I have enough energy to make it accurate, but not enough to make it pretty. So, apologies in advance for the lack of style points.
Historic context:
The mod team is a largely flat, democratized structure, with equal weight given to votes cast by old dogs and brand new goldfish. Every voice and vote matters. We move as a team, and sometimes we discuss things for many many many days back and forth in passionate ways before we arrive at consensus or compromise. Why on earth am I starting here? Well, it's important to understand that it's a relatively flat organization and that there's a lot of intentional equality impressed upon every new mod. There's a sense that new mods have that they should stay quiet and observe -- no, we want to have unfiltered feedback and fresh perspectives on an equal basis. However, there are layers to the mod team. For the most part, these really have to do with focus: the higher up, theoretically, the broader the view. However, one of the abilities unlocked by certain higher layers that are not accessible to newer mods is the ability to ban a user. This is a tool withheld for the more experienced mods and one that we do not take lightly. Although we calibrate OFTEN (and you're seeing evidence of this -- the work we're doing here is not theater... you're seeing discussions that are essentially the same work in another server), the mods are autonomous. We aren't always around modding and the same time, we don't always see the same content in the queue etc...
I checked our mod meeting notes for context. Prior to April 23, 2022, bans were distributed by the higher level of mods on a case by case basis with no real consistency. What some mods would see as a permaban might be a 7 day, or a 1 day ban for others. Some mods though it was appropriate to ban trolls for 42069 days (115ish years) but not perma them. We'd frequently get requests for unban reviews and would be fairly liberal about doling them out if the appeal seemed sincere (e.g. there was acknowledgement that the content was inappropriate and there was effort made to explain how it would not be repeated). Trouble was that there was no real way to log this except for searching for users having been discussed in the discord. As a result, there would be users who caught multiple perma bans and were let back in multiple times. <Barney getting thrown out of bar.gif> I'm not sure of the exact timing, but we've developed some tools, along with "reddit user notes" that allow us to track bans and see a record of who has been banned and for how long. There's still a bit of manual work to determine why ban but we can at least track when and how many bans easily.
But, understand that prior to April 23, 2022, it was sort of a free for all. As a user, your ban experience would be dictated by who issued the ban and your appeal outcome would be the result of the subjective combination of who saw it, when, and how it came across to those who saw it.
Obviously, there was room for improvement to this system. During this particular meeting, we decided to adopt a "unified ban approach" style. I will admit that I was not initially in favor of this plan, but have since come to respect it in both purpose and practice.
Our current ban procedures are as follows:
When a user commits an infraction, in most cases, we simply remove the offending content. We then "tag" users with mod notes that allow us to keep internal score (e.g. - "Hates Pulte, watch for Rule 1" or "Can get political in the comment section") which allows us to watch for trends but remain decentralized for our day-to-day modding stuff, but have shared knowledge about potential troublemakers quickly. If we see somebody who is getting rude in the comment section and has multiple tags indicating that they have violated rule 1 in the past, then they typically get a warning and a temp ban. (edited)
1
1
1
3
1
