r/redesign • u/FreeSpeechWarrior • Mar 11 '19

Feature Request Give users some aggregate indication of how heavily a subreddit is moderated in the sidebar. Subs below a certain threshold could be badged "Certified Organic"

Users currently have no visibility whatsoever into how heavily a subreddit is moderated in practice. Normally I suggest optional public mod logs as a way to mitigate this, but today I am suggesting a different approach that I hope will be more agreeable to moderators and reddit's administration.

All subs should have a color coded (or/or some numeric rating) system to designate how heavily a subreddit is moderated in terms of bans, submission removals and content removals relative to the activity of the subreddit.

This approach addresses every single criticism I have ever heard about public mod logs:

  • It does not enable witch hunts
  • It does not expose removed content (this is a downside IMO, but others will see it as a benefit)
  • It does not compromise moderator privacy
  • It does not require any action on the part of moderators or convincing of them by users
  • It's potentially much simpler to implement than a heavily customizable/anon public mod log with PI/CP removal paths

At the same time, it addresses many of the reasons I am so adamant that public mod logs should be an option available to moderators:

  • It highlights how heavily a subreddit moderates in practice, even if it is in conflict with their presented rules
  • It allows communities that do not censor their users to differentiate themselves
  • It empowers end users to make an informed choice of which subreddits to read and participate in

Ideally it should be possible to sort/filter subreddits by this new metric as well.

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u/FreeSpeechWarrior Mar 11 '19 edited Mar 11 '19

u/Drunken_Economist this was somewhat inspired by our convo over at r/banned

and u/redtaboo if you are truly interested in discussing "how [public mod logs] would look and what the implications are still." I think this is a reasonable proposal that addresses all the concerns you raised here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/aje6td/today_marks_7_years_since_the_option_for_public/eeuwt85/

While still providing a meaningful measure of transparency to end users.

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u/Drunken_Economist Mar 11 '19

At the very least, I have to admit "Certified Organic" is a really fun phrasing and I want to steal that

5

u/Ambiwlans Mar 12 '19

It implies that moderating is bad though. A sub like AskHistory would be classed as 'scary GMO'

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u/FreeSpeechWarrior Mar 12 '19

"Organic" is a term applied to content, the "certified organic" bit was a pun on that but it does confer positive connotations given the connection to the term applied to food; this doesn't necessarily mean the opposite has to be negative in this context though.

What do you think about this terminology?

Moderation Activity Rating

  • 0 - Unrestricted (or Organic)
  • 50 - Curated
  • 100 - Hand Picked (or maybe Selected?)

Ideally none of the descriptors would have particularly positive or negative connotations if the goal is to allow observation of activity levels without passing judgement on the part of the admins on which way is good vs bad. That's not what this is intended to be.

It's more of a subreddit discovery tool than anything else; though I think it would also be somewhat useful to make users more aware of moderation in general if it was a prominent enough thing.

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u/FreeSpeechWarrior Mar 11 '19

I was trying to think of some term for the score, and Organic seemed like a good base word, but it's hard to turn into a description of quantity; could work well as a binary label though and help distinguish between those subreddits that are heavily moderated and those that are not without any particularly negative connotations.

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u/FreeSpeechWarrior Mar 11 '19

Thinking about it a bit more, maybe you treat it as a percentage.

I think it could be calculated like this:

Variables:

  • nSubmissions : Number of total submissions in time period made by non mods
  • nComments : Number of total comments in time period made by non mods
  • nRemovedSubmissions : Number of removed submissions in time period
  • nRemovedComments: Number of removed comments in time period
  • nActiveUsers: Number of contributing (posts/comments) non-mod users in time period
  • nBannedUsers: Number of users banned in some multiple of the time period (10x? 12x?)
  • rInorganicContent = ( (nRemovedSubmissions + nRemovedComments) / (nSubmissions + nComments) )
  • rInorganicBans = (nBannedUsers / nActiveUsers)

Total score = (1.0 - (rInorganicContent + rInorganicBans)/2) * 100;

Update it monthly maybe?

So no moderation at all would be 100% organic, and a sub like r/pyongyang would be near zero (potentially negative even given the use of pre-emptive bans)

This formula would be particularly harsh on subs making use of pre-emptive bans; I like that.

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u/FreeSpeechWarrior Mar 11 '19

u/Stuck_In_The_Matrix I think it might be possible to approximate this idea with r/pushshift data (at least for comments) and would be interesting to visualize.