Rework user reports to show to mods first, then admins

[DShiller]

User reports are a great addition, but they could be even better with proper compartmentalisation.

The problem currently is that once a user makes a report, it's sent to the mods of a community and the admins of the instance. Then whoever gets to it first can resolve it for everyone.

This can lead to a few problems:

1. Admin overreach. Moderators expect to resolve their own reports but see that admins resolve them first.
2. On the other hand, some reports should probably be resolved by admins (like banning someone site-wide).

As an admin on an instance, there's many times where I let a report sit because I feel it's not my responsibility to take care of it but the mods'. Then it sits there with that "1" notification until they get to it, if they ever. Sometimes the mods of a community are not active anymore and so an admin needs to step in.

There's many things we can do with reports so that both mods and admins can work better on them instead of being in a "tug of war".

But what I would propose first is to compartmentalize reports properly:

1. When a user makes a report, it goes to the mod team of that community by default, this would be a "mod report". After making their report, they get an option to bump the report to the admins if they feel it is warranted.
2. A report that is sent to mods only can be bumped up by the mods to the admins, and they can add their own comment on it. A report escalated to admins would be an "admin report".
3. If after X days (set by the instance admins?) a mod report has not been marked as solved, it will automatically be bumped up to the admins. This solves the problem of inactive mods not responding or not caring about reports.
4. As mod and admin reports are entirely independent from each other (the big takeaway), admins can resolve reports without taking an action if they feel it's not their responsibility and mods will still see the report in their queue. Likewise mods can resolve their report if they feel it's an admin issue without affecting the admin queue.

I have other ideas, including listing modlog actions (mod&admin) against a user under items in the report queue so that we can follow a user's history or check at a glance how the report was solved.

[dessalines]

With 1 and 2, the fear is that, since admins are almost always more active than mods, that the reports would never get "bumped up", and would forever sit in the mod queue.

With 3, having some really bad content sitting there for days is also not an option. Someone needs to get to it ASAP.

The admin overreach is def a problem, but I can't think of a good way to solve it without increasing everyone's workload. Seems an unavoidable tradeoff of: "get eyes on this report to solve it quickly" vs "let community mods have some time to take action on it first".

I also don't want users to have two different report buttons.

The only thing I can think of, is to have an admin action of "push to community mods", after which it would be "resolved" for admins, but "unresolved" for mods. This would be a way to mitigate the annoyance for admins of resolving things that should really be community mods jurisdiction.

[Nutomic]

I generally agree with the proposal, and I think could work more or less like this: reports initially go to community mods, and are hidden from admins unless they click a button like "show all reports". If a report isnt resolved by mods after some days, it gets shown to admins directly. Same if a single post/comment receives multiple reports, which usually happens when something really bad gets posted.

[ruudschilders]

I would like to add, that I would like an option in the report to notify the admins right away if the reporter thinks the reported content violates the server rules. So maybe a choice 'does it violate server rules or community rules?' or something like that.

[Crashdoom]

If we implemented #3324 then it would be possible to categorize who should receive the reports first. So, an instance-specific rule like "Spam" may go to both admins and mods, but a local-community rule may only go to mods first, then to admins if it goes unanswered for an extended period.

It would also be awesome to be able to set timeouts for when community-local reports would be escalated to an admin to review. e.g. If a community mod doesn't resolve a local-rule breaking issue within X hours / days, it'll be flagged for admin review. That way even if a report goes unanswered, it'll eventually be dealt with.

Also, is there any way to mark the reports as resolved if a moderation action is taken against them remotely? e.g. when a local user reports a post on a remote instance, could it be auto-resolved if said post / comment is removed, since those actions appear in the modlog already iirc.

[ludrol]

With 1 and 2, the fear is that, since admins are almost always more active than mods, that the reports would never get "bumped up", and would forever sit in the mod queue.

Then a person should have a role of an Admin and also role of a Mod

With 3, having some really bad content sitting there for days is also not an option. Someone needs to get to it ASAP.

Then Admins need to appoint a new Mod

[DraconicNEO]

I think forcing reports to always be sent to mods is a bad idea, for communities created in bad faith it won't do anything except be a harassment vector for the person reporting, which is why I strongly believe that admin only reports should be a feature. We shouldn't give too much legitimacy to moderators here because ultimately they can be just as bad as the people being reported.

[Nutomic]

There is a related rfc: LemmyNet/rfcs#6