I'm a reddit moderator for one of the 50 most active subreddits. My experience as a reddit moderator has been that users break down into 4 groups: 1. Normal pe

I'm a reddit moderator for one of the 50 most active subreddits. My experience as a reddit moderator has been that users break down into 4 groups: 1. Normal people that mostly follow the rules. This is BY FAR the largest group, and they're usually great. Transparency benefits them most: once they know what they did wrong, usually they won't do it again. Some even admit they deserved penalties or short bans -- although a few will defend their actions. 2. Jerks: people who contribute constructively sometimes but also cause a lot of drama. If moderators don't show clearly where they broke a rule, usually they're going to protest that they did nothing wrong. Providing transparency saves moderator effort because it avoids some of this back-and-forth. Sometimes. These are almost inevitably the people that claim mods were "abusing their powers" when they get banned for obvious things (swearing at people, posting self-promotional content, etc). 3. Dedicated trolls who go out of their way to break rules and cause trouble. They are relatively rare but as a moderator really the only thing you can do is ban them. Transparency won't make a difference one way or another, but it can be hard to tell a jerk from a dedicated troll at times so you're better off citing specific violations. 4. Spammers & obvious bots. With the right defenses (automoderator rules, spam filter, etc) most of these can be handled with minimum human effort. Without these defenses, spammers/bots can flood you pretty quickly. Transparency is irrelevant here. FWIW I always provide a reason when issuing a ban (citing the rule broken and where they did it).