Reddit announced the launch of a moderator assistance program.
As part of this program, announced by a virtual platform that combines the features of a social network and a forum, rewards will be provided to moderators who will give valuable advice to their colleagues. The company will also launch an updated moderator assistance center.
The firm announced a program to improve interaction with users moderating content, amid their dissatisfaction due to the pricing policy regarding the Reddit API, which provoked the closure of third-party applications. The moderators asked the company to improve the tools for monitoring the content of the official application, stating that the existing mechanisms are inferior in efficiency and quality to those offered by now-defunct platforms.
Currently, the state of the relationship between Reddit and users who control the content of the materials published in this social interaction network is not the best and is very far from ideal. Site administrators remove entire teams of moderators who maintain the confidentiality of their subreddits, thus expressing disagreement with the paid API. Third-party developers have described Reddit’s pricing policy, which determines the financial availability of the software interface, as exorbitant and unstable.
The new program called Mod Helper is a multi-level system that rewards useful moderators with trophies and talents. In this case, users accumulate karma by receiving rewards and worsen their virtual well-being by receiving lowering voices. As part of the creation of the new program, Reddit clearly paid attention to the features of game universes, which are characterized by a certain code of conduct and something like a legal system regulating the actions of characters inhabiting a fictional space.
The karma of comments earned in r/ModSupport will be rewarded with trophies that will signal to others that a certain user is a source of valuable information. Each title awards unique trophies and abilities.
The administrators of Reddit stated that the system of assigning the status to moderators will allow to formation of something like a culture of support by users for each other and on a more global scale will create a moral and ethical basis for relationships in the community.
Reddit has also launched a Modmail responder bot. The digital assistant responds to requests with links to the help center of the site. If the recommended information does not satisfy the intellectual needs of the user, another request will be created, which will be processed by a human administrator.
This bot is designed to optimize the search demands of moderators, which will allow the team of administrators to focus on solving more complex tasks.
Reddit has also decided to combine a help center for those who monitor content with a site-wide center. The company believes that the implementation of this initiative will guarantee an easy search for support resources and access to them from the same place.
Reddit is in no hurry to implement moderation tools that were offered by third-party applications. The updates offered by the site, in terms of quality, are inferior to no longer available mechanisms in terms of quality. For example, moderator r/blind claims that the latest Reddit accessibility update has created a lot of problems and contains errors.
In response to complaints from users who control the content of the published content, one of the administrators said that the developers are working on some problems and will launch improvements for mobile functions.
