3 ms·

Moderation should be fully reviewable. I made a site to do this for reddit [1]. As of this hour, user pages [2] work best because the archive service is down. S

by rhaksw 5y ago

Moderation should be fully reviewable. I made a site to do this for reddit [1]. As of this hour, user pages [2] work best because the archive service is down. Subreddit history pages [3], which show where the community and mods have disagreed the most, also still work. [1] https://www.reveddit.com/about/faq https://www.reveddit.com/about/faq [2] https://www.reveddit.com/y/rhaksw https://www.reveddit.com/y/rhaksw [3] https://www.reveddit.com/v/worldnews/history https://www.reveddit.com/v/worldnews/history

mrshadowgoose 5y ago
Thank you for the work you are doing. Although I acknowledge that moderation is absolutely required to keep online communities on track, I also believe that moderation should be fully reviewable. The best approach I've come up with is that moderation results in a label (such as "spam", "hate speech", "incivility", "misinformation", etc...) being applied to a user's problematic post. New users to an online community would have a standard set of filters applied to their account to achieve the default "moderated view", but would have full control to manage their filters and see (or not see) whatever content they want. It's absolutely terrifying how welcoming people are to let large central actors dictate what they are allowed to see and hear. As an example, during the whole GME situation last year, the WallStreetBets discord server was taken down for "hate speech", conveniently at the same time that community was causing millions of dollars of losses for certain corporations. If you normalize the unquestionable removal of content, it will be used to suppress content that is contrary to the interests of powerful central actors.
- rhaksw 5y ago
  Thank you for sharing your experience! I think it would go a long way towards building more civil communities if reddit would stop showing users their removed comments as if they have not been removed. In other words, let users see the red background on comments that moderators see [1]. The current system is duplicitous and breeds mistrust. It's possible that all the platforms do it, but as far as I know, reddit is the only one that has successfully scaled volunteer mods such that anyone can secretly censor anyone else. [1] https://twitter.com/reveddit/status/1482249796841009154 https://twitter.com/reveddit/status/1482249796841009154
Chris2048 5y ago
Agreed. But I suspect that places like HN reply too much on "shadow" moderation methods. Also: I think while it's understandable why you can't see who downvoted/flagged a post, I also see this a weakness when the mechanism is abused - I think that there is no "skin in the game" to flag is an issue.

by rhaksw 5y ago

mrshadowgoose 5y ago

Thank you for the work you are doing. Although I acknowledge that moderation is absolutely required to keep online communities on track, I also believe that moderation should be fully reviewable. The best approach I've come up with is that moderation results in a label (such as "spam", "hate speech", "incivility", "misinformation", etc...) being applied to a user's problematic post. New users to an online community would have a standard set of filters applied to their account to achieve the default "moderated view", but would have full control to manage their filters and see (or not see) whatever content they want. It's absolutely terrifying how welcoming people are to let large central actors dictate what they are allowed to see and hear. As an example, during the whole GME situation last year, the WallStreetBets discord server was taken down for "hate speech", conveniently at the same time that community was causing millions of dollars of losses for certain corporations. If you normalize the unquestionable removal of content, it will be used to suppress content that is contrary to the interests of powerful central actors.

rhaksw 5y ago
Thank you for sharing your experience! I think it would go a long way towards building more civil communities if reddit would stop showing users their removed comments as if they have not been removed. In other words, let users see the red background on comments that moderators see [1]. The current system is duplicitous and breeds mistrust. It's possible that all the platforms do it, but as far as I know, reddit is the only one that has successfully scaled volunteer mods such that anyone can secretly censor anyone else. [1] https://twitter.com/reveddit/status/1482249796841009154 https://twitter.com/reveddit/status/1482249796841009154

Chris2048 5y ago

Agreed. But I suspect that places like HN reply too much on "shadow" moderation methods. Also: I think while it's understandable why you can't see who downvoted/flagged a post, I also see this a weakness when the mechanism is abused - I think that there is no "skin in the game" to flag is an issue.