Transparency and Accountability: What does the community think of public subreddit moderation logs?

[Mumberthrax]

I recently had a discussion with a user on Reddit named go1dfish who maintains the /r/uncensorship, /r/POLITIC, and /r/ModerationLog subreddits, and I shared with him a method I discovered to easily generate public moderation logs for subreddits who wish for transparency and accountability. Being the awesome guy that he is, go1dfish whipped up a website to make the logs easy on the eyes, and helped set up a wiki page on my /r/publicmodlogs subreddit to make it super simple to add new subreddits.

 

Long story short, it's easier than ever for a community on Reddit to have transparency and accountability, and all you have to do is have a moderator send an invite to /u/publicmodlogs to become a moderator of a subreddit, granting it NO permissions (so that all the account can do is view the moderation logs). Then anyone can view the log of subreddit actions taken at https://modlog.github.io, or viewing an RSS feed generated by reddit itself. Example here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Morrowind/about/log/.rss?feed=c7b83b457469643f1912d5fee30e18dba808f351&user=publicmodlogs

 

As a moderator on the /r/mcpublic subreddit, I can attest that not much really happens there in the logs of any significance to the public - occasionally someone tries to advertise a server, or someone posts a personal attack that gets removed - basic rule violations. I must admit my belief is not that /r/mcpublic absolutely needs this, and my intention here is not really to promote drama or to rabblerouse, but moreso to promote the notion of and adoption of public moderator logs more broadly on Reddit, with /r/mcpublic and nerd.nu standing firm with the principles of transparency and accountability, to lead other communities by example in the hopes of strengthening online communities everywhere.

 

So, what do you, the nerd.nu community, think about this?

 

edit: subreddit post that links to this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/mcpublic/comments/35wcg3/transparency_and_accountability_what_does_the/

 

edit2: I've written up a fairly complete explanation of how the process go1dfish and I have setup works on /r/publicmodlogs here: https://www.reddit.com/r/publicmodlogs/comments/360amy/so_how_does_this_public_moderation_logs_thing/ for anyone who is interested in the details.

Edited May 15, 2015 by Mumberthrax

[d3north]

On question three, a crucial part is understanding how 'beneficial' and 'positive' are different things. Sometimes the right thing isnt an easy or painless process, but putting everything* to light will always be better in the long run. 

*that does not affect safety of players or servers

[Guest Former Staff]

Thank you for creating this poll Mumberthrax, I had some concerns about how this would be implemented if it does go ahead but then after voting in the poll you described exactly how that would be established. Seems that you've done most of the leg-work too!

 

It seems that my voting for the most part falls in line with people as in my eyes, most of the answers are logical. There is one exception where I voted differently and that is whether such a tool would prevent abuse of power. This will deter some people, most definitely to reconsider their actions before they take them. However if I were a 'censorship crusader' then that would not stop me. Ultimately it would lead to questions which I hope would be directed at the head admins rather than a public verbal assassination.

[Mumberthrax]

There is one exception where I voted differently and that is whether such a tool would prevent abuse of power. This will deter some people, most definitely to reconsider their actions before they take them. However if I were a 'censorship crusader' then that would not stop me. Ultimately it would lead to questions which I hope would be directed at the head admins rather than a public verbal assassination.

 

Thank you, Barlimore. I agree with the general sentiment you've expressed. As I voted in this poll my interpretation of the question was not necessarily whether it would fully stop abuse of powers on its own (which can manifest in more ways than solely censorship), but whether it would contribute to the process of prevention, whether it would act as a substantial deterrent. If the poll did not already have so many votes i would probably go back and change the wording from "preventing" to "deterring" to be more precise, but I think, at least in my mind, the meaning is essentially the same. I do not ask if public moderation logs will prevent abuse of power with finality, but whether it is a useful tool for that end.

 

I think it can be a very useful tool for transparency, for accountability, and for deterring misconduct. I think it is democratizing. Again, I don't see this as a substantial issue on /r/mcpublic currently - our subreddit has the most developed moderation bureaucracy I've been privileged to be a part of, and our mods are all quite professional. Mistakes happen, but that's life. I believe that with a tool like this, it will only help to contribute that much more to the trust that the community has in its chosen stewards, and to help identify mistakes and correct them with minimal fuss.

[Guest]

Anticipating the rash response which may be posted by people who don't understand the positive consequence of doing this, we should all agree that transparency in the community isn't a bad thing at all. I think the admins and mods should definitely give this serious thought since this would be an extremely easy and effortless way to show that you guys are willing to provide public information in regards to "behind the scenes" work.

[schererererer]

In general, I think this is a harmless showing of transparency (for us, really more demonstrative than substantive), and would be fine with implementing it. I thought of a couple of issues with privacy/anonymity of reporting via modmail and re-listing of posts containing doxxing, etc.; but ultimately these are very few and far between and often circumventable in any case.

[Mumberthrax]

I have thought a little bit about personal information/doxxing, and I think that in those instances where if the harmful content remains in the title then the reddit admins would remove it when reported - especially with their recent post about working harder to counter harassment on the site.

[cdmrtbeok]

Isn't it just a checkbox to make them public? Is this an issue?

 

I remember when I used to moderate the subreddit. I never once had an opportunity to do anything because there were so many mods lol.

 

It was all just obvious troll stuff though, what was highlighted in pink.

 

Quick edit: yeah doxxing maybe I can't imagine there is that much of that going on, you can just list what action was taken with out providing the censored text

Edited May 16, 2015 by cdmrtbeok

[Mumberthrax]

No, there's no checkbox for public moderation logs on reddit. The Reddit admins wanted to introduce them as an option a while back, but a handful of mods on large subreddits said they didn't want it to be available as an option since people would clamor for it and it would make them look bad if they said they didn't want it. kind of weird logic, but thats the gist of the argument. They also said it would cause witch hunts against moderators when the mods enforce a rule because the community was too dumb to understand how the rules applied to any given situation. https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/ov7rt/moderators_feedback_requested_on_enabling_public/ So the admins at the time sided with these mods and chose not to supply the feature natively, allowing workaround options like /r/uncensorship and /r/POLITIC and /r/undelete, and now /u/publicmodlogs to spring up as solutions for those who want them.

 

edit: If the Reddit admins did provide the public log they were talking about years back, then it would be much more feature-rich than what we have currently. It would have the option to tag mod actions with reasons or rules, the options to anonymize the acting moderator, etc. Things which would make things better. But a lack of those features is still better than complete opacity in many cases on reddit, in my opinion. Again, /r/mcpublic might not need this, especially since it's about a set of game servers and not really about the subreddit. But it's my hope that folks here will set it up to lend support for the concept more broadly on reddit.

Edited May 16, 2015 by Mumberthrax

[cdmrtbeok]

Do you have an implementation of this ready to go or are you just requesting this get done?

[Mumberthrax]

Do you have an implementation of this ready to go or are you just requesting this get done?

Yes. If you read the original post above, you'll see that I have discovered a method to generate public moderation logs from reddit itself without the need for any third party bot/script/website setups, and the reddit user go1dfish has provided an alternative frontend for veiwing the logs. all that a subreddit moderator has to do in order to set it up is invite the account /u/publicmodlogs to become a moderator of their subreddit, granting it no permissions. if you'd prefer not to read the post text above, I also wrote a post on reddit about this for anyone curious about how it works: https://www.reddit.com/r/publicmodlogs/comments/360amy/so_how_does_this_public_moderation_logs_thing/

 

That said, this isn't so much a request for it to be done as much as it is seeking input from the community on whether they would like to see this on /r/mcpublic.

Edited May 16, 2015 by Mumberthrax

[cdmrtbeok]

What does the first question in the poll have to do with anything?

[Guest Former Staff]

What does the first question in the poll have to do with anything?

 

This is a good question as you could argue that it another matter entirely however given the number of people who have voted yes to this question, it could be demonstrating a correlation between the lack of transparency. My opinion is that if these additional logs are implemented, in six, twelve months or another unspecified timeframe has passed then we could gather further data on how successful people feel the logs have been in contributing to the prevention of abuse (although I feel that it would speak for itself and not require further feedback).

[tobylane]

What does the first question in the poll have to do with anything?

 

Perceptions, which is slightly different to basis for trust. I said yes to that question because I know of a few bad actions but I still trust the mod team.

[Mumberthrax]

What does the first question in the poll have to do with anything?

 

I asked this question to create a frame of reference from which respondents could consider the concept of a public subreddit moderation log. I was also curious about whether those voting "no" on the final question were familiar with some of the censorship that has occurred on reddit or if it was a vote based on a belief that it does not happen. I hope that the question did not mislead anyone into thinking that it was about censorship or misconduct on /r/mcpublic specifically.