SIte suggestions- transparency & ajustment on reports/moderation

1. Bans ought to be renamed as suspensions if it is only temporary. If it’s a permanent ban, keep it called a ban
    
2. There ought to be a method to appeal suspensions onsite, than having to go offsite (Ie Discord, Emails or twitter). Not sure how this could be implemented with how the current ban/suspension system works, as it prevents all onsite actions
    
3. Alterations to how reports work And yes, this will likely increase time of moderation slightly  
   3a) If a report is rejected, even a basic short sentence to explain why would be good rather than zero feedback/reasoning.  
   3b) If you feel the content does break the rules but the prior report is rejected, there ought to be a means to appeal the decision without re-reporting it or bugging a mod in the forum/DMs/Discord. These appeals ought to be a lower priority than new reports.  
   This will help avoid issues where people keep reporting the disputed comment/image repeatedly.
    
4. Alterations to image/comment moderation  
   4a) quite often, users have no clue their image or comment has been moderated unless they go out of their way to check. And in the more active comment threads, it quickly gets buried.  
   If a comment/image is moderated, their ought to be an automated ping/DM informing the user.  
   4b) Like report rejections, there ought to be a simple sentence stating why it was moderated Which ought to be inc in the automated DM For example you may see mods actually refence the offense (ie Sockpuppeting/Spam/ect), but this is so highly inconstant. Especially in cases where an image is removed yet it does not seem to break the rule cited  
   4c) For images only, I feel there ought to be a onsite appeal to it being removed, rather than having to as stated when you vist an img upload of your’s that has been removed emailing the site’s email where it’d get buried.
    
5. If you have a number of comment/images moderated within a short space of time, would it be an idea for the system to automatically suspend the user for an hour asking them to cool off. unless a mod deems the person needs a longer suspension or ban for what was stated This is not a huge issue, but just an idea
    
    
   These I feel are decent attempts to tackle an long term issue I feel has been occuring on site. I do feel that out of the 5 listed, No.4 is my biggest concern as there is zero notification if it occurs.

1. The only permanent ban is a “moon”. And even those are assessed every year or so and many are lifted if people approach us about their ban. The site’s been here for years, and if someone got mooned as an edgy teenager and now just want to be here to enjoy the show then there’s no reason to keep them banned.
    
2. Appealing bans on site isn’t a bad idea, but I agree - the current implementation just blocks interaction. Also our current appeal channels allow everyone on staff to see and respond to the discussion, where onsite tools tend to be one-to-one. This isn’t a bad idea, but man, it would take some typing to replace what IRC and Discord already give us. And that would take developer time from everything else. So, it is a good idea, but we already have solutions that are free and work.
    
3. Many of us already reply to reports - whether they are actionable or not. Sometimes we reply in the thread itself if it’s a post or comment. If you have a report that was closed and you want an explanation you can report yourself for a reason of “Other” and ask for more information, and if someone has time to help you they will. But, that depends on the current load and staff availability. As an example of the time required to work some reports, right now I have 15 claimed reports, some of which go back 20 days. But if there was a field where we could type a response and that just went to the reporter and showed up in their “My Reports” list that would be really useful.
    
   3a) Yeah - that’s a great idea.
    
   3b) Hmmm … that’s a great idea until I think about situations where we get 20 reports of the same Rule #0 comment, and deleting the comment automagically closes all of those reports.
    
   See - we don’t always see what reports we are closing. If I claim a report, and there’s another report in the guts of the queue that was on the same item, then when I close the report I’m working on that other report can often also be automagically closed without me even knowing.
    
   So, this is not really a one-to-one relationship. Sometimes a single moderation action can close dozens of reports.
    
   And having levels of reports makes sense from a Software QA bug reporting standpoint, but right now we have just a single flat list of open, claimed, or closed tickets. It would have to be reworked into some sort of prioritized list.
    
   That could be done, but someone would have to create and test that and then we’d need to implement processes to take advantage of the new tools.
    
   So that’s not a short project. That’s the kind of thing that might take months to get into production and integrated with practices.
    
   4a & b - Generally speaking, if the comment was something that will be considered against future behavior, the person who posted the image or comment gets a warning. Or if it is a continuation of past behavior they are banned or someone sends them a followup warning or reminder. If the image or comment isn’t something that’s going to be considered in the future then we just deal with the image or comment and move on, possibly leaving a comment on the thread or image asking people to change their behavior.
    
   Sometimes those get missed, but really I can only think of a handful of times in the last year where someone got banned because they missed a warning. So, I’m not sure if this is actually a real issue that needs to be fixed.
    
   4c - Where they are not banned, people are contacting us via PMs or reports all the time about deleted images, and as mentioned above our existing IRC and Discord support channels are free and don’t ‘cost’ us any developer time.
    
   What’s wrong with using those existing solutions? How is having something on-site that we have to develop and maintain preferable to using the existing free solutions?
    
   5 - I don’t personally like the idea of automated bans. If someone is going to be banned I think available on-duty staff should discuss it or review it.
    

These I feel are decent attempts to tackle an long term issue I feel has been occuring on site. I do feel that out of the 5 listed, No.4 is my biggest concern as there is zero notification if it occurs.