Mod demands (Fri Jul 3 04:08:01 UTC 2015)

Why has the blackout happened?


The key points we would like to say are


1. Whilst this protest initial began because of the dismissal of Victoria from the administration team, it is not the primary cause, it is merely the straw that broke the camel’s back
2. We feel as though reddit’s communication with moderators as well as with the wider community, has been lacking. This is exemplified by the fact that Victoria was one of the few admins who regularly communicated with moderators. Subs such as /r/IAMA relied on her to help facilitate their AMAs, and the fact she was dismissed without notice is not only an insult, given that reddit has poorly communicated its decision to dismiss a major communicator, but has also lead to many AMAs needing to be cancelled, which could have been avoided simply by forwarning
3. We love reddit. We love the community and the functions it provides. That’s why we moderate. We give up our free time to do this out of a sense of fun and a desire to do something good; to make and facilitate the growth of communities we love. We wish reddit no harm. We wish it every prosperity.
4. However we feel unable to do this due to the lacking communication of the administrators during times of crisis, which they can easily fix (e.g. brigading and removal of alternative accounts). And the tools we are given in order to fulfil our function as custodians of the communities is hindered by the fact that we have such limited tools to do that.
5. We are protesting to draw attention to this. Many moderators feel unable to accurately do our job because of these conditions, and we want the wider reddit community to know that, and we want the admins to fix that. This is a plea for reddit. This is a protest to draw attention. Mods are often criticised, but we are forced usually into the actions we take because of our severely limited resources.
6. There’s two ways this can be fixed: either, the admins give us the powers to run these subreddits effectively, or create a layer of community admins who can deal with moderator requests (or a mixture of the two)
7. We have provided a list of recommendations (and that’s all these are) below. We would also like to announce pre-emptively that we know the administrators “are working on” these tools, but if that is indeed the case, then we would at least appreciate a genuine progress report, and insight into how far it is actually going a long.


Better Communication and Cooperation with Moderators

·      Ability to contact as and when needed, and expect a genuine reply.
·      When we report an alt account, actually ban the account
·      When we report personal information being shared, ban the accounts involved


Recommends: creation of a layer of administration in between moderators and administrators,
whose sole purpose is engagement with the community and with moderators.


Better mod tools


*  More subreddit statistics
* Ability to overview a user’s comment history
* More tools to detect alternative accounts, and at least get the admins to remove alternative accounts when we find them. Alternatively, better ability to stop the creation of alternative accounts at source.
*   Better mod queue, for reading through reports
* Ability to ban users based on IP, without being able to see the IP in order to avoid violating reddit’s privacy policy.


Mod mail

* Easier to read (Comment Threading)
* Downloadable
* Allow an ignore function to avoid spamming
* Ability to instantaneously discuss a message to the moderators, with co-moderators without the user who’s messaged us being able to see.