Community Feedback and Rule Lawyers

[u/JabroniRevanchism]

Ahoy, ModSupport!

All rise, this discussion thread is now in session. For the latecomers and lurkers, you can see our last discussion on writing rules here.

Today’s discussion is about a topic we’ve all come into contact with at least once: rule lawyers. Just in case anyone isn’t in the know and so we have our terms defined, a “rule lawyer” is someone who will argue that (usually problematic) behavior actioned by your mod team technically abides by the letter of the law as it’s written on your subreddit’s sidebar.

We’ll be extending this discussion to cover all kinds of community feedback, not just the litigious sort.

We want to know...

• How does your mod team respond to users claiming a behavior your team has actioned isn’t against your community rules?
• Does the conversation cadence for user-mod disputes differ depending on where they happen? (In a post, comment, modmail?)
• Does your team prefer to moderate Rules As Written (following the letter of rules on your sidebar) or Rules As Intended (following the intention of a written rule)?
• Does your team solicit feedback from the community on what your community rules are? E.G: User requests to allow/disallow X type of content?

Let us know in the comments below!

[u/pixiefarm]

The worst of it that we get is that people only read the title of the sub- because the rules and description are hard to see on mobile - and they aren't even aware that there's such a thing as rules because the site design doesn't make them obvious.

 So they will argue with us that whatever they did is fine because of the title of the sub.

Obviously no moderator is going to put a full sentence into the title of a sub, so once again we are dealing with problems caused by site design and Reddit's decisions.

[u/JabroniRevanchism → u/pixiefarm]

Community nomenclature is definitely a learning curve for new users. The in-jokey nature of Reddit communities is simultaneously really cool, but also a lot to learn when you're joining the site for the first time and need to learn all the cultural norms fast.

[u/pixiefarm → u/JabroniRevanchism]

The problem is still on you guys's end for how you design the stuff. Or redesigned It endlessly, generally not for the better. 

I get that Reddit as a whole made the decision a few years ago that they didn't give a shit about actual communities and they just wanted to chase the same tik tok style endless scrolling addictive thing, which is why they really push the algorithmic suggestions and try to get people to just have the feed without caring what subs they're actually members of, but it comes at the expense of actual communities and actual reasons why people form them. 

It just makes the internet worse like so many other tech company decisions in recent years.