We've begun 24/7 moderation. Hooray!

I've said this before, but I'll keep saying it: my main concern is that Reddit is a news site, and this is supposed to be a discussion forum. If you copy and paste Reddit's karma rules, including karma decay, you will just have a second news site. The most salient features of Reddit's visibility system are:

1. No post, however popular, will be visible after a few days. That's plenty of time to circulate a breaking news article or an interesting link, but not enough time for a meaningful discussion.

2. Reddit only considers upvotes/downvotes, not posts, when determining visibility. I think threads with active discussion should be more visible. "Bumps" can be regulated by, e.g., only providing a visibility boost once per user per day.

I don't really like this analogy. I don't view mod posts as being akin to having a cop driving behind you the whole way home. I view them like seeing a cop that has pulled someone over on the highway for speeding. As a driver that doesn't make me think 'Oh no I'm next!' it makes me think 'Good, people be driving crazy out here' And then next time I get cut off, I think 'don't worry, he'll get pulled over eventually'. Currently every time I get cut off (see obvious rule breaking posts/threads) I think 'Boy I wish we had a police force'.

Which I guess is maybe somewhat testable. You could do a survey and ask forum users how often you think the forums are moderated. Because the two comments I always see, are "The forums aren't moderated" or "The mods ban you for literally nothing". The later being people very likely got banned for obvious rule violations, obviously. But I feel like the majority of posters who haven't had mod action taken on their posts, think the forums are a lawless wasteland with no moderators.

tl;dr Constant cops trailing you = scary. Visibility that cops protect you = reassuring. Strike a balance please.

edit; Maybe if posts about mod action weren't highlighted by the 'riot post in this thread' button. So if you were in the thread you'd know, but on the front page it would be invisible? That way you can notice it in passing, but it doesn't demand attention.

The current system leads to a lot of confusion about the level of moderation and who is doing the moderating. I've seen people who think there are no moderators, or only spotty moderation.

That the moderation staff is hidden has led to people assuming that a non-moderator Red who was currently active on the forum had closed a thread. Compounding the confusion is the ability for the community to close a thread with downvotes, which has resulted in people not knowing whether a thread was closed by Riot or the players.

You guys can do better. Moderation shouldn't be obtrusive, but at the same time there should be information available to those who care to know.

I must also say, I find the police analogy kind of disturbing. Invisible moderation sounds more like a police state where the police are discreetly watching on you, and if you screw up they quietly haul you away.

Some of the best moderated boards I've seen have mods as active participants and posters. The community is comfortable with them because they know they're also just regular people who enjoy the same stuff they do, but also know that there is somebody ready to defend the boards against undesirable posting.

I think this can be flipped to better state what I'm seeing a lot of other people say. Mods shouldn't be "that police officer in the corner" but that sheriff in a close knit town. You know their name, they help the community where they can and try to be a good role model. Oh, and they also carry a gun.

The fact is, mods (and even cops as well for that matter) shouldn't be known as "the guys that can ban (arrest) you". They should be helpful, well-known members of the community that can be trusted for their representation as a person and not their role. All pleasant ideals sure, but I digress.

Tamat, I'm really upset. A thread I really liked got moved. And I would really like to know the reason. It's very unsettling that we can't see these mods at all or interact with them. The analogy just doesn't stand.

No, I did not make the thread, but I supported it. We need to know WHY something was moved etc. Communication. We need it. Please don't avoid it. Communicate

While we're back on this topic, can I suggest that whenever mod actions are taken, the reason behind their action is visible to the general public, as well as to the offender? This...

1. prevents false accusations by the offender, or others.
2. helped the community know what kinds of posts are acceptable - ex: when I see that a post has been deleted for racism, now I know that racism isn't acceptable on these forums.
3. is a reassurance that mods aren't being inactive
4. is a reassurance that my threads won't get deleted (because I see the types of things that do get deleted, and know that my threads aren't that).

My view on it is that League spans multiple cultures. That on top of differing age groups inside of those cultures will lead to different perspectives on what violates the rules. Some cultures are more accepting of profanity while others are more strict. By having examples available you provide the opportunity to not just act on the rules that are broken, but hopefully add an extra layer of prevention. It's always better to educate the community in order to avoid infractions as opposed to say "They'll figure it out and interpret it or they'll end up banned and figure it out from there". That's my take on what he's trying to say here. No guarantee I'm anywhere close.

If nothing else, think of this in terms of consistency. The more areas in which Riot clearly displays a commitment to honesty and accountability, the more trust Riot creates in its community. By making moderation visible and clear, the community is able to see that Riot is not hiding the reasons for which that moderation happens.

Look at other issues that have come up in the past. IP gains? Very little communication, lots of distrust. Stealth rework? Long periods of silence, highly upset community. Magma Chamber? Delayed announcements and dialogue, still a sore spot for many. Most of the instances in which Riot chooses not to be transparent or communicative have weakened and stressed the relationship between the company and the players, which is particularly distressing when so much of the company is made up of players.

You do have a point that we, as posters and players, won't actually get a ton of direct value from seeing why xXJoeXJaneXx had a post deleted. In the long run, though, the fact that those reasons are available at all will be impactful in itself, to significant benefit.

Because you're not dealing with a community of fully rational people, who see a list of rules, and assume those rules are enforced as outlined. You're dealing with a community of real people, who will doubt if things are actually done the way they have been told if they never see them being done that way. Again, going back to the cop analogy, I don't need to know every last verdict and how every case turns out. I just want to pass some guy that got pulled over now and then, so I know that the person that cut me off and ran a red light I was going to stop at, isn't just the way things are around here.

Bringing that back to forum moderation, I don't need (or really have any strong desire) to know what action the mod took against the specific user. I just want the mod to post "alright guys, this thread has turned into person attack and isn't discussing balance anymore, I'm closing it". That way I know the mods care about thread quality, and I know that everyone else knows that personal attacks get threads closed.

In a perfect world simply having a clear list of rules would work, but the world isn't perfect, and the internet is less perfect than that. And in fact, even now people post and do things that are CLEARLY against the rules (porn, racism, etc) and other people don't even blink, because they think that is just how it is here. Visibility is about assuring Joe Q Forumgoer that those things really are against the rules, and the rules really are enforced.

Edit; Again, just to be clear. I don't think people want a compendium of moderator actions they can thumb through. I think they just want a quick explanation of what rule was broken (even if it was obvious) in the thread in question. To me that doesn't sound like a lot of extra work, but maybe I've got a bad frame of reference, since I clearly make long winded posts and I've got no idea how involved the back end of forum moderation is. As for the return on the time/effort investment, its an intangible. It comes back in the forum of generic board health/mentality. Ideally public action lets disgruntled posters angry about trolls come back from the brink and make good content, rather than pull an 'If you can't beat them, join them' response and start junk posting themselves.

I tend to tangent off to an idea like that when discussing topics sorry. Don't get too hung up on my specific idea of a tracker and such, that's just me brainstorming out loud without much consideration.

What it really boils down to, I'd rather have mods I know and trust and see than invisible mods who's actions I may only see once in a blue moon. The results can be exactly the same in both approaches, but the former will let me rest at ease more because I know "Rioter X will come to take this down" in a thread that deserves intervention instead of thinking "it will hopefully disappear soon".

Trust is established off of previous actions I've seen (public disclosure of thread closures and other mod actions). If I see a Rioter's name behind an action I can put a name behind my expectations of a mod and start building a trust in that person and other mods to repeat that same action.

Invisible mods.... even if they're just as effective, I can't trust them. Was the invisible action taken by a Mod or did OP just delete it? Was this the same Mod who closed 'Y' thread last week or was it someone else? Was 'Y' thread deleted for the racism or for the naming and shaming? or both? Behind the awful tone and words choice OP made a good point, was it deleted because it portrayed Riot in a bad light? Invisible actions leave too many questions for anyone outside the offender<-->Mod relationship. And that doubt, however slight, impedes the ability to trust 'the people behind the curtain'.

tl;dr I'd rather trust an individual than have blind faith in a group.

P.S. In the end, my ideal moderator is an active member of the community who is confident enough in their actions to announce what they did and why they did it. I'm not saying you guys aren't, just that that's what I look for in a great moderator.

Out of curiosity, are there any plans/ideas on where these rules will be physically shown on-site?