Reddit has launched an fascinating experiment which basically offers recommendation and scores on contributors to subreddits, enabling extra context as to how the person has contributed prior to now.

As you possibly can see on this instance, Reddit has launched a brand new take a look at of what it’s calling ‘Mod Notes’, which allows moderators to create informational notes and suggestions which might be then connected to a person profile for that group.

Right here’s one other have a look at the Mod Notes course of, which additionally features a full log of notes and mod actions utilized to a person inside a selected subreddit. 

As defined by Reddit:

“The profile hovercard will likely be your property base for accessing Mod Notes and any moderator with Handle Consumer permissions will be capable to put it to use.”

So it’s not supposed to be a public-facing data supply, as such, but it surely’s designed to present moderators extra context on every particular person person, and their actions throughout the group.

Moderators are in a position to mark every subreddit member with certainly one of 5 labels:

• Useful
• Good Contributor
• Spam Watch
• Spam Warning
• Abuse Warning

That gives extra methods to not solely weed out doubtlessly problematic contributors, but additionally to acknowledge the highest members for his or her ongoing contributions.

It’s an fascinating strategy, which may present one other manner for Reddit, and doubtlessly different platforms that may look to adapt related, to share extra context about every person.

Twitter is definitely attempting one thing related with its Birdwatch experiment, which allows customers to go away notes on questionable tweets to supply extra context. Earlier this month, Twitter took that venture to the subsequent stage, with some customers now in a position to view Birdwatch notes from different customers on sure tweets.

Reddit’s Mod Notes are, once more, not public, so it’s not precisely the identical, but it surely takes an identical strategy in enabling customers so as to add context and oversight to contributors, with the intention to weed out questionable posts and customers.

It’d really be fascinating to see Reddit make these notes accessible to common customers, particularly after, say, a sure threshold of stories. If moderators flag a contributor with a number of spam or abuse warnings, they need to be both publicly highlighted, or the person must be eliminated, whereas the ‘Useful’ and ‘Good Contributor’ tags may add extra context to those customers’ feedback, and extra weight to their insights and notes.

The truth that these are allotted by the mods themselves may function each an endorsement and incentive, giving customers one other strategy to get credit score for his or her interactions.

And once more, that might work on different platforms too. Other than Twitter, Fb’s additionally testing up and downvotes on group feedback, which may additionally function a method to flag good and unhealthy contributors, and add a component of crowdsourced monitoring to its techniques.

There are abuse dangers too, which is why platforms have to tread fastidiously (notice: Reddit says the function has been in improvement for months). However in case you can allocate a gaggle of trusted overseers, like Reddit mods, or group admins, who can then approve such tags, it could possibly be a invaluable device in enhancing engagement.

Reddit’s Mod Notes are actually accessible to moderators within the app.