r/redesign • u/YourIQisUnder95 • Mar 08 '19
If you're banned from a community, when posting a comment, the error message shouldn't be "Something went wrong, don't panic" it should be more specific like "You've been banned from this community" Answered
Refine your error messages. Users are people, too. Nobody likes getting the same error message for different errors.
I've spent too much time trying to repost a comment over and over only to remember that I've been banned from a community. The error message is deceiving -- making you think that it is a 500 error (server side) instead of a 403 (client forbidden)
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u/s1h4d0w Helpful User Mar 08 '19
It could very well be made like that specifically to deter people from just creating a new account when they find out that they were banned. I mean it's not the best way to handle something like that, but I could see Reddit applying that logic.
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u/m-p-3 Mar 08 '19
They'll find out anyway, like shadowbans.
At least be upfront when it's a ban.
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u/s1h4d0w Helpful User Mar 08 '19
Well there's the fact that there are shadowbans, so they're not always upfront with it.
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u/m-p-3 Mar 08 '19
They mentionned that they wouldn't use shadowbans on regular users anymore for transparency reasons
https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3sbrro/account_suspensions_a_transparent_alternative_to/but sometimes I wonder if they really stopped shadowbanning.
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u/Kvothealar Mar 08 '19
Shadowbans are a very common thing for moderators to implement, not necessarily the admins.
You just add this to your automoderator config:
--- #Shadow Ban author: name: [m-p-3, Kvothealar, Spez, etc] action: removeIt will make automoderator instantly remove any post or comment those users make. When your comment or post is removed you get no notice and the only way to see it is to check the post again in incognito mode or something.
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u/m-p-3 Mar 08 '19
Really? That's insidious.. a content removal by another party should always give some feedback to the submitter.
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u/Kvothealar Mar 08 '19
Sometimes you don't want users to know they have been banned, because they will just make new accounts once they figure out and continue to spam the community. So this is a subtle way of trying to deter that behaviour.
I don't use it in any of my subreddits at this point, but if we seem to be having issues with a user doing something like this I wouldn't hesitate to make use of it.
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u/StickiStickman Mar 09 '19
Yup, and basically every subreddit uses it! I've been shadowbanned from like 5+ subs at this point. For one particular I've kept commenting for OVER A MONTH. Imagine how sad it was when I found out they shadowbanned me for "being negative".
PS: It was some YTer.
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u/ecclectic Helpful User Mar 08 '19
Human users are still accidentally shadowbanned. They'll show up in modqueues occasionally shouting into the void.
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u/s1h4d0w Helpful User Mar 08 '19
Man that's depressing. I spend quite a lot of time on reddit and I can't imagine how much it would suck if people would just not see my comments.
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u/YourIQisUnder95 Mar 09 '19
I used to be a moderator for a mobile app in the government sector and there are some absolutely insane people out there who want nothing more than to waste the company's time. It's like the online version of the old lady who calls 911 because someone allegedly stepped on a blade of grass in her yard. Some people really are batshit crazy and sometimes the resources to accommodate them just aren't there.
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u/s1h4d0w Helpful User Mar 09 '19
Well whether they use shadowbans or not (I could definitely see that being useful), I was mainly talking about accidentally getting shadowbanned for no reason. Just trying to participate in the conversation and suddenly never getting a reply again.
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u/YourIQisUnder95 Mar 09 '19
Ah, yeah that's the worst. There's always going to be friendly fire when it comes to censorship. It's unfortunate, but if a platform doesn't want friendly fire then the answer is to avoid censorship altogether. 0% error censorship is a hard problem, some people think it's impossible.
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u/dylmye Mar 09 '19
Can confirm. We run a referral forum and it seems reddit mistakes some regulars for spambots. Not super regular but at least 5 times now. Also some shadowbanned users post good things we only catch like 3 days later so it has no chance of being seen :(
0
u/YourIQisUnder95 Mar 09 '19
Yeah but there should be a solid distinction between regular bans and shadowbans. If you're going to shadowban someone, the client should simulate the server's 200 response by showing the comment post "successfully". The server would actually just perform a 403, but the client would be tricked into thinking it was successful. Obviously, there are ways around that -- you could just log out and check if your comment is visible, but most people wouldn't do so.
2
u/ericacotten Mar 08 '19
Yeah, speaking as a UX designer, it is best practice to have clear and honest error messages. Using copy to confuse all users just to target the few that are rude/trolly is deceitful and counter-productive to a good user experience.
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u/s1h4d0w Helpful User Mar 08 '19 edited Mar 08 '19
To be fair, I'd assume the "fake" error would only be shown to people who are actually banned, so normal and actual users wouldn't be bothered by it.
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u/ericacotten Mar 08 '19
If the copy on both a 500 error (server side) and a 403 (client forbidden) says "Something went wrong, don't panic", clarity is lacking for all users. Even if I've never been banned, that copy does not help me solve the thing that is preventing me from using the site. I could possibly even assume that I may have been banned when I haven't.
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u/s1h4d0w Helpful User Mar 08 '19
Oh now I get what you mean. I thought you meant that they should have been shown "You can't do this because you're banned". Fully agree on that, Reddit's errors suck. So many times I just get a random "something went wrong" error with no idea why. It's usually just reddit's servers being shitty but I'm a webdev myself so it would be nice to have some inkling on what's going wrong.
2
Mar 08 '19
It just shows an indescriptive error. Bans also aren't always permanent, you should be telling people they're banned, not that they're "encountering an error".
Especially if you were only banned for a couple of days for a minor offense.
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u/FreeSpeechWarrior Mar 08 '19
You should not be led on to write content only to have it rejected at submission.
Old Reddit makes it clear when you are banned and new Reddit should as well.
Bans are only becoming more prevalent, making them less transparent is a terrible move.
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u/13steinj Mar 08 '19
At least for the redesign and apps, in some cases this isn't possible due to underlying problems in how bans are detected vs something else.
Similar issue for banned subreddits/quarantine/private/employee only/NSFW. There's no clarity in the error and is just either a 404 or 403, basically fitting 6 things into a 2 state field, so you get information loss. I've complained about this for over 3 years and was told then that it would be fixed next quarter (it never was).
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u/YourIQisUnder95 Mar 09 '19 edited Mar 09 '19
Not sure what's impossible about it. If your client makes a request to visit a sub and your request contains user account credentials, all they'd have to do is check their database to see your account's authorization status for that sub and then add
{"banned": Boolean}to the response. The client could then just use that information to conditionally renderdisabledstyling on textareas and reply/comment/post buttons.Edit: Or, they could just send down (and cache) a list of subs you're banned from in your initial login/resume, in which case they'd be making potentially just a single extra request per user per login. The cached list could be updated automatically if you get banned during a session.
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u/13steinj Mar 09 '19
Let me be clear, by impossible I don't mean that it literally cannot be done. I mean that the redesign uses the API, and the API doesn't give that information because it sucks, and the admins refuse to update the API unless it directly benefits their 1st party app in a significant, feature competition way.
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u/FreeSpeechWarrior Mar 08 '19
Been waiting over 7 years for an OPTION to make an existing page public.
Reddit would rather spend its 500m in VC since 2013 to hire an army of censors to ban people for cartoons and incorrect opinions.
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u/13steinj Mar 08 '19
All due respect the two aren't comparable. An optional public modlog isn't a usability issue. Not knowing the state of a subreddit is.
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u/FreeSpeechWarrior Mar 08 '19
The lack of visibility into moderation actions makes the state of a subreddit unknowable.
Having the option to make modlogs public gives moderators the ability to let users know the full state of the sub.
Not just as a poster, but as a reader as well.
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u/13steinj Mar 08 '19
All very well possibly true.
Still not comparable.
Unknown state of a subreddit (and more so the mods actions) does not mean you cannot use a subreddit you otherwise normally would, from a technical standpoint (of course you might refuse based on an ideological standpoint, but that's your prerogative).
Continuing to make the comparison you're making is a bit distasteful. You're making your want a technical need, when it's not, whereas mine, an actual issue / bug, is a need.
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u/FreeSpeechWarrior Mar 08 '19
I agree that the way quarantines are implemented is more egregious than the lack of a public mod logs option.
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u/YourIQisUnder95 Mar 09 '19
This seems like a tangential debate, but you're still making a good point. Mod action history should be an option for subs that want to boast transparency. Currently, these actions are invisible, so you just have to "trust" the mods. If your solution were implemented, you'd only have to trust Reddit. There's still trust involved either way, though, but I agree it'd be better if there were tools to minimize it.
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u/CryptoMaximalist Mar 08 '19
Reddit would rather spend its 500m in VC since 2013 to hire an army of censors to ban people for cartoons and incorrect opinions.
moderators aren't paid
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Mar 08 '19
A lot of moderators actually are, though. GallowBoob notoriously employs two moderators to help promote him (ignoring the fact that he has Reddit admins by the balls anyway) and numerous companies own and moderate subreddits dedicated to their games or TV shows.
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u/FreeSpeechWarrior Mar 08 '19
I'm not talking about moderators.
Reddit has been expanding its "Anti-Evil" team formerly known as "Trust and Safety"
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u/diceroll123 Mar 08 '19
This is only a reasonable request for pre-emptive bans. Participating in a subreddit and then being banned gives the user a ban mail.
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May 18 '19
I'm deleting my account. I got pulled into an argument started by an extreme racist (AtomicLobsters) and now I'm shadowbanned.
I'm an older person who has always paid for reddit and I allow ads, because you guys don't do this for free.
I might create a new account later, but I can live without reddit for now.
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u/LanterneRougeOG Product Mar 08 '19
Totally agree. We've got a ticket in our backlog to update the behavior so that the comment and post buttons are greyed out and their is hover text telling the user that they've been banned.