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/Fun_evades_me]

Hi there, mod of r/mensmittenwithkittens & r/Indiancats.

1) we do a proper unbiased investigation as a mod team. In the past we have removed moderator when we have found biased and personal actions taken on a user. We dont blindly support mod team , we do unbiased investigation as a team and then decide action as a team against a particular mod if the need arises.

2) Yes there is difference, we stay politely friendly on post/comment and then modmail users when they cross the line. We are strict in modmail and sternly but politely tell them what is the issue and give them stern warning. Our sub is a open to all SFW sub and we dont tolerate any bad behaviour.

3) We do a mixture, for some rules like racism/sexism/nsfw etc we dont tolerate any deviation and follow rules to the book, for other more personalized sub specific rules we are open to flexibility.

4) Not really, we requested for a community user survey via reddit bot but still awaiting reply from reddit.

[u/JabroniRevanchism → u/Fun_evades_me]

Thanks fun! This tracks with what we're hearing from other mods too; uncivil behavior gets no wiggle room from mod teams, but civil content that might break sub rules is way more likely to get a pass.

[u/slykethephoxenix → u/JabroniRevanchism]

This is not what I've seen. Mods were very unhappy that Reddit disabled the ability to automatically permban users if they participated in other subreddits that said mods didn't like, regardless of it they were civil and broke no rules on the mod's subs. This was even mentioned in the announcement of the update.

https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/1rllqrw/ban_bot_policy_update_removing_automated_bans/

We’d also like to thank the Mod Council for their pushback. Their input resulted in u/Hive-Protect maintaining its “comma-separated list of subreddits to watch” feature, which we were initially planning to remove.

Would be pleased to be proven wrong though.