July 2016 /r/pics transparency report and important update about moderation
This is a longggg post. Scroll to the very end if all you want is the stats / numbersHello! July was a pretty big month for us internally. A lot of our projects are really kicking off and we have some exciting things to share in the coming months, and I want to share what I can with you today.Some of these upcoming changes may not be user-facing. We are restructuring and rewriting our various policies, and anything that affects the end user will be posted as a sticky.What we did this monthWe worked on quite a few things this months, notably:New mod searchJust yesterday, applications for modship were closed, and we have just begun the process of narrowing down who will be in the batch of upcoming moderators. We expect all new mods to be added by the end of August. You will not be contacted if we do not select you. Please hang tight, don’t PM us endlessly about it.Banned misleading titlesDeciding what to do with misleading titles has always been a bit hard for us. Initially, we just flaired them. Then, we decided to add a “three strikes you’re out” rule for them. After observing what happened with this new policy, we decided to take the next step and simply remove any posts that are misleading.Minor things can always be corrected by flair, we are more concerned about flat out lies or misleading posts, not little mistakes.ExchangeWe partnered with RedditGifts to create an awesome photography exchange! It isn’t too late to check it out and sign up! Click me!ImgurSome of you remember our discussion about Imgur. At this moment in time, we have opted to take no action, however we may decide on a different path, and we will keep you up to date as things develop.Internal ChangesSo, I also wanted to let you folks know about what we are doing internally with /r/pics.Moderation on reddit is a bit messy, a lot of tools are essentially ancient code that simply can’t keep up with our usage, and we rely on many external tools to do what we need to do.In addition, policy, structure, and all that is not a simple task. Keeping things “in order” is not great when you use a platform you don’t actually control. Other sites I do moderation work on, for example, have a very clear tree structure of command, policies, etc. On reddit, our hierarchy is an unreadable blob and while we have policy, it can be intimidating to get started, and be consistent.This isn’t just a pics or a default problem, but a reddit problem itself and it is not a problem Reddit the company can solve.With this in mind, /r/pics is taking the time to create a more welcoming environment for our moderators and a more consistent environment for our users by refreshing the subreddit, its policies, and creating what is essentially, the /r/pics SOP.We called it “Make Pics Great” (no again). The goal is to make the subreddit a better place to moderate, give our policies a facelift, and create a better experience for our users.This process will be mostly internal, and you the end user may not see too much, but we are working on improving at the very least and we want you to know that.We plan on refreshing and doing the following:Refresh and official-ize our internal voting process for new policy -- In progressUpdate moderator activity requirements, enforcement policy, and all the "meta mod" stuffCreate a "project" system and policy, allowing moderators to work on internal projects more effectively, and giving them a central point of co-ordination and direction.Rewrite our sidebar, compress our rules.Make the /r/pics wiki actually do something, create a full rule index there. Few other ideasCreate a real ban policy and mute policy -- Such as use, duration, and moreCreate a real modmail policy -- Use, responses, how much can we actually circlejerk in one thread? -- On holdCreate a better /r/toolbox usage and note policy, including standardizing notes, colors, etcMake the /r/pics wiki cool, as well as our own internal subreddit wikiIn line with the sidebar re-write, update and reword our rules.Clean up our internal mod notes (not looking forward to this one)Better policies, and welcoming for new moderatorsMore integrations into our slack, automation is the futureDocument it allCreate a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) document set for internal use and referral. (We are also considering making these documents public so other subreddits may use them, as well as for transparency.)CSS updates for /r/pics as well as internal subredditAnything else we forgetThese items are in no particular orderWhy am I telling you all this?Well, for one, transparency. That's the point. We want those who are interested to know what we are doingSecondly, one of the goals of this project is to make the subreddit more consistent and better for our users. Not involving the users would be silly.Why are we doing this?Well, I don't think /r/pics is broken. I don't think we NEED to fix ourselves. Most of us are all happy with the way things are.However, reddit doesn't give us much of a platform, we need to take the only steps we can to improve it further. Since we can't change reddit itself, we have to change how we do things.It can always be better. Lots of defaults are a mess - /r/pics wants to strive to be the best in terms of moderation, consistancy, transparency, etc. We want to be the default to mod. We want to do it right.This is not an easy thing to do with such an established moderation team as well as twelve million subscribers. But we want to try.You care too much about meaningless internet thingsOnly me, I'm just dragging everyone else along.The numbersNow, to the part people actually care about:Here is a fancy table of the raw numbers from July 2016CategoryDataDifferenceCommentTotal Actions37184Down ~3000Submission Removals12948Down ~1000Comment Removals8826Down ~2000Posts Approved3573-Posts rescued from a spam filter, or approving posts with excessive reportsComments Approved2564-DittoBans939Down ~500Includes temp and perma bansUnbans54Down ~10Does not include temp bans expiringReports Ignored994≈Keep reporting stuff though!Stickies Made25-Posts and CommentsPosts Locked4-Other Important detailsIn the month of July...1 moderator was completely inactive (1 or less actions)Of 37,184 actions, 13423 were made by automation, about 36% -- For the past few months, automation is always 34-36%, neatReddit administrators made 2 actions in /r/pics - However it turns out it was just /u/redtaboo misclicking and ignoring (then unignoring) reports on a post.We received no takedown requests
via /r/pics
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