https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/5u9yh8/improvements_to_subreddit_rules/
created by powerlanguage on 15/02/2017 at 20:15 UTC
826 upvotes, 84 top-level comments (showing 25)
1: https://i.redd.it/8oynz3j5ijfy.gif
Hey mods, last year we launched the subreddit rules feature[2], which let communities define rules. A quick refresher on subreddit rules:
Previously we only really used these rules to populate the report menu. Because of this, a lot of subreddit rules are, understandably, written with only reports in mind. This has meant it is hard for us to use the rules elsewhere (e.g. to show to a user before they make a comment, for mod removal reasons, etc.). **We want to start using community rules in more places**, so we’ve made a change to the way they work.
3: https://i.redd.it/vkficephzyey.png
4: https://i.redd.it/vkficephzyey.png
5: https://i.redd.it/8oynz3j5ijfy.gif
As u/spez mentioned in his 2017 SOTU post[6], Reddit’s primary usage is shifting to mobile. We want to do a better job of supporting moderators and communities on mobile. One of the ways we can do this is through **structured data**.
6: https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/5q4qmg/out_with_2016_in_with_2017/
Structured data basically means “stuff that is easy for a computer to understand”. Subreddit rules are an example of structured data. Everything is neatly defined and so can be easily reproduced on desktop, mobile web, and the apps. In order to help bring the indentity of communities into the mobile apps, we’re going to be talking to you a lot about structured data in the coming months.
We know that a lot of mods’ time is spent removing content that violates subreddit rules. In the coming weeks, we are planning on running some tests that focus on showing users subreddit rules and seeing if that affects their behavior. If your subreddit would like to participate in these tests (I’d really appreciate it), make sure your subreddit rules are up to date and reply to this comment[7] with your subreddit name.
7: https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/5u9yh8/improvements_to_subreddit_rules/ddsew54/
Comment by [deleted] at 15/02/2017 at 20:34 UTC*
65 upvotes, 1 direct replies
[deleted]
Comment by agentlame at 15/02/2017 at 20:56 UTC*
25 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I requested this when rules were first released, and it seems pretty easy to add. Can you add enumerated `name` tags to the rules (ie: `name="rule1"`)?
This would help mods being able to link to them from canned messages from /r/toolbox... or just link directly to them, at all.
Example:
This was removed for violating Rule #1[1]: don't be a jerk.
1: /r/modnews/about/rules#rule1
Comment by powerlanguage at 15/02/2017 at 20:15 UTC
1 upvotes, 206 direct replies
Please reply to this comment **with just your subreddit name** if you wish to take part in the rules experiments mentioned in the post. Any other comments will be removed. Please post a top-level comment if you have questions about the experiments.
Comment by jhc1415 at 15/02/2017 at 23:00 UTC
10 upvotes, 3 direct replies
Have you guys thought about no longer making reports anonymous?
The problems associated it seem to greatly outweigh the benefits of it. And it would be nice to give feedback to specific users on whether or not their report was useful. Right now, a vast majority of reports are just wasting both user's time and ours.
Comment by fdagpigj at 15/02/2017 at 21:07 UTC
8 upvotes, 2 direct replies
Excellent, finally the rules feature will start to become useful. On a related note, could we have the sitewide report reasons listed above the subreddit rule report reasons? I think spam makes up a disproportionately large amount of all reports in a lot of subreddits and so making it quicker to find (and ideally to click on, rather than being in a dropdown) in the list would improve workflows - especially since I recall some admin at some point recommending even moderators report spam posts on top of removing it as spam.
Comment by D0cR3d at 16/02/2017 at 02:47 UTC
8 upvotes, 0 direct replies
From a developer perspective, how does the changed data look that developers would have to account for, and what kind of notice are you planning on providing to developers so we can make changes to our apps and services so that when you launch the feature, we can already have our services updated?
Ideally, once you guys have confirmed you are moving forward with the change, I would like to see a /r/redditdev post letting us know the API changes made that we'd have to account for, along with a notice letting us know the change will be going live in at minimum no sooner than x days (preferably 7-14 days). We would then update our apps, and start pushing the update to our services, and once you push the go live button, things just work. As opposed to past deployments where you say "it's now live" and we then have to make changes/bug fixes.
Thanks.
Comment by K_Lobstah at 15/02/2017 at 20:23 UTC
13 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Structured data wooo!
Comment by [deleted] at 15/02/2017 at 20:21 UTC
5 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Can we have more than 10 rules?
Comment by PitchforkAssistant at 15/02/2017 at 21:28 UTC*
5 upvotes, 2 direct replies
Why is the ~~action~~ violation reason character limit set to 50 when users can send reports up to 100 characters long?
Comment by [deleted] at 22/02/2017 at 19:10 UTC
4 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Why did you link to /r/PresidentTrumpTwitter in the modmail comment hyperlinked as "structured rules"
Comment by [deleted] at 15/02/2017 at 20:40 UTC
5 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Dumb question, whats different? I thought those things were already shown to users when they pressed report
Comment by rWoahDude at 16/02/2017 at 02:43 UTC
5 upvotes, 2 direct replies
I just wish there was a way for specific subreddits to ignore users who submit bogus reports.
You wouldn't even have to show us their names. Just "ignore reports from users who reported this post" or something. And if they get tagged a certain number of times, your subreddit will stop counting or displaying their reports.
Comment by SnowPhoenix9999 at 23/02/2017 at 02:41 UTC
4 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I was going to post a more structured message last week, but ended up forgetting to do so.
Anyway, I'm a moderator for /r/friendsafari and /r/pokemontrades. The reason we've so far opted not to implement this feature in /r/friendsafari is that our biggest rule necessitates proof photos for each violation.
For some context, /r/friendsafari is a Pokémon sub, and the games in question assign each user three Pokémon in their safari, which other users can visit if both add each other as friends. If someone lies about what's in their safari, another user can take a picture of the other safari while they're visiting it and prove it. However, without a picture, claims are just complete hearsay.
As such, we don't want *reports* for violations of this rule. We only want modmails so other users can easily provide the required photos and we can get back to them if anything is missing. The fact that it would almost certainly lead to many non-actionable reports (which we've already gotten a number of in the past, even without it being an explicit report reason) is why we haven't used the rules page on this sub.
Would it be feasible to have an option to have certain report reasons direct users to modmail instead of going through the standard report system, or maybe have rules that simply do not produce report reasons?
(Also, please mark /r/pokemontrades down as another sub that has rules too complex to fit clearly into 500 characters. We do try to format them[1] nicely to improve the odds of people reading them, but we've had to go with the "link the wiki" solution there.)
1: https://www.reddit.com/r/pokemontrades/wiki/rules
Comment by devperez at 15/02/2017 at 20:32 UTC
12 upvotes, 3 direct replies
Why limit it to 10 rules? A lot of subs refuse to use it because we need more than 10. And 500 characters is nowhere near enough space to explain the rule.
You can't expect wide adoption when you give us such crappy restrictions.
Comment by [deleted] at 15/02/2017 at 20:24 UTC
16 upvotes, 1 direct replies
A quick refresher on why we didn't like subreddit rules the first time around:
As far as I can see, this update adds an extra field for the text in the report menu, and addresses none of the concerns we had with it when you first rolled it out, including the ones that were promised to be fixed.
This update is a stark contrast to the communication we had about the modmail beta and is honestly pretty disappointing. I know you guys worked hard on it, and I'm sorry to be negative about it. I really hope you stop future plans to expand the use of this rule system and talk over with the moderators and users about what we actually need. If you continue to push forward in the direction you're going, you're going to make things harder for us, not easier.
Thanks for your attention and your continued work to try to improve reddit, even if we don't always agree which direction that work should go. :)
Comment by I_Am_Batgirl at 15/02/2017 at 21:20 UTC
3 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I know I'm looking forward to seeing how these changes positively affect things going forward. ☺
Comment by ThatAstronautGuy at 15/02/2017 at 22:33 UTC
3 upvotes, 2 direct replies
What does the rules experiment entail? You just sort of said focus on showing users the rules, but what does that mean?
Comment by Umlautica at 16/02/2017 at 00:31 UTC
3 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Is this a step towards mobile apps supporting a feature like "*rules before a user posts?*" or even training a ML classifier for spam filtering based on reports?
Comment by tizorres at 16/02/2017 at 02:54 UTC
3 upvotes, 2 direct replies
Can you include a toggle for a rule not to be used as a report reason. On one of my subs we have a rule "include context" which basically means the thread has to have something in the submission text area. Now this rule is completely handled by automod, that means it would be silly to have it as a report reason since there would never be a thread that passes in the first place.
Now my delema is, I'd like this rule "include context" to be show on the submission page. This means users would see this rule as a rule and a basic reminder to put something in the text box.
...If that makes sense u/powerlanguage
Comment by Life_Tripper at 16/02/2017 at 07:58 UTC*
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
As u/spez mentioned in his 2017 SOTU post, Reddit’s primary usage is shifting to mobile
Shitty apps will help.
Comment by MoederPoeder at 16/02/2017 at 10:29 UTC
3 upvotes, 1 direct replies
So, a couple questions regarding the rules:
Most of my mods are unfamiliar with the rules system in general because it's really not visible for any user except for when they're reporting, on top of that, you keep copying back from the sidebar to the rules settings.
This is also doesn't make it very appealing to use the rules system in the first place.
Comment by mking6543 at 22/02/2017 at 19:27 UTC
3 upvotes, 2 direct replies
Is there any way to re-arrange the rules? Other than deleting them and re-adding them back in another order?
Comment by spling44 at 07/03/2017 at 02:46 UTC
3 upvotes, 1 direct replies
JSYK the only reason I haven't taken the time and effort to do this for you yet is because our subreddit has very structured and specific rules and the limitation on the number of rules you can add to this new feature make it a bit of a headache to decide which rules to chop and which to add to structured rules. Give us more room so we can add all of our rules.. Don't make me choose between my babies.
Comment by Applejaxc at 15/02/2017 at 21:07 UTC
4 upvotes, 1 direct replies
We only have 50 characters to write the short name?
For all the subreddits I'm a part of, there is nothing this update accomplishes that the title of the rule doesn't already accomplish.
Comment by a_shootin_star at 15/02/2017 at 21:57 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Updates are good.
