https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/13qq2sb/providing_context_to_banned_users/
created by lift_ticket83 on 24/05/2023 at 16:18 UTC
210 upvotes, 54 top-level comments (showing 25)
Ahoy, palloi!
It’s been a busy and exciting week in the world of mod tooling, and today we’re excited to share a new development with y’all.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before - a redditor walks into a subreddit, posts rule-breaking content, and is subsequently actioned for doing so. Confused and surprised[1], they message the mods asking what they could have possibly done to deserve such action. These conversations typically go one of two ways - users either become enlightened and understand the error of their ways, or they get frustrated and the conversation has the potential to devolve.
1: https://i.redd.it/bbno3us0ef1b1.gif
This week we’re excited to launch a new feature that gives mods the capability to provide more context and better educate users when actioning their accounts for rule-breaking behavior. Now when a moderator bans a user from a post or comment, they’ll be able to automatically choose whether or not they’d like to send a link to the violating content within their ban message. Actioned accounts will then receive a message in their inbox detailing the subreddit they were banned from, why they’ve been banned, a link to the content, the length of the ban, and any notes from the moderator.
We hope this will cut down on user confusion and help free up mod inboxes from the above-mentioned back and forth. This feature will first launch within our native iOS app and will be closely followed on Android.
Have any questions or feedback about the above-mentioned feature? Please let us know in the comments below.
Comment by tharic99 at 24/05/2023 at 16:25 UTC
206 upvotes, 1 direct replies
This feature will first launch within our native iOS app and will be closely followed on Android.
So it's not coming to desktop? Not even *gasp* new.reddit.com?
Comment by creesch at 24/05/2023 at 16:27 UTC
66 upvotes, 3 direct replies
I am glad you had a good look at /r/toolbox banmacros/tokens and decided to implement it natively in reddit ;)
Without kidding though, is this also available in the API through a nice boolean parameter?
Comment by andrewthetechie at 24/05/2023 at 17:00 UTC
41 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Why only on mobile apps? I don't moderate on mobile
Comment by avrus at 24/05/2023 at 16:51 UTC
35 upvotes, 1 direct replies
This feature will first launch within our native iOS app and will be closely followed on Android.
I mean okay but mobile mod functionality is the most cumbersome of the platforms for a variety of reasons. It's a great change but it won't be particularly useful to me until it's available on desktop.
There's far to many issues with moderating on mobile / Android that almost all our bans are actioned at a desktop level.
As already commented on here: Since there's a strict sitewide policy around tobacco, we need a user consent form that people have to actively acknowledge and read subreddit and possible sitewide rules before being able to post.
Comment by Karmanacht at 24/05/2023 at 16:32 UTC*
123 upvotes, 4 direct replies
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before - a redditor walks into a subreddit, posts rule-breaking content, and is subsequently actioned for doing so. Confused and surprised, they message the mods asking what they could have possibly done to deserve such action.
The current signup for a new account on this site is like every other signup. "Here's a link to our TOS and a checkbox indicating that you totally definitely read them *wink*." and then no one ever actually reads them, and you've set them up for failure with poor UX flow.
Maybe a Kingdom of Loathing style quiz that each subreddit can custom tailor and a setting/flag indicating that users passed it would work somehow, then subreddits can use this flag instead of karma levels to filter users.
Please give us something to raise user literacy; I've been asking for this for literally years.
The thing you're implementing today is such basic functionality that Toolbox has had it for years. I always recommend for all my co-mods to include a link to the offending content for ease of discussion and for posterity.
This is such an incredibly basic feature that you should just be silently adding it instead of announcing the fact that it took so long. You're also dumping all this extra work in our laps by handing us ignorant users. Fix the cause of the problem, not the symptom.
Comment by Georgy_K_Zhukov at 24/05/2023 at 16:43 UTC
46 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Oh, one piece of specific feedback. In the message, it looks like you link to *the post*, but "violates this community rules" should link to the rules. That is what our autofilled message in Toolbox does. Linking directly to the rules page is a no-brainer (*customizing* to link to a Wikipage would be even better, as we don't consider the native rules page to be *Official*, but it needs to link to something...).
Comment by hacksoncode at 24/05/2023 at 16:50 UTC
21 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Very close, but... I mean, you have the "rule broken" *right there* in the form... why not include it in the message?
The most common of these potentially adversarial exchanges is "what rule did I break?"...
Comment by [deleted] at 24/05/2023 at 20:42 UTC*
21 upvotes, 1 direct replies
[deleted]
Comment by Georgy_K_Zhukov at 24/05/2023 at 16:41 UTC
18 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Nice to see this rolling out. A little closer towards parity with Toolbox for New Reddit. Still will be a grumpy old man using Old Reddit. But getting there!
Any chance ban *Macros* might be on the horizon? Longer pre-set messages we can select from to send!? (I can dream, right?)
Comment by PotatoUmaru at 24/05/2023 at 16:37 UTC
16 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I think the macro should clearly have the link displayed without it embedded in text. Users do not read their ban messages, especially when they perceive it to be a form message. This won’t help with the users who devolve into slurs and insults as they’re the ones that won’t read their ban messages anyway.
Comment by MajorParadox at 24/05/2023 at 17:19 UTC
14 upvotes, 2 direct replies
This is awesome and will certainly help mods ban when not using toolbox on desktop. However, I think the message can be misleading. While the post or comment certainly could be the only reason, sometimes it's only a contributing factor or the final straw. That's why the general toolbox ban macro that goes around starts with:
This {kind} may have *fully or partially contributed* to your ban:
(Emphasis mine for context).
It lets them know if may be more than just the post or comment the mod used when banning. I think some rewording would certainly help in this case.
Comment by SampleOfNone at 24/05/2023 at 19:44 UTC
11 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Pet peeve, when banning (new reddit, desktop) you are obligated to choose a rule, but then that specific rule isn’t included in the ban message or message subject
Comment by shiruken at 24/05/2023 at 16:27 UTC
7 upvotes, 1 direct replies
What does the ban message look like when the rule is specified?
Comment by BerlinghoffRasmussen at 25/05/2023 at 03:50 UTC
8 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Any way we can get admins to provide more context on their bans?
We’ve had two moderators banned sitewide recently, one of them with absolutely zero information about why they were banned.
Comment by anonboxis at 24/05/2023 at 17:44 UTC
5 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Compliance with the EU's Digital Services Act will matter a lot, so this is a great initiative!
Comment by itskdog at 24/05/2023 at 18:06 UTC
5 upvotes, 0 direct replies
While on the subject of bringing over features from r/Toolbox, the one thing stopping me using the native tools for a couple of my subreddits is the lack of placeholders.
In Toolbox we can include the permalink to the post in the comment, allowing us to have an appeal link that goes to a modmail message with the permalink already added to the message. That makes the appeal process much simpler, so we're not having to guess which post someone is asking about, as sometimes you get someone appealing something from 6 months ago that's getting archived in a week.
Comment by cyrilio at 24/05/2023 at 18:23 UTC
6 upvotes, 0 direct replies
This is an awesome improvement. I've been using mod toolbox to do this since forever. Great to see the feature being implemented in reddit.
Comment by stray_r at 24/05/2023 at 23:20 UTC
4 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Links are great, right up to the point the user deletes the offending content and pleads innocense.
We have toolbox include a quote for a reason. Unless reddit gives us a permalink to the content that the user can't delete, this is not helpful.
Comment by bizude at 25/05/2023 at 02:32 UTC
5 upvotes, 0 direct replies
So this is an inferior version of what already exists in mod toolbox, and it's a limited release?
...do y'all enjoy wasting time and money?
Comment by Watchful1 at 24/05/2023 at 16:54 UTC
16 upvotes, 2 direct replies
I know this probably isn't a topic you like talking about, but what about subreddit's that ban you automatically for posting in specific other subreddits? There's many examples of people posting in certain controversial subreddits and immediately getting banned in other subs. And then those subs ignoring appeals.
That seems like a really bad experience for new users.
Comment by Mathias_Greyjoy at 24/05/2023 at 22:36 UTC
4 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I beg for these features in every modnews post.
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Can you *Please* offer the option to send *both* a modmail *and* a stickied comment for removal reasons? I find I need to send *both* to users breaking rules. It's incredibly tedious to do all this every time I remove something-
1. Hit remove.
2. Select the right rule.
3. Select removal reason Private: Modmail, and send.
4. Approve the post/comment.
5. Remove the post/comment again.
6. Select the right rule.
7. Select removal reason Private: Sticky comment, and send.
As well as the fact that this seven step process makes it very likely that I'll hit the wrong rule and/or make some kind of mistake. Can you imagine what this is like when you get to a post with multiple comments in it you have to remove?
Please create a button that sends *both* at the same time!
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Why can't we have some kind of development of the mute function, beyond a 28 day mute? Many users wait out the 28 days to send us harassment. Maybe Admins are worried that mods will abuse it and perma-mute right away in all instances. Fair enough, I guess? But it's not like abusing a perma-mute button is any worse than perma-banning? How is a perma-mute that bad? "It would discourage good faith discussion between mod and user?" Alright, but why can't we have the option of permanently muting after a user has waited the 28 days to harass us, like 2+ times? Seriously, some of these people write in their calendars when the mutes expire so they can shoot into our modmail to continue to harass us. We've had users do this multiple times, harassing us every 28 days. When we report those messages, nothing happens.
Admins, please look into a development of the mute function.
Comment by BlankVerse at 25/05/2023 at 20:00 UTC
5 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Reddit needs to do the same for reddit site-wide bans!
Comment by [deleted] at 24/05/2023 at 18:28 UTC
7 upvotes, 1 direct replies
[deleted]
Comment by Anonim97 at 24/05/2023 at 17:36 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Don't we already have this one tho?
Comment by Demilio55 at 25/05/2023 at 11:00 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
There’s almost no reason to respond to people who are permanently banned. We’ve recently learned that when a mod was auto banned on report for copy and pasting the offending text.
