Overall, I can see liking this. But mostly I think the summaries should be public.
In general the problem with moderators is they can be fairly partisan. I don’t know if it’s still the case after the whole API … thing, but certain groups of moderators had access to bots that did what is essentially equivalent to the sort of thing. What tended to happen is the good mods would become overwhelmed and bring on a “power mod” and the powermod has secret axes to grind and political agendas that they bring with them into the sub.
Another problem I generally had with reddit towards the end of my serious engagement there is that a lot of things reported to admin started being evaluated by non-American English speakers who don’t have the cultural context to understand sharp turns of phrase and plays on idioms. Americans would understand the words mean the opposite of what they literally say, but you can’t expect ESL overseas contractors to understand these nuances. So I would be concerned that AI is similar… except for the fact that it’s not really a change from the status quo.
Would be nice if we also had AI summaries of moderator behavior and if these were visible to everyone. I wouldn’t be surprised if admin have (or soon will have) access to AI summaries of moderator activity and behavior. So that might be another shoe to drop. I can see it can be good if it improves modding for the good mods who just want to build communities. Basically it might reduce the need for the powermod protection racket.
Speaking as a reddit mod for a massive subreddit, it honestly hasn’t been a useful tool at all. It’s only really useful for identifying users who engage with problematic subs but there are old tools which can do that without using AI.
Overall, I can see liking this. But mostly I think the summaries should be public.
In general the problem with moderators is they can be fairly partisan. I don’t know if it’s still the case after the whole API … thing, but certain groups of moderators had access to bots that did what is essentially equivalent to the sort of thing. What tended to happen is the good mods would become overwhelmed and bring on a “power mod” and the powermod has secret axes to grind and political agendas that they bring with them into the sub.
Another problem I generally had with reddit towards the end of my serious engagement there is that a lot of things reported to admin started being evaluated by non-American English speakers who don’t have the cultural context to understand sharp turns of phrase and plays on idioms. Americans would understand the words mean the opposite of what they literally say, but you can’t expect ESL overseas contractors to understand these nuances. So I would be concerned that AI is similar… except for the fact that it’s not really a change from the status quo.
Would be nice if we also had AI summaries of moderator behavior and if these were visible to everyone. I wouldn’t be surprised if admin have (or soon will have) access to AI summaries of moderator activity and behavior. So that might be another shoe to drop. I can see it can be good if it improves modding for the good mods who just want to build communities. Basically it might reduce the need for the powermod protection racket.
Speaking as a reddit mod for a massive subreddit, it honestly hasn’t been a useful tool at all. It’s only really useful for identifying users who engage with problematic subs but there are old tools which can do that without using AI.