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> Many subs have enormous blacklists of users,domains,and even words. This is the most pathetic slam against mods I have ever seen and shows that you haven't s

> Many subs have enormous blacklists of users,domains,and even words. This is the most pathetic slam against mods I have ever seen and shows that you haven't spent two seconds considering what you're criticizing.

khazhoux 5y ago
Ironically, your comment itself also lacks any detail of countering or clarifying information, and is itself just a content-free slam on the person you replied to. Is your point that the mods don't have all these blacklists (including of words), or that the mods do have the blacklists but they're allowed and expected to? Is the mod system working well, in your opinion?
- emodendroket 5y ago
  If you try moderating one you'll see quickly why these tools are necessary.
- CamelCaseName 5y ago
  > Is your point that the mods don't have all these blacklists (including of words), Of course moderators have blacklists. For words / phrases / domains, they are site sanctioned through the (now) built in function called "Automoderator". User blacklists are done through the built in ban function. In fact, one would call these blacklists... moderation. Something a moderator would be expected to do. > the mods do have the blacklists but they're allowed and expected to? They are built into the site. It would logically follow that it is both allowed and expected. Stepping back, I'm not sure how you can expect a forum, any forum, to survive without moderation. > Is the mod system working well, in your opinion? This is really impossible to answer. From the bird's eye view, users and impressions are growing while reddit doesn't have to pay for moderation. A stunning success. From a lurker perspective, they never interact with moderators and generally get content that has been reviewed and determined to be within the rules, though this may vary by subreddit. From an active user perspective, the system may work well, or not well, depending on which subreddit(s) you frequent and how you use the platform. There are many subreddits, and moderators on some may certainly make your life unpleasant. So... don't be active on those subreddits. However, the number of active users, according to the 90-9-1 principle is quite small, and the number of those that ever meaningfully interact with a moderator, or even a bot moderator, are probably a magnitude smaller than that. So yes, IMO, the mod system seems to work well overall.
buu700 5y ago
I get where you're coming from, as I created /r/relationship_advice. The existence of such blacklists, even "enormous" ones, isn't inherently bad; it's just a reality of dealing with an enormous flood of spam on a $0 budget. That being said, blacklists on strings have 100% been abused by both the mods and the admins. Blacklists should be used for mitigating spam — e.g. we'll often block a specific attacker by blacklisting certain phrases or regexes and then deal with the inevitable edge case false positives by hand — not generally for censoring ideas or "offensive" words. Sure, by all means block phrases like "kill yourself" in /r/SuicideWatch and maybe /r/relationship_advice. If a sub is inciting violence or posting CP, there's probably a case for banning it. But when people have to self-censor common curse words and even the word "fart" in a general forum like /r/tifu, clearly something is wrong.
- Blikkentrekker 5y ago
  > Sure, by all means block phrases like "kill yourself" Even that will often lead to the scunthorpe problem. I remember well once scouring through a post that was rejected on a forum to finally realize it was because it contained the phrase “tardive dyskinesia” which contained “tard” which alone was enough to deny the post, apparently.
  - buu700 5y ago
    FWIW, I think it's silly that reddit has banned the term "retard" site-wide, although I also acknowledge that the term may be becoming broader and more offensive than I personally understand it to be. In the case of "kill yourself" in /r/SuicideWatch, though, it's such an extreme case with potentially disastrous results that I wouldn't find it particularly problematic. The occasional false positive is arguably a small price to pay.
    - Blikkentrekker 5y ago
      > FWIW, I think it's silly that reddit has banned the term "retard" site-wide, although I also acknowledge that the term may be becoming broader and more offensive than I personally understand it to be. Do you have any source of this? As far as I know Reddit bans no words site-wide, and I see the term used now and then. On the very same website a post could not come through because I described someone as having “retarded pubertal development”, in any case. > In the case of "kill yourself" in /r/SuicideWatch, though, it's such an extreme case with potentially disastrous results that I wouldn't find it particularly problematic. The occasional false positive is arguably a small price to pay. It's also completely useless because people that want to get through the censor will et through it by other means that will still make their message easily understood. Word censors are window politics and people that want to get around them will get around them and I assume it's already against the rules on that subreddit to encourage suicide so they would be quite willing to also break a rule to evade word censors.

khazhoux 5y ago

Ironically, your comment itself also lacks any detail of countering or clarifying information, and is itself just a content-free slam on the person you replied to. Is your point that the mods don't have all these blacklists (including of words), or that the mods do have the blacklists but they're allowed and expected to? Is the mod system working well, in your opinion?

emodendroket 5y ago
If you try moderating one you'll see quickly why these tools are necessary.
CamelCaseName 5y ago
> Is your point that the mods don't have all these blacklists (including of words), Of course moderators have blacklists. For words / phrases / domains, they are site sanctioned through the (now) built in function called "Automoderator". User blacklists are done through the built in ban function. In fact, one would call these blacklists... moderation. Something a moderator would be expected to do. > the mods do have the blacklists but they're allowed and expected to? They are built into the site. It would logically follow that it is both allowed and expected. Stepping back, I'm not sure how you can expect a forum, any forum, to survive without moderation. > Is the mod system working well, in your opinion? This is really impossible to answer. From the bird's eye view, users and impressions are growing while reddit doesn't have to pay for moderation. A stunning success. From a lurker perspective, they never interact with moderators and generally get content that has been reviewed and determined to be within the rules, though this may vary by subreddit. From an active user perspective, the system may work well, or not well, depending on which subreddit(s) you frequent and how you use the platform. There are many subreddits, and moderators on some may certainly make your life unpleasant. So... don't be active on those subreddits. However, the number of active users, according to the 90-9-1 principle is quite small, and the number of those that ever meaningfully interact with a moderator, or even a bot moderator, are probably a magnitude smaller than that. So yes, IMO, the mod system seems to work well overall.

buu700 5y ago

I get where you're coming from, as I created /r/relationship_advice. The existence of such blacklists, even "enormous" ones, isn't inherently bad; it's just a reality of dealing with an enormous flood of spam on a $0 budget. That being said, blacklists on strings have 100% been abused by both the mods and the admins. Blacklists should be used for mitigating spam — e.g. we'll often block a specific attacker by blacklisting certain phrases or regexes and then deal with the inevitable edge case false positives by hand — not generally for censoring ideas or "offensive" words. Sure, by all means block phrases like "kill yourself" in /r/SuicideWatch and maybe /r/relationship_advice. If a sub is inciting violence or posting CP, there's probably a case for banning it. But when people have to self-censor common curse words and even the word "fart" in a general forum like /r/tifu, clearly something is wrong.

Blikkentrekker 5y ago
> Sure, by all means block phrases like "kill yourself" Even that will often lead to the scunthorpe problem. I remember well once scouring through a post that was rejected on a forum to finally realize it was because it contained the phrase “tardive dyskinesia” which contained “tard” which alone was enough to deny the post, apparently.
- buu700 5y ago
  FWIW, I think it's silly that reddit has banned the term "retard" site-wide, although I also acknowledge that the term may be becoming broader and more offensive than I personally understand it to be. In the case of "kill yourself" in /r/SuicideWatch, though, it's such an extreme case with potentially disastrous results that I wouldn't find it particularly problematic. The occasional false positive is arguably a small price to pay.
  - Blikkentrekker 5y ago
    > FWIW, I think it's silly that reddit has banned the term "retard" site-wide, although I also acknowledge that the term may be becoming broader and more offensive than I personally understand it to be. Do you have any source of this? As far as I know Reddit bans no words site-wide, and I see the term used now and then. On the very same website a post could not come through because I described someone as having “retarded pubertal development”, in any case. > In the case of "kill yourself" in /r/SuicideWatch, though, it's such an extreme case with potentially disastrous results that I wouldn't find it particularly problematic. The occasional false positive is arguably a small price to pay. It's also completely useless because people that want to get through the censor will et through it by other means that will still make their message easily understood. Word censors are window politics and people that want to get around them will get around them and I assume it's already against the rules on that subreddit to encourage suicide so they would be quite willing to also break a rule to evade word censors.