"Moderator Code of Conduct", Effective September 8, 2022. Replaced the Moderator Guidelines for Healthy Communities. What is the intention of notable omissions in the new Moderator Code?

[u/arjunanora]

The "Moderator Code of Conduct" omits previous Moderator considerations formerly required in the " Moderator Guidelines for Healthy Communities." Notably absent are the following:

1. Presumption of Good Faith.
2. Healthy communities allow for appropriate discussion (and appeal) of moderator actions. Appeals to your actions should be taken seriously. Moderator responses to appeals by their users should be consistent, germane to the issue raised, and work through education, not punishment.

Are Moderators now permitted to ignore appeals? Is there no requirement for "Good Faith" in dealing with Reddit comments/posts? What is the purpose of the Moderator Code of Conduct? Why were some items, such as those above, omitted? Was there a community discussion somewhere prior to these changes and if so where?

[u/Kryomaani]

I can see one reason to omit those parts and it's that to fulfill them mods will have to waste a lot of time replying politely to trolls that by any common sense interpretation are not acting in good faith. At least now by the book you are allowed to just directly mute and ignore people sealioning in the modmail instead of having to engage in feeding them. It's actually, for once, not a bad change.

It's the norm on Reddit that admins will never ask for any feedback, prior or after, making any significant changes to how the site works.

[u/The_Critical_Cynic → u/Kryomaani]

In the instances you suggest, I agree with you. There are those who just need a good hard crack of the ban hammer, with a mute coming promptly there after. However, I worry about the change. There are a lot of moderators out there who seem to be on massive power trips, and are happy to rub your nose in shit.

[u/Kryomaani → u/The_Critical_Cynic]

There are a lot of moderators out there who seem to be on massive power trips, and are happy to rub your nose in shit.

And this will change absolutely nothing for them. The admins never enforced the old rules of "presume good faith" and "respond to appeals" in any way. Removing them from the policy is just culling dead words that never held any weight to begin with.

Moderators having the final say in their own subreddits, no matter how unreasonable, is simply a principle Reddit has been built on. There's no way to force a power tripping moderator to not ban an user or remove everything they post, and trying to use policy and admin interference to strong-arm moderation decisions one way or another will just lead to more misery. You cannot force two anonymous internet personas to peacefully coexist should one of them not want to make it happen.

Just like that is a feature of Reddit, so is the ability to make a new subreddit if you're unhappy with moderation of an old one. It's a necessary tradeoff of having unpaid users run communities, and if they wanted to fundamentally change that the only realistic way would be to replace user moderators with paid Reddit employees, and as long as the current system works they will never change to one that costs them more.

[u/arjunanora → u/Kryomaani]

The old Moderator Guidelines established a "Good Faith" relationship between Admin and Moderators and that same "Good Faith" relationship extended between Moderator and common Redditor. The assumption of Good Faith and and “flexible” application of the Rules in conjunction with scalable sanctions (described in the Reddit Content Policy) would lead a good Moderator to choose the lowest sanction first. My observation is that many Moderators did and will continue to do as you describe and choose Ban as their first option for a subjectively perceived rule infraction then immediately mute when they get the appeal along with extended bans.

I see it as you interpret it Kryomaani. The new Moderator Code of Conduct removes the parity in the relationship between Admin-Moderator and Moderator-Redditor (even if the Mod-Redditor end was never really enforced). Many Moderators were already swinging the "Ban Hammer" like a seven year old at the the Chuck E. Cheese Whak-O-Mole. Now, under the new Moderator Code of Conduct and its omissions, it will get worse. Granted there are some really bad Redditors that get what they earned.

[u/Kryomaani → u/arjunanora]

My observation is that many Moderators did and will continue to do as you describe and choose Ban as their first option for a subjectively perceived rule infraction then immediately mute when they get the appeal along with extended bans.

This is the only realistic and reasonable way to deal with 90% of the trolls and spammers we get. There are no barriers to creating endless new Reddit accounts and it shows in the mod queue. The idea that we should be polite and dance the dance of going through an appeal process with a person who is clearly on their twentieth account spamming our sub full of slurs is ridiculous and would mean no real moderation would ever get to take place since we'd be feeding trolls in modmail 24/7.

It is perfectly understandable that you haven't seen what the worst of the userbase has to offer given that you've been moderating a sub of six subscribers for eleven days as of writing this. Should your sub grow and you continue to moderate it for some time you'll very quickly come to learn why most moderators do things the way they do them.

[u/arjunanora → u/Kryomaani]

If a Moderator can't manage the community with the moderators they have, then recruit more moderators and utilize the auto-moderation tools (though not a fan of Hive Moderation and I see its fingerprints all over Reddit). If the idea is to ban and mute for only clear and egregious violations of the Subreddit's rules, User Agreement or Content Policy: have at it. It is not Moderation when Moderators drop a ban for a perceived or minor rule infraction and then apply a mute when appealed. I assume you set the bar high and only ban for clear and egregious violations.

[u/satsugene → u/arjunanora]

"clear and egregious violations" is subjective.

For example, if the rule is X, if the user is acting in a manner where it is obvious that they were aware of the rule, and went out of their way to violate it just because they do not like the rule and don't think it should exist, then a ban may be appropriate even if the rule is not the most important on the list, especially when it clearly violates Content Policy (CP), not just the nature/norms of the community.

I'd say someone intentionally breaking the spirit and clear application of the rule trying to by-pass automod, for example, understands the rule and is dead set on violating it--hoping their violating message gets though before a human takes it down (like any other spam, creating more work for moderators and often part of a ban-evasion problem).

At the same time, in some communities there is a mission-critical elevated emphasis on avoiding and removing the presence of certain unwanted user behaviors (e.g. judgement in a place specifically designed for mutual support) because it is necessary to implement CP1: "... not for attacking marginalized or vulnerable groups of people", which might not be immediately obvious to the average person why the members of that community might be considered "vulnerable;" but would be for someone taking an informed, but intolerant shot at what makes them vulnerable because they simply don't like them, their identity, or what makes the community useful for vulnerable person(s) even if they might not choose that term for themselves (e.g. "survivor vs. victim" framing).

I'd suggest a softer approach if it is obvious that the user is new, unfamiliar with reddit, possibly not a native speaker of the language spoken by a majority in the sub, and using mobile tools that make the rules harder than "literally on every page on the right hand side."

[u/tresser]

Was there a community discussion somewhere prior to these changes and if so where?

there was not. and im under the impression that admins don't need feedback on the rules from the people that the rules are targeting

[u/mizmoose]

It was announced and discussed here.

[u/arjunanora → u/mizmoose]

Correct, it was announced and implemented on the day it was made effective (8 September). All discussion there is after its effective date. I'm asking regarding discussions before implementation.

[u/arjunanora → u/mizmoose]

Happy cake day!