Mobile Mod Tooling Update: Automod Keyword Highlighting, Comment Context in Mod Queue, Saved Responses, and more!

[u/lift_ticket83]

Hello, mods

In recent months, we’ve heard numerous mods call out the below challenges while managing their community via their mobile device:

• Managing comments within the post details page (PDP) is challenging, particularly in longer threads.
• When content gets flagged for review by automod, it can be challenging to locate the specific section of the text containing the offending phrase.
• Mods have to leave the mod queue to gain additional context when moderating comments. This is a clunky and inefficient experience.
• It can be a hassle when dealing with tasks that involve sending similar messages to multiple users, like responding to modmail or explaining ban reasons. Currently, mods resort to using third-party macros or saving templates on their phones outside the Reddit app, forcing them to exit the app and copy/paste the templates every time they use them.

Today we’re excited to unveil a new set of features that address these pain points and make modding from your mobile device more efficient.

Automod keyword highlighting

Now when Automod flags a word for review, that specific word or text section will be highlighted in the Mod Queue. We anticipate that this enhancement will help streamline mobile moderation, cutting down on the time needed to review and take action on posts and comments.

Mobile Mod Queue + showing context in the comment spotlight

We've made it quicker to review and take action on content in the mobile mod queue by adding more context in the comment spotlight. Mods can now get extra info by long-pressing on a piece of content, seeing the original post, the grandparent comment (if there is one), the parent comment, and any child comments.

Show report reasons comments in the PDP

Recognizing that a substantial amount of content is moderated from the post details page, we'll now show report reasons there to enhance efficiency and readability. This should enable mods to swiftly identify comments requiring more immediate attention. Paired with automod keyword highlighting this improvement ensures that relevant information is presented to mods more rapidly, contributing to a more consistent moderation experience between the Mod Queue and post details page.

Saved responses!

In the coming weeks, mod teams will be able to natively craft saved responses to address removals, bans, and modmails easily. Simply access the "Saved Response" feature under the Content & Regulation section in your Mod Tools to create, edit, or delete saved responses. Please be aware that mods will require the "Manage Settings" permission to utilize this feature. With this change, we’ve also moved all actions relating to managing removal reasons (add, edit, delete, and reorder) to “Edit removal reasons” under this permission.

Bonus feature update: Post Guidance

Last year we kicked off a pilot program with mods to help us test a new feature, Post Guidance. Initially, this feature was exclusively available to desktop users. This week, we're thrilled to announce that we've launched the user-facing aspect to 100% of iOS and Android users. We’re still in the process of testing this feature out and are still accepting participants into our early access program. If interested, let us know in the comments below and we’ll make sure this feature is enabled within your subreddit.

As always, thank you to all the mods who have taken the time to chat with us and provide continued feedback on ways we can improve the mobile mod experience. Your feedback was instrumental in helping us build these features, and we’re excited to keep the conversation going. If you have any questions or comments about the features we discussed today, please let us know in the comments below.

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[u/ashamed-of-yourself]

this is all well and good, but i’m still not using your app. will these features be available on mobile web?

[u/SampleOfNone]

Yes, post guidance on mobile!

Is there an estimate when we can set up post guidance to target posts that include images?

[u/FlapSnapple]

Now that post-guidance is being rolled out to a larger audience, it would be awesome if we could access metrics related to how often post-guidance rules are triggered. As moderators, we want to consider and monitor the impact of the UX we're giving users. For example, if a rule is configured incorrectly and triggered more often than intended or if there is pent-up demand from users trying to perform a specific action, that might lead us to reevaluate our posting requirements or overall subreddit rules. We want to strike a balance between reducing the moderator burden without annoying users who are trying to participate in our communities.

[u/lift_ticket83 → u/FlapSnapple]

it would be awesome if we could access metrics related to how often post-guidance rules are triggered.

Thank you for sharing this idea! This is abssolutely something we want to add further on down the road to help educate and inform mods. In our minds, this is something that we would integrate into Mod Insights.

[u/esb1212]

You guys are finally giving me a good reason to update my app after months of turning off the auto-update setting. ^{the amount of bugs reported for mobile platform is a headache}

These are helpful indeed.

r/phcareers would like to test Post Guidance please, thank you!

Still hoping you consider adding action reason on user mod log. It would really speed up moderation if we can see that data in one place for each user. It applies when reviewing post appeals from modmail, reversing false positives from threads, quicker banning decision, etc.

[u/Sephardson]

All good things.

Super excited about saved responses and post guidance on mobile.

Question about moderating comments sections on mobile app after the OP deletes the parent post - why are the mod menu / profile card actions missing? This forces the moderator to open the deleted post in a mobile browser in order to take actions like locking the post, changing the post flair, taking user notes, or banning unruly users.

[u/lift_ticket83 → u/Sephardson]

Thanks for calling this out - this appears to be an oversight on our end. Our team is looking into this now to work on a fix.

[u/Georgy_K_Zhukov]

In the coming weeks, mod teams will be able to natively craft saved responses to address removals, bans, and modmails easily. Simply access the "Saved Response" feature under the Content & Regulation section in your Mod Tools to create, edit, or delete saved responses. Please be aware that mods will require the "Manage Settings" permission to utilize this feature. With this change, we’ve also moved all actions relating to managing removal reasons (add, edit, delete, and reorder) to “Edit removal reasons” under this permission.

This is definitely what I'm most excited about here. It sounds like this will be a functional equivalent to the Macros in Toolbox, and possibly even better since it includes macros for bans!

I do have a question though about this, as well as one suggestion.

For the suggestion, looking at the mock-up, it looks like all the Macros are going to show up when I select it (I see three categories showing up there). One nice part about the feature in Toolbox is when we set them up, we can toggle the context we want to see them. So we see Macros relating to removals when we reply to a comment, we see modmail macros when we are in modmail, and the ones relating to top-level matters when replying to a post (as opposed to a comment).

We have dozens of Macros as it is, so not having the irrelevant ones show up when they aren't needed it critical for usability. Having a similar toggle when setting these up would be really important for making them easy to use, and not get drowned by 30+ responses in a list that we have to find. To be sure, being able to group them is at least a start, but not having the other options show up at all would be ideal (or perhaps auto-arrange so the most relevant category is always at the top).

Which leads me to the question, about whether this is being seen as a complement to the removal reasons , or whether it would replace removal reasons? Since you call out "saved responses to address removals" it isn't quite clear. I would note that the above has been the most critical shortcoming for removal reasons, and a major reason why we continue to use Toolbox instead, so in either situation, while these looks like a really welcome tool being rolled out, the above would likely be its biggest weakness and hurt usability for larger subs (and it it is a complement, the above applies equally to removal reasons, which would really benefit from adding that kind of use-context flag).

[u/achchi]

I'd like to test out post guidance my small, but heavily moderated sub r/Politik. The highlighting will also be awesome, if it works like I hope it does.

[u/lift_ticket83 → u/achchi]

Thanks so much for helping us test this feature out. Post Guidance will become available in your community this week!