catch what it can catch. We manually remove a lot of other stuff. We use short temporary bans for some categories of rule-breaking, and permanent bans for assholes. And it mostly chugs along, which is about the best you can hope for most of the time as a moderator. But, again, there's not time to hold the hand of people who think reading a short set of rules is beneath them, or who otherwise have aggressive attitudes to begin with (like you!). And even if there was, it wouldn't be worth the time. If we added a hundred million new moderators overnight just to try to do this, it wouldn't improve things one bit.
DanBC 9y ago
> linked from our sidebar For many years those links were not available to mobile users.
DoreenMichele 9y ago
I'm sympathetic to your problems and I see nothing inherently wrong with deleting a post that doesn't belong there and sending a standard message related to it. But the GP is saying he is tempted to troll the subreddit in question because of feeling burned. This was something I thought a lot about as a moderator. If I don't have time to deal with these small issues, when I am going to find time to deal with the towering inferno that is growing because of me putting out the fire with gasoline? Sometimes, it isn't what you do per se, it's how you do it. When I was homeless, I had a question deleted from Metafilter and not hugely long after, someone else asked the exact same question with identical wording but a different explanation for asking and it was allowed to stand. That looks to me like the reason mine got deleted was not because the question was not allowed, but because the mods were classist assholes and actively looking to shit on me. We can't have the homeless woman having any positive experiences here. It might encourage her to stick around and, heaven forbid, even help improve her life and solve her problems, a platform we are actively hostile towards. I really was okay with my questions sometimes being deleted, but a lot of the details of how this specific incident was handled suggested to me that it was not actually a case of "This question is in violation of the guidelines." And that is often the case. Sexism, racism, classism, homophobia, etc are often reinforced with such tactics because it maintains plausible deniability. This is intended as food for thought. I am well aware moderating is challenging and that being too nice can serve as an attractive nuisance, causing people to dump on you and expect you to kiss their boo-boo in response to their icky behavior. There are no perfect solutions. I get that. I'm not trying to attack you.
- eecc 9y ago
  Well, I was just tempted what I did was to unsubscribe, once. Then I had another question, but was given the same treatment so now I’m gone for good... I don’t care if there’s interesting stuff or if I can contribute some, it’s just a hostile circle or i-dotters and t-crossers, life is too short
  - DoreenMichele 9y ago
    That's the right decision on your part and it speaks well of you. Nonetheless, that doesn't change the fact that your negative reaction has consequences and those consequences may be harmful to the forum. They have not only lost a potential member who was interested in the subject, you are here complaining about the forum in question, just as I am here testifying to my dreadful experiences with Metafilter. It's really challenging to pin down cause and effect for social phenomenon. It usually isn't as clear cut as "Flicking cigarettes out your car window while driving can start a forest fire." But I wonder a lot about the cause and effect of social events and how to mentally model them. Much of Georgia is split nearly 50-50 between blacks and whites. Other races represent a tiny fraction of the population. Years ago, I saw a TV show that traced the origins of gang violence in Atlanta to a small number of Hispanic children being treated badly at school by both whites and blacks, which meant almost everyone treated them badly for being the wrong race. On the show, they interviewed some of the original members of the first gang. One of them said he joined because he was tired of being scared. After he joined, he no longer needed to be scared because now people were scared of him. Online forums are real social environments. What we say and do on the internet can lead to serious real world consequences. People have married others they met via an online forum. People have been fired from their job for comments made online. My recollection is the gang violence in Atlanta could be traced to just nine Hispanic kids who simply were treated in a very unwelcoming way and who just could not make positive social connections no matter what they did. You don't need to mistreat all that many people to lead to a metaphorical conflagration. Our actions have consequences. For good or for ill, those consequences often come back to us.

TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago

Does the, or can the, automated moderation tools privately message the user and let them know why their post was moderated? Even if it just said the post was removed because it didn't meet the rules, here's a link please read??

ubernostrum 9y ago
It can, and I've set it up to do that with some of the obvious stuff. Also working on reorganizing things to make it easier for AutoModerator to detect those things. But even then it's an impersonal deletion with a "copypasta message", which is what the parent comment was complaining is unacceptable.

eecc 9y ago

The set of rules isn’t always “simple & obvious” particularly to those new or only tangentially interested in the sub. Not everyone is OCD about a particular topic but it’s handy to toss a genuine question and perhaps catalogue it more appropriately at a later stage. Most of these draconian rules reek of tribal fallout from some earlier - totally unrelated - war. “And no, we do not have the time to...” then dude, you’re investing waaay more effort than you can afford, you’re burning out, take a step back, chill and let other people shoulder the community. You’re not paid to do it, neither in monetary nor in “gratitude” so chill and keep it best effort

detaro 9y ago
So first you complain that mods don't give enough effort in their messages, and now you say "chill and keep it best effort"? "Just get more moderators" isn't easy in many communities.
- eecc 9y ago
  No, I complain that mods are too eager establishing excessively draconian - and rather elaborate, probably subjective - rules on a general and broad topic sub. Keep it to the minimum (behave, be civil) and that’s that. Not this: 1 try. No direct images, only Imgur links (first auto-delete) 2 try. No request for advice. (Second delete) 3 try. No what’s this (we have decided that it goes to another sub, there it’s documented in article nn of our faq) 4... (whatever, take your meds, I’ve wasted enough time...)
ubernostrum 9y ago
So, the subreddit I mod basically uses its rules to tell people not to throw insults at each other, to avoid low-effort types of posts (like memes) and to stay on-topic. That's not terribly difficult to follow. But it still ends up taking a lot of words to express, largely because so many people will come in with an attitude of "well my post is special and shouldn't have to be subject to that". Plus, of course, lots of people are just assholes on the internet. We use AutoModerator to catch what it can catch. We manually remove a lot of other stuff. We use short temporary bans for some categories of rule-breaking, and permanent bans for assholes. And it mostly chugs along, which is about the best you can hope for most of the time as a moderator. But, again, there's not time to hold the hand of people who think reading a short set of rules is beneath them, or who otherwise have aggressive attitudes to begin with (like you!). And even if there was, it wouldn't be worth the time. If we added a hundred million new moderators overnight just to try to do this, it wouldn't improve things one bit.

DanBC 9y ago

> linked from our sidebar For many years those links were not available to mobile users.

DoreenMichele 9y ago

I'm sympathetic to your problems and I see nothing inherently wrong with deleting a post that doesn't belong there and sending a standard message related to it. But the GP is saying he is tempted to troll the subreddit in question because of feeling burned. This was something I thought a lot about as a moderator. If I don't have time to deal with these small issues, when I am going to find time to deal with the towering inferno that is growing because of me putting out the fire with gasoline? Sometimes, it isn't what you do per se, it's how you do it. When I was homeless, I had a question deleted from Metafilter and not hugely long after, someone else asked the exact same question with identical wording but a different explanation for asking and it was allowed to stand. That looks to me like the reason mine got deleted was not because the question was not allowed, but because the mods were classist assholes and actively looking to shit on me. We can't have the homeless woman having any positive experiences here. It might encourage her to stick around and, heaven forbid, even help improve her life and solve her problems, a platform we are actively hostile towards. I really was okay with my questions sometimes being deleted, but a lot of the details of how this specific incident was handled suggested to me that it was not actually a case of "This question is in violation of the guidelines." And that is often the case. Sexism, racism, classism, homophobia, etc are often reinforced with such tactics because it maintains plausible deniability. This is intended as food for thought. I am well aware moderating is challenging and that being too nice can serve as an attractive nuisance, causing people to dump on you and expect you to kiss their boo-boo in response to their icky behavior. There are no perfect solutions. I get that. I'm not trying to attack you.

eecc 9y ago
Well, I was just tempted what I did was to unsubscribe, once. Then I had another question, but was given the same treatment so now I’m gone for good... I don’t care if there’s interesting stuff or if I can contribute some, it’s just a hostile circle or i-dotters and t-crossers, life is too short
- DoreenMichele 9y ago
  That's the right decision on your part and it speaks well of you. Nonetheless, that doesn't change the fact that your negative reaction has consequences and those consequences may be harmful to the forum. They have not only lost a potential member who was interested in the subject, you are here complaining about the forum in question, just as I am here testifying to my dreadful experiences with Metafilter. It's really challenging to pin down cause and effect for social phenomenon. It usually isn't as clear cut as "Flicking cigarettes out your car window while driving can start a forest fire." But I wonder a lot about the cause and effect of social events and how to mentally model them. Much of Georgia is split nearly 50-50 between blacks and whites. Other races represent a tiny fraction of the population. Years ago, I saw a TV show that traced the origins of gang violence in Atlanta to a small number of Hispanic children being treated badly at school by both whites and blacks, which meant almost everyone treated them badly for being the wrong race. On the show, they interviewed some of the original members of the first gang. One of them said he joined because he was tired of being scared. After he joined, he no longer needed to be scared because now people were scared of him. Online forums are real social environments. What we say and do on the internet can lead to serious real world consequences. People have married others they met via an online forum. People have been fired from their job for comments made online. My recollection is the gang violence in Atlanta could be traced to just nine Hispanic kids who simply were treated in a very unwelcoming way and who just could not make positive social connections no matter what they did. You don't need to mistreat all that many people to lead to a metaphorical conflagration. Our actions have consequences. For good or for ill, those consequences often come back to us.