Automating the Tedious

Much of the work of moderation has been mechanical steps to carry out a moderation decision.    Given a flag, the mod must link to the article to see the comment, copy the original comment to the Moderator’s Group, annotate the comment to include the ‘purple ink’ and then record the offense so ‘points’ can be accumulated towards a suspension.  

Points then must be tracked to detect a potential need for punitive action (a suspension).   But points need to also expire – each new month starts with a clean slate.    If a member does require a suspension the appropriate suspension duration needs to be calculated (a function of suspensions during the month).   Then the member’s quota must be changed to the special quota for suspended members and an email must be authored and sent informing the member of the suspension.   Finally, the suspension end date must be recorded so that the suspension is manually released by changing the quota back and issuing a reinstatement email.

There are additional special case details (e.g. restoring comments) but the above is more than enough to justify an automated solution.

This document describes the new Moderator Console whose purpose is to eliminate the mechanical and tracking work so mods can focus instead on making judgment calls.

Profile Menu

The Moderator Console is available to all mods.   Just go to your personal menu (far right) and you will see a new item labeled ‘Moderator’.   Moving forward this will be the home base for moderation.

Moderator Console

Clicking ‘Moderator’ brings you to the console.   The console displays five tabs:  Flags, Tickets, Pending, Suspensions and Expired.   The Flags tab is always presented first.   

The tabs represent the following major functions:

Flags

Although this is basically the flagger mods have been using, there are a few new features.   The most significant difference is the format.   This new version of the flagger is oriented to the item.   It will list each item (comment or an article) and then list all current flags on that item.   All the flags on a given item are considered a group.   Any action taken by the moderator will automatically act on the entire group of flags.

Looking at the flag display, note that there is no LINK button.   If you want to go directly to a comment just click on the Item (the title).   But that will only be necessary if you need to see the context.   Most of the time you should be able to use the COMMENT  button.   The COMMENT   button shows you the comment without requiring you to go to the actual article.    Next to COMMENT  is the  UNCENSOR  button.  We will address that later on so move to the  TICKET  button.   The  TICKET  button is the main function for flagging.   This button delivers direct edit access to the comment and offers the means to rule on the flag.    Here is what the Ticket function looks like for the first flag.

The comment area shows the member’s comment in the editor.   Any change you make will be to the actual comment.   So here is where you can apply purple ink.  However, you will not need to do this as often.   The only time you really need to edit the member comment is if you want to delete inappropriate content.    The reason for this is the new mechanism for showing moderation calls:  the moderator ruling area ( see below ).

Note that below the comment is a drop down box containing the most common offenses (‘Skirting …’, ‘CoC violation’, ‘Off topic’, etc.)   The moderator will normally pick the appropriate offense from this list.   When an offense is picked, the system will assign the proper ‘point’ penalty and reflect your moderation decision in the comment.   Let’s just use the default offense of ‘Skirting the CoC’ and issue the ticket.   When the ticket is issued, the member’s comment in the article will appear as follows:

( A violation appears as a no-sign  and a warning appears as a yellow circle . ) 

Since a mod has ruled on the flag, the flag icon is no longer available (members can no longer flag this comment).   In its place is an icon indicating the severity (in this case this is a violation, not a warning) and a message showing the mod's ruling along with the name of the moderator.   

In short, the mod makes a decision and the system will do the rest.   With the offense and mod name listed in a special moderator ruling area on each comment, there is much less need to adorn user comments with purple ink.

Returning now to the offense, there is an additional feature.   Sometimes a mod will need to deem a non-standard offense.  For example, if someone engages in doxing, the mod would want to label it as such and maybe assign a penalty that is stiffer than 2 points.   This can be done by typing ‘doxing’ (or whatever the mod deems appropriate) in the ‘new value’ box on the offense line.   Once done, click on the open area and a new box will appear for you to assign a point value from 1 to 8.   Here is how it would look if the offense was ‘doxing’ with a point value of 4.

The point system, by the way, is 1 through 8 (currently).   When a member accumulates 8 points, that member will be up for suspension.   The points leading to a suspension are simple.   Skirting is one point.  A CoC violation is 2 points.   Of course, if a mod makes a custom offense (e.g. doxing, death-wishing) the mod can assign points between 0 and 8.    All other offenses are considered warnings and have a point value of 0.   Warnings are all recorded, but they do not have any material effect.

Next to TICKET  is the  ALLOW  button.   This is used when a mod has reviewed the flags for an item and has decided the item can stand as is.   Pressing ALLOW  causes all the flags on the item to be deleted and prohibits any future flagging.   (However, mods can still flag.)   Thus when an item is flagged, a mod will either issue a ticket or allow the item to stand as is.  In either case, no future member flagging is possible for the item.

The remaining button,  UNCENSOR , is a special button that will only be available for authors who have been given the special privilege of flag-censoring.   Flag-censoring means that when the author flags an item on the author’s own article a flag is raised but the comment is also made invisible (looks as though it has been deleted).   The UNCENSOR  button is used by a mod to remove the censor (if appropriate).  UNCENSOR  makes the censored comment visible.   The mod may also rule on the flag and issue a ticket.   Note that if the mod does not remove the censor, the comment will remain invisible to normal members.

The flag functionality is of course the beginning of the process.  The next step after Flags is dealing with tickets.

Tickets

This section lists all active tickets.   An active ticket is one that is leading to a suspension for the current month.   At the beginning of each month, all active tickets are removed (thus clearing the slates for all members).

As with Flags, a mod can go to the actual comment (or article) by clicking on the Item.   But as before that is probably never going to be necessary.   Note the COMMENTS  button.   This button will display the comment as with the Flags section.  However, it has a special twist.   If the mod has editted the original comment (deleted or added) the COMMENTS  button provides the means to review original vs. moderated and the means to restore the comment to its original form.   Here is what this looks like for a ticket that has been purple inked:

The RESTORE ORIGINAL COMMENT  button is available to restore the comment to its original content (discarding moderator edits).

A more potent undo function is also available.  The UNTICKET  button will completely reverse the ticket function.   It will reset the comment to its original form, remove the moderator comment and delete the ticket.   This would be used if a ticket was determined to be inappropriate.   The UNTICKET  function removes the ticket as if it was never issued.

Pending Suspensions

As soon as a member accumulates enough tickets in a month to warrant a suspension, all tickets are packaged into a pending suspension.   The tickets are no longer visible in the Tickets list – they are simply listed as offenses in a pending suspension.

The pending suspension will sit there until a mod takes an action.   The action will be to suspend the member or to decline the pending suspension.  

Clicking the  SUSPEND  button will activate this pending suspension.   The member will be instantly suspended and notified of same by email.   The suspension will be accomplished by moving the member into a special restricted quota.   This quota is selected via a configuration option by the site owner.

The suspension email informs the member of the suspension, the duration and the justification.   The email that results from the above looks like this:

This suspension is now listed in the suspension section.

The other option is to DECLINE  the pending suspension.   This would be done if the mod decides that even though the member has earned a suspension, a suspension is not appropriate at this time.   Declining a pending suspension returns all the offenses back to the Ticket list.   The tickets are still valid and active – they are simply not part of a pending suspension anymore.   However, if a mod issues another ticket for that member, it and all of these newly returned tickets will be packaged together as a new pending suspension.

A third option, so to speak, is to do nothing.   This will leave the pending suspension on this list.   This will continue until the end of the month when it will be removed as part of clearing the slate.    For the rest of the  month, all new tickets will be automatically included in the pending suspension.   In result, if a mod does finally decide to suspend the member, the suspension will include all outstanding tickets (as offenses) for the month.

Suspensions

When a member is suspended, the record of suspension will appear in the suspensions list.   This list is ordered in reverse chronological sequence so the most recent suspensions will appear first.

There are a few functions (outside of comment) available at this point.   The COMMENT  button shows the comment (original and moderated) and similarly, the MESSAGE  button will show the mod message that accompanied the suspension.

The important button, however, is RESUME .   This is the way a mod can release a member from suspension before the suspension duration is over.   A way to come off of suspension early.   Issuing a resume will immediately terminate the suspension and issue an email message to the member informing them that their accounts are again active.

 Basically it performs the exact actions that automatically occur at the end of the suspension period – just does them now.    The email that results for resuming the above suspension looks like this:

Once a suspension is over either by arriving at the suspension end date or by using the RESUME  button, the suspension will be sent to the Expired section - an ongoing record of past suspensions.

Expired

All expired suspensions appear here for historical reasons.   This list looks like the suspensions list except instead of RESUME  it has a DELETE  button.   The DELETE  button permanently removes the expired suspension.   It is a manual delete.

Expired suspensions are automatically removed by the system based on configurations by the owner.   It is thus unlikely that a mod will see a need to issue a manual delete.

Summary

The purpose of the moderator console is to make moderation easier.   It does this by automating many of the mundane, mechanical aspects of the job and frees the mods to spend their time making judgment calls rather than tracking offenses and manually copying and pasting content.

In the future, additional functionality will be added.   First on the list will be the means to automatically metafy and unmetafy articles.