The current state of moderation across various online communities, especially on platforms like Reddit, has been a topic of much debate and dissatisfaction. Users have voiced concerns over issues such as moderator rudeness, abuse, bias, and a failure to adhere to their own guidelines. Moreover, many communities suffer from a lack of active moderation, as moderators often disengage due to the overwhelming demands of what essentially amounts to an unpaid, full-time job. This has led to a reliance on automated moderation tools and restrictions on user actions, which can stifle community engagement and growth.
In light of these challenges, it’s time to explore alternative models of community moderation that can distribute responsibilities more equitably among users, reduce moderator burnout, and improve overall community health. One promising approach is the implementation of a trust level system, similar to that used by Discourse. Such a system rewards users for positive contributions and active participation by gradually increasing their privileges and responsibilities within the community. This not only incentivizes constructive behavior but also allows for a more organic and scalable form of moderation.
Key features of a trust level system include:
- Sandboxing New Users: Initially limiting the actions new users can take to prevent accidental harm to themselves or the community.
- Gradual Privilege Escalation: Allowing users to earn more rights over time, such as the ability to post pictures, edit wikis, or moderate discussions, based on their contributions and behavior.
- Federated Reputation: Considering the integration of federated reputation systems, where users can carry over their trust levels from one community to another, encouraging cross-community engagement and trust.
Implementing a trust level system could significantly alleviate the current strains on moderators and create a more welcoming and self-sustaining community environment. It encourages users to be more active and responsible members of their communities, knowing that their efforts will be recognized and rewarded. Moreover, it reduces the reliance on a small group of moderators, distributing moderation tasks across a wider base of engaged and trusted users.
For communities within the Fediverse, adopting a trust level system could mark a significant step forward in how we think about and manage online interactions. It offers a path toward more democratic and self-regulating communities, where moderation is not a burden shouldered by the few but a shared responsibility of the many.
As we continue to navigate the complexities of online community management, it’s clear that innovative approaches like trust level systems could hold the key to creating more inclusive, respectful, and engaging spaces for everyone.
I’d advocate training an AI on removed posts and using that as moderator tool. The moderator starts to approve false positives until the AI is getting more and more precise. You could even gray out comments first, the AI sees as potentially harmful and have user vot them being viewable. While almost certain harmful will be collapsed and definitely harmful will be blocked until approved. That way it’s more gradually moderated and gives some power back to the users. Not sure how power and CPU intense this would be, maybe it could be shared between instances to load balance.
A motivational approach seams to be harmful to the Fediverse as it can be gamed and faked by bad actors and Lemmy instances are probably already larger than most discords. Discord is also pretty pointless with their unlock process, because 99% of the time, I’ve seen it be more of an obfuscation of where to find the “unlock” emoji to finally be able to chat. There’s no voice chat here, so all you could limit is functionality on a featureless platform. What are you going to do, remove the ability to post from new users? This already sucked on Reddit and was a bandaid at best. I remember grinding AskReddit with every new account to get over that pointless karma level to finally be able to participate in my old accounts communities.
I think in a few years using an AI for this kind of task will be much more efficient and simpler to set up. Right now I think it would fail too much.