3 ms·

Moderators can't suspend accounts; only administrators can do that.

steveklabnik 6y ago
If there is one thing I see folks persistently misunderstand, it is the separation between mods and admins, and which powers each group has. It is really unfortunate for mods, who end up getting blamed for all sorts of things that it is impossible for them to know or do.
- wyldfire 6y ago
  Public moderation logs might help make this distinction more clear.
  - gruez 6y ago
    Is there a reason why mod logs should be private at all?
    - PenguinCoder 6y ago
      Brigading, mod harassment, doxxing, etc.
      - gruez 6y ago
        >Brigading ??? >mod harassment It doesn't have to contain who did it >doxxing Then make it so you can't see what was deleted if the deletion reason is "doxing". Also make it a bannable offense for mods to misuse that reason. Also make it so that if there's a pattern of it happening in the subreddit, the whole moderation team will be replaced (to prevent mods from using sockpuppet accounts to do their dirty work).
        VLM 6y ago
        You're reading it backwards. Its to support that kind of stuff, not discourage it. Reddit is pretty toxic.
    - dmckeon 6y ago
      tl;dr: Private is easier/cheaper. Almost any set of policies and procedures can be gamed by a motivated set of participants, and the more information that is exposed by a moderation process, the easier it becomes to game the process, and the harder/more expensive it becomes to support a moderated environment, whether by volunteers or paid staff. Public activity logs, detailed policies, and detailed procedures would be an amazing expression of transparency that would then immediately become a complicated house of cards requiring constant maintenance, defense, and review. For volunteers that is either a huge time-suck or a high threshold. For paid staff, the same, plus expensive, plus a target for law-suits.
      - duskwuff 6y ago
        > Almost any set of policies and procedures can be gamed by a motivated set of participants Also a good point. For instance, even if mod logs obscure the content of deleted posts, a determined abuser can simply create new users whose names alone convey messages that are inappropriate for the community. (A concrete example: in a community surrounding a person named John Smith, a user named "JohnSmithIsARapist".)
    - duskwuff 6y ago
      While making moderation logs public is perhaps a plus for "transparency", it can have some rather negative effects in terms of community stability, especially in smaller groups. Even if the mod logs don't include the content of removed posts, the fact alone that a user had some of their posts removed by a moderator can feed a conflict. Having moderation actions occur silently helps keep a community on track.
      - snazz 6y ago
        In my experience, it has worked pretty well on Lobsters: https://lobste.rs/moderations https://lobste.rs/moderations I think it helps that moderation transparency was one of the "founding goals" of that community. The dynamics there are also quite different from the dynamics on Reddit. As another example, I moderate a small semi-public Discord server and we publish both the audit log (which Discord automatically creates) as well as the contents of our moderator-only chat room 24 hours after conversations take place. This extra bit of transparency makes users more comfortable with what's going on while giving moderators enough of their own space to make decisions unencumbered by involvement from community members.
  - steveklabnik 6y ago
    Maybe; moderation is an area where it seems like[1] a lot of people act in bad faith, and so I'm not convinced that this would actually change a whole ton. Maybe it would though. 1: I'm not actually a moderator of any significant subreddits, so I am mostly going by what I see and hear, rather than personal experience. I used to be a really avid reader of /r/subredditdrama too, so I probably have bias towards the worst of it...
- SL61 6y ago
  It doesn't help that Reddit's automatic spam filter will go over the heads of subreddit moderators and remove posts without their input. Users are aware that mods can remove posts but are generally unaware of the auto filter, so they'll get angry at mods for the removal.
- marvy 6y ago
  I assume that mods have "local" powers in specific sub-reddits and admins have global sitewide powers?
  - steveklabnik 6y ago
    That is a good first approximation, but the situation described in one of your siblings is a good example of a "local" action that moderators are not in charge of, so the split isn't that exact.
diath 6y ago
It wouldn't be unlikely that this has to be forwarded by moderators to administrators first as sort of a filter thing and then administrators are just suspending accounts without even reviewing the cases forwarded by the moderators.
- steveklabnik 6y ago
  I doubt it, given that the moderators are trying to fix it, if you read the /r/cpp thread. https://www.reddit.com/r/cpp/comments/ia6u5t/why_has_reddit_suspended_bjarne_stroustrups/ https://www.reddit.com/r/cpp/comments/ia6u5t/why_has_reddit_...

If there is one thing I see folks persistently misunderstand, it is the separation between mods and admins, and which powers each group has. It is really unfortunate for mods, who end up getting blamed for all sorts of things that it is impossible for them to know or do.

wyldfire 6y ago
Public moderation logs might help make this distinction more clear.
- gruez 6y ago
  Is there a reason why mod logs should be private at all?
  - PenguinCoder 6y ago
    Brigading, mod harassment, doxxing, etc.
    - gruez 6y ago
      >Brigading ??? >mod harassment It doesn't have to contain who did it >doxxing Then make it so you can't see what was deleted if the deletion reason is "doxing". Also make it a bannable offense for mods to misuse that reason. Also make it so that if there's a pattern of it happening in the subreddit, the whole moderation team will be replaced (to prevent mods from using sockpuppet accounts to do their dirty work).
      - VLM 6y ago
        You're reading it backwards. Its to support that kind of stuff, not discourage it. Reddit is pretty toxic.
  - dmckeon 6y ago
    tl;dr: Private is easier/cheaper. Almost any set of policies and procedures can be gamed by a motivated set of participants, and the more information that is exposed by a moderation process, the easier it becomes to game the process, and the harder/more expensive it becomes to support a moderated environment, whether by volunteers or paid staff. Public activity logs, detailed policies, and detailed procedures would be an amazing expression of transparency that would then immediately become a complicated house of cards requiring constant maintenance, defense, and review. For volunteers that is either a huge time-suck or a high threshold. For paid staff, the same, plus expensive, plus a target for law-suits.
    - duskwuff 6y ago
      > Almost any set of policies and procedures can be gamed by a motivated set of participants Also a good point. For instance, even if mod logs obscure the content of deleted posts, a determined abuser can simply create new users whose names alone convey messages that are inappropriate for the community. (A concrete example: in a community surrounding a person named John Smith, a user named "JohnSmithIsARapist".)
  - duskwuff 6y ago
    While making moderation logs public is perhaps a plus for "transparency", it can have some rather negative effects in terms of community stability, especially in smaller groups. Even if the mod logs don't include the content of removed posts, the fact alone that a user had some of their posts removed by a moderator can feed a conflict. Having moderation actions occur silently helps keep a community on track.
    - snazz 6y ago
      In my experience, it has worked pretty well on Lobsters: https://lobste.rs/moderations https://lobste.rs/moderations I think it helps that moderation transparency was one of the "founding goals" of that community. The dynamics there are also quite different from the dynamics on Reddit. As another example, I moderate a small semi-public Discord server and we publish both the audit log (which Discord automatically creates) as well as the contents of our moderator-only chat room 24 hours after conversations take place. This extra bit of transparency makes users more comfortable with what's going on while giving moderators enough of their own space to make decisions unencumbered by involvement from community members.
- steveklabnik 6y ago
  Maybe; moderation is an area where it seems like[1] a lot of people act in bad faith, and so I'm not convinced that this would actually change a whole ton. Maybe it would though. 1: I'm not actually a moderator of any significant subreddits, so I am mostly going by what I see and hear, rather than personal experience. I used to be a really avid reader of /r/subredditdrama too, so I probably have bias towards the worst of it...
SL61 6y ago
It doesn't help that Reddit's automatic spam filter will go over the heads of subreddit moderators and remove posts without their input. Users are aware that mods can remove posts but are generally unaware of the auto filter, so they'll get angry at mods for the removal.
marvy 6y ago
I assume that mods have "local" powers in specific sub-reddits and admins have global sitewide powers?
- steveklabnik 6y ago
  That is a good first approximation, but the situation described in one of your siblings is a good example of a "local" action that moderators are not in charge of, so the split isn't that exact.

diath 6y ago

It wouldn't be unlikely that this has to be forwarded by moderators to administrators first as sort of a filter thing and then administrators are just suspending accounts without even reviewing the cases forwarded by the moderators.

steveklabnik 6y ago
I doubt it, given that the moderators are trying to fix it, if you read the /r/cpp thread. https://www.reddit.com/r/cpp/comments/ia6u5t/why_has_reddit_suspended_bjarne_stroustrups/ https://www.reddit.com/r/cpp/comments/ia6u5t/why_has_reddit_...