Moderator transparency in /r/conspiracy
70 2013-12-24 by sunshine-x
Given the recent hubbub surrounding the actions of certain mods, I thought I'd make this post to inform and remind everyone about a great tool at your disposal.
Many may not realize it but you, the community of /r/conspiracy, have a tool available to you that provides you with visibility into the actions taken by the moderator team here. This is exceptionally rare on Reddit.
First, a little history. Did you know that the Admins intentionally prevent moderators from making their moderation logs public? I've requested the feature many times, and even though it could be optional and only enabled should moderators choose to, the Admins have chosen to prevent moderators from easily disclosing their actions.
In addition to not offering moderators with this simple feature, the admins have gone so far as not providing the moderation log via API calls - you can't access the mod logs without scraping and parsing the HTML. This intentionally makes it significantly more laborious and intensive to read the logs programatically.
The moderators and community of /r/conspiracy loathe censorship. The mods wanted a way to make their actions visible to the public, but there was no way to do so directly in Reddit. To address this intentional gap in reddit functionality, I created a bot that runs under /u/uncensorship and populates /r/uncensorship with metadata about moderator actions. It's a simple bot that scrapes the mod logs, parses them, and posts the activities to /r/uncensorship in tagged searchable way.
So, how do you make use of this tool? Simple - Visit /r/uncensorship and search for "conspiracy" or any other of the participating subreddits.
Here's a link to some search results, where you can see what your mod team is up to.
If you're a moderator of a subreddit and wish to participate, please contact me and I'll work with you to get it set up. I'll provide this service to any who wish to participate, and hope that one day the Admins will decide to offer this level of transparency directly as a Reddit feature.
22 comments
19 GlenBaskerville 2013-12-24
I think we could use several more moderators here. Ones that will tackle the problem of the /r/conspiratards.
Mocking is not discussion, neither is attacking the notion of conspiracy. Conspiracies are happening all the time in every area of life. It takes intuitive minds to begin to uncover these, and this is the very concept that is under attack in /r/conspiracy. Vote brigading and black ops from /r/conspiratard are the most damaging things to this subreddit, and this aggression will not stand.
It doesn't matter what other subs think of the people here. What matters is that those people are not permitted to come in and make a mockery of the ideals of this subreddit. Let them have /r/conspiratard. We don't want them shut down, we just want them to stop harassing us.
We can solve this quite easily with several new moderators who will be vigilant in removing them whenever they create new troll accounts. I would love to be one of several to do this.
1 Mrg13 2013-12-24
This is what I could not put in to words basically, so thank you.
0 Entry_Point 2013-12-24
You can negate their paid shill efforts by simply disabling the hiding of comments in your Prefs - upper right hand corner, to the left of your username. I believe the field within your site Preferences (http://www.reddit.com/prefs/) is populated by default with a value that force hides anything with a certain downvote count, say -4.
Delete both values and their downvotes become meaningless.
Don't allow anyone else to control what you see and participate in. After tackling this, its time to address the removal and censprship of entire threads here.
9 newformeand 2013-12-24
They are censoring and banning anyone who criticizes the mods. help!
http://i5.minus.com/jP9Wm3YNOrHVO.png
-3 The_Pale_Blue_Dot 2013-12-24
Untrue; this was explained here
2 GlenBaskerville 2013-12-24
Untrue. This is a selective enforcement of the rules against someone /u/solidwhetstone wanted gone. It was an excuse.
10 Palido 2013-12-24
+10, amount of ppl that broke that same rule the past day is unreal.
Ppl can fill that topic with links and screen shots of trolling / abuse in a heart beat
selective modding is exactly what that is
5 SystemicSubversion 2013-12-24
It's kind of like how I can park my car at a gas station and sit there Redditing on my phone for hours without complaint, but if I were a wearing a bulky coat standing there, a cop would get me for loitering. Selective enforcement of "catch-all" laws is abuse in any context.
-2 cmseagle 2013-12-24
Hilariously, selective enforcement of the rules was one of the major criticisms brought up in the infamous /r/conspiratard thread.
-8 The_Pale_Blue_Dot 2013-12-24
Based on what evidence? I mean, he DID break the rules.
2 R4F1 2013-12-24
If he was banned for offensive language, some warnings and disciplinary actions could have sufficed. Debate and/or loathing of tyranny naturally bring about emotions; this should not be used to demonize and stifle all opinions outright (which is what a ban does).
Unless I maybe mistaken, and warnings were given.
8 Final-Hero 2013-12-24
Finally a post that actually contributes instead of complains!
Good day to you sir!
5 go1dfish 2013-12-24
/r/uncensorship is great I use it at /r/POLITIC as well, so does /r/altnewz and now even /r/TrueReddit
I try to get as many sub-reddits as possible using /r/uncensorship it's a great tool.
I started /r/ModerationLog shortly after the admins implemented the (private) Moderation Log and held back release of an option to enable public logs:
A feature implemented nearly 2 years ago but still not released:
http://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/ov7rt/moderators_feedback_requested_on_enabling_public/
Though in defense of the reddit admins; they allow me to run /r/ModerationLog (an involuntary version of uncensorship that does not require moderator cooperation) as long as I limit it to political subreddits; respect API rate limits; and do not have it automatically PM people.
This is despite numerous calls from larger subreddits monitored by ModerationLog to ban the bot.
/r/ModerationLog monitors /r/conspiracy as well because it just seems appropriate (and helps me check accuracy against uncensorship)
3 Purimfest_1946 2013-12-24
The person that commented here that is not me, you are shadow banned.
3 sunshine-x 2013-12-24
I'm confused. What comment are you referring to? Are you suggesting I'm shadow-banned? There is no other comment in here, and I've checked my inbox and there are no other replies to this post.
On the topic of being shadow banned, in case anyone reading this is wondering how they can check, it's simple:
If I've missed something or have a mistake in the procedure please correct me.
3 Palido 2013-12-24
I see you op so your fine, but the topic outside says 3 comments while only 2 are visible to me.... so ya, someone is SB'd
1 Purimfest_1946 2013-12-24
Could have been you, it's hard to tell with a shadowban
2 sunshine-x 2013-12-24
I've made an edit since your reply, take a look at the parent comment again and apply that procedure.
I am not shadow banned, for example.
3 [deleted] 2013-12-24
[deleted]
3 sunshine-x 2013-12-24
items removed by Reddit's anti-spam filter will not appear. If a mod takes an action, it will be reported.
2 [deleted] 2013-12-24
[deleted]
1 go1dfish 2013-12-24
If it's a political sub-reddit; /r/POLITIC mirrors nearly everything to create an uncensored political subreddit.
1 99red 2013-12-24
Looking at the threads being removed, u/solidwhetstone isn't the only problem here. The whole mod team needs to go. Or we need to go and start over fresh some place else in a new conspiracy sub