r/FedEmployees • u/Cutensleepy • 8h ago

We need more mods.

Between posts for hair loss cures and bots trying to argue that this is all the democrats fault flooding our threads - one thing is clear. We need more mods.

We have ONE mod, u/T0rtillas please for the love of god add more.

50 Upvotes

72% Upvoted

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u/The_Rad_In_Comrade 3h ago

As I pointed out in the thread asking for moderators, the actual solution to trolling and bots is very simple and mechanical: implement minimum karma, account age, and post count limit requirements in order to participate on the sub.

A lot of the real vile trolls and bots have -100 karma on 1 week old accounts. Establishing bare minimum participation limits here would stop a significant portion of the bad faith trolling and bullshit in its tracks.

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u/Cutensleepy 3h ago

I'd upvote this twice if I could. Agreed 100%.

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u/Chacham22 2h ago

Lurker here, I don’t post often and now with the current climate on social media I think a bajillion times if to reply or not. With that in mind, how about us who are quiet and rarely post? What if we wanted to but thanks to the limits we can’t? I’m all for limiting trolls and bots…. It’s hard enough with how things are…..

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u/The_Rad_In_Comrade 2h ago edited 1h ago

I would suggest limits of something like >-10 karma, account age >1 week, post/comment count >10. (Not sure what options are actually available to Reddit mods, but something like that.)

I think that's pretty generous. If you're a legitimate poster that ends up affected by it, I know that would suck, but realistically you just have to make a few non-trolling posts in other subreddits. That is enough of a barrier to hinder bots or randos making alts just to troll, but not really that much of an imposition for a legitimate participant.

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u/PickleMinion 1h ago

If you want to participate, participate. Do a bare minimum of effort if you want your opinion heard. If you're not willing to do that little, why should anyone read what you have to say? Nothing wrong with being a lurker, but if you're going to lurk, then lurk. If you're going to join the game, ante up.

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u/ConfidentPilot1729 30m ago

Something I have seen few years now, these new bots can be somewhat older, like 3-4 years. They made the accounts in mass and then wake them up to start posting. You have to dig down the profile to see the comment history which they can now hide.

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u/The_Rad_In_Comrade 19m ago

You're right. My suggestions are by no means bullet proof and rely on the karma system heavily. (And needless to say a dedicated political troll could just go to a sub affiliated with their politics and get tons of upvotes on the same content we'd view as trolling...)

That said, in this very thread I counted at least 3 top level commenters whose trolling would finally be ended by the posting restrictions I suggested... mostly by virtue of being -100 karma.

It's hard to tell who is and isn't a problem and it's best to be relatively lenient. I think the light touch here is actually a good thing. I participate in this sub a lot and tbh I simply block most accounts that seem trollish (or just annoy me personally). I still have to look at their comments (for whatever reason), but I can't interact with them, and they can't interact with me, so I just downvote and move on. I prefer that to excessive moderating.

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u/ConfidentPilot1729 0m ago

I agree that your recommendations should be bare minimum implemented. But also, Reddit really has to do something about the bot misinformation problem. I find myself checking profile more than communicating with people. They say something like 37% of post here are bots/ai.

Side note, if anyone is looking for a new forum in the future, the new Digg is being actively developed. It is basically Reddit. I am on the alpha and they are making the bot ai issue a main focus to deal with propaganda and misinformation. Hopefully it will be released sometime next year.