What does the site look like for the mods?

July 18, 2010 8:05 PM

I'm curious what the mods see when they look at the site.

For example, do all user-names have a little hammer that can be used to ban them?

Is there a little edit button next to every comment or does it just say 'edit' similar to the 'add to favorites' link?

Could we have a few screen-shots please?

posted by Confess, Fletch to MetaFilter-Related at 8:05 PM (48 comments total)

The mod screen has appeared a couple of times, most recently in Lewistate's dissertation, as an exhibit. It has a friendly "X days since a bannin'" graphic, but otherwise it seems pretty utilitarian.
posted by yhbc at 8:09 PM on July 18, 2010

It's been posted before that as well. I don't think it's a secret. My search is failing me though.
posted by cjorgensen at 8:10 PM on July 18, 2010

If you watch that GEL conference video on the about page all the screenshots look normal and you can see at the top of the page there's a "view: standard | admin" selection so I guess somebody got tired of having to log off to take screenshots.
posted by Rhomboid at 8:19 PM on July 18, 2010

Here's an unedited version^* of what the mods see.

* Mefi mod unblurring glasses sold separately. Not valid with other offers. Limit 1 per mod.
posted by special-k at 8:24 PM on July 18, 2010 [3 favorites]

There are photos on flickr.
posted by donnagirl at 8:25 PM on July 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

Also, if you watch this video of Matt explaining Mefi, there are many admin screenshots of the site.
posted by special-k at 8:26 PM on July 18, 2010

recently we've gotten the ability to see threads with the deleted stuff still in them inline [so that we can tell what the other mod did, no we are not planning on making this user-facing] and otherwise we see what you guys see site-wise except for an [edit] [x] [IP:whois|search] options. Edit lets us edit, the X will delete something and we can run a whois or a site search for an IP address. It's pretty prosaic actually. And we have the admin panel which people have already pointed out.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 8:28 PM on July 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

The screenshot in the article yhbc linked to is on page 126 of the pdf (p.177 of the article).
posted by nangar at 8:31 PM on July 18, 2010

Previously, previously, previously.
posted by Jaltcoh at 8:47 PM on July 18, 2010

They see darkness. Darkness and Void.
posted by The Whelk at 8:52 PM on July 18, 2010

...on a professional white background.
posted by griphus at 9:01 PM on July 18, 2010 [3 favorites]

It's ShotoShop Sunday!
posted by blue_beetle at 9:08 PM on July 18, 2010

When they've had a bad day & just want to unwind a little, the mods switch to the alternate interface, where posts & comments pop up out of holes like in a carnival sideshow, and the mods smash them down with digitally-enabled nerf hammers.

If they hammer well enough the machine dispenses a cookie; sometimes even a donut. If they fall behind, the machine plays a version of Never Gonna Give You Up, as sung by Peter Andre & Jordan, accompanied by kazoo, banjo & vuvuzela, and without an autotune.
posted by UbuRoivas at 9:09 PM on July 18, 2010

I understand why not every "Flagged as Fantastic" post or comment gets put in the sideblog, but is there a way that those of us who do not have access to the awesome power of the mod screen can find what has been flagged as fantastic lately?
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 9:33 PM on July 18, 2010

They sit high and mighty on their thrones, eating venison and drinking mead, and every once in a while they utter "Butler! Delete a comment! Ban someone! And do it arbitrarily!"
posted by qvantamon at 9:50 PM on July 18, 2010 [3 favorites]

I like the Flagged as Fantastic pony but it already exists in another form. If several people flag a comment as fantastic they are also quite likely to favorite that comment which means it will end up here.
posted by special-k at 9:55 PM on July 18, 2010

For some reason, I read the question above the fold as metaphorical in nature. These technical answers are not what I was hoping for. So, tell me mods, what do you *really* see?
posted by iamkimiam at 10:00 PM on July 18, 2010

jessamyn: recently we've gotten the ability to see threads with the deleted stuff still in them inline

pony pony pony pony pony PONY!

Oh I'll feed him, and brush him, and I'll ride him every day, and I'll bring him apples and oats and it will be ever so nice!
posted by paisley henosis at 10:00 PM on July 18, 2010 [4 favorites]

It'd be funny if the deleted stuff on the mod side looked like this:
It'd be funny if the deleted stuff on the mod side looked like this:FTFY

(Ok, maybe not)
posted by iamkimiam at 10:41 PM on July 18, 2010

Here's a picture of the hardware the mods use for day to day administration (the hat belongs to cortex).
posted by eyeballkid at 10:52 PM on July 18, 2010

I'm curious what the mods see when they look at the site.

Work.
posted by pracowity at 11:33 PM on July 18, 2010 [7 favorites]

They see the sorrows of the world; the blood-bitter struggles on the darkling plain; the tears of the bereaved and bereft and the smoke rising from ravaged homesteads; yet to the east, the first glimmerings of a new dawn.
There is a Firefox plug-in that can replace that with a series of Lady Gaga wallpapers in rotation, though.
posted by Abiezer at 11:48 PM on July 18, 2010 [7 favorites]

Except pb, he sees something like this.
posted by XMLicious at 12:17 AM on July 19, 2010 [4 favorites]

They see evertything.

*puts pants on*
posted by new brand day at 1:22 AM on July 19, 2010

Here's mine.

It's the same basic funtionality but able to handle infinite possible universes and a slightly more trippy UI just for shits and giggles.
posted by Meatbomb at 2:31 AM on July 19, 2010 [11 favorites]

Wow, it's amazing what you can do with a couple greasemonkey scripts, Meatbomb.
posted by crunchland at 3:55 AM on July 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

They see dead people.

Wait, wait. No, no. That's just me.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 5:24 AM on July 19, 2010

They see the futility of existence in a world driven by chaos.

Wait, wait. No, no. That's Werner Herzog.
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:40 AM on July 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

They see the best minds of our generation destroyed by madness, starving
hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry
fix.
posted by ColdChef at 6:04 AM on July 19, 2010 [6 favorites]

it's the one street rule.
posted by new brand day at 6:10 AM on July 19, 2010

They see the best minds of our generation destroyed by madness, starving
hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry
fix.

If you squint hard that bit is down in the left hand corner ColdChef.
posted by Meatbomb at 6:29 AM on July 19, 2010 [2 favorites]

Hang on. I thought it was ColdChef who saw dead people and Meatbomb who has the squint.
posted by pracowity at 7:28 AM on July 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

What do you see when you look at the site?
I can't tell you but I know it's white
posted by emelenjr at 7:31 AM on July 19, 2010

Do you think the mods perceive blue as the same color in their minds that we do? How would we know if they didn't?
posted by mccarty.tim at 7:36 AM on July 19, 2010 [2 favorites]

I see ...three.....lights.
posted by The Whelk at 7:37 AM on July 19, 2010 [2 favorites]

I can't imagine wanting to participate in this site with deleted comments visible. Just go to fark or somewhere else if that's what you want.

It's a plain bad idea. It would set up an alternate-mefite, in which there is a group of users being turds to each other in the deleted content unseen by the masses. While this would make for an interesting type of community site, it just isn't what Matt has cultivated in Mefi through the years.
posted by frecklefaerie at 8:04 AM on July 19, 2010

I can't imagine wanting to participate in this site with deleted comments visible.

Yeah, we can't really imagine it working well here either. It's been a really interesting experience having the deletion and flagging stuff visible inline for the last however-long that we've been doing it, and from a mod angle I think it's been a hugely useful change, but part of that is because it keeps us a bit more constantly aware of mod-side stuff that may need action.

The down side of that is that when a thread has become a wreck and we do a bunch of heavily lifting to salvage it, it becomes messier instead of cleaner on our end; the mess is still there, it's just two-tone now. That'd be more of a bummer if I really spent much time in the sort of threads that tend to need salvaging, but since they don't tend to hold my interest too well it's not really ruining my casual reading.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:08 AM on July 19, 2010

I always understood that when they looked at the site, this is what the mods saw.

I've noticed that Matt has become a lot less involved with the site, at least as far as participating on the public side. Did he just completely burn out on us? Not that I can blame him. I would think that you guys feel a lot differently about the site, and that it's hard to shake that you're more than just participants. (Not that frequent threads like this one don't help you to forget it.)
posted by crunchland at 8:21 AM on July 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

I found it a little saddening that there were one or two "Hey, don't feed the troll" comments at the front of the latest political thread, and then they were deleted I imagine as to not incite trolling themselves, but the end result was (and this is what was saddening) was that people went out and fed the "Troll" right below the deleted comments. I've been a mod in much smaller community type sites before, and this sort of attempt at "Guiding" a thread has always left me heartburn. Someone makes a thread, someone else takes a minor dump, then someone goes out and really lets one rip, so you clean that up, but then two more people see the minor dump and make their own dumps, so then there you are-- do you just sanitize all of them, wait, is the thread even going anywhere? Have I made it worse, better?

Ugh. Glad not to be a mod these days. Glad to have such beautiful and charming people here as mods. [NOT-SUCKUP-IST]
posted by cavalier at 8:41 AM on July 19, 2010

Does the banhammer thingie look kind of like Whack-a-Mole?
posted by Drasher at 9:26 AM on July 19, 2010

I don't have access to that page?
posted by jeffamaphone at 10:08 AM on July 19, 2010

Do you think the mods perceive blue as the same color in their minds that we do? How would we know if they didn't?

I don't know about the blue, but the "grey" looks pretty brown to me. Cocoa Brown.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 10:17 AM on July 19, 2010

jessamyn : recently we've gotten the ability to see threads with the deleted stuff still in them inline

Oh sure, but that's just useful but mundane uses of existing technology. I was hoping you'd tell us about the interface that lets you see what we're going to post next. That shit's the bomb!
posted by quin at 12:37 PM on July 19, 2010

I don't know about the blue, but the "grey" looks pretty brown to me. Cocoa Brown.

Here you go.
posted by qvantamon at 1:28 PM on July 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

I think it's very likely that the mods have a way to monitor a particular user's posts. (I doubt this extends to watching the user compose the post—just a "heads up" when a specified user posts something.)
posted by Crabby Appleton at 10:27 AM on July 21, 2010

We've got a watchlist function that'll send us an email when there's a post from a likely huge-problem poster—this is like 95+% suspected spammers, with the small remainder being folks who seem to be in one way or another unhinged (show and start making really weird out-of-place comment or write us confused or ranty emails after signing up, or in rare cases have a specific impulse-control problem with axegrindy posts on some topic, that sort of thing).

The watchlist tool also has a "recent comments" page that just shows any new comments from folks on the watchlist in reverse chron order; again, mostly a spam-watch tool for folks who drop a random bit of linkfarming into an askme thread here or there, though it's also useful for dealing with rare on-thin-ice situations where we're basically dealing with a low-frequency, bad-behavior poster who we've given a last warning and want to be sure we see it if they like flip out again.

We also get email for every single first post to the front page, since those have a higher chance of going badly and our early-detection instincts for spammers aren't foolproof; a lot of spammers have one or more of a number of obvious tells, but some fly totally under our radar until HEY CHECK OUT THIS AWESOME WEBSITE THAT I JUST HAPPENED TO FIND hits the front page, so it's nice to be able to give every first post a glance pretty much immediately.
posted by cortex (staff) at 12:33 PM on July 21, 2010

just a "heads up" when a specified user posts something.

Yeah I think we've mentioned this before but we can mark people, I think the options are spammers, jerks, or others. And then we can follow their comments. But this is a pretty simple-tool situation; all the users who are marked have their comments appear on an admin-facing page that I think cortex keeps an eye on. This is almost never done with regular members, mostly a way to keep track either of new members that seem sketchy or people who seemed to be doing fine but all of the sudden seemed to be off the rails and, yeah, the "this is your last warning" types.

We're also both heavy users of the site, so we see a lot of stuff scooting over recent activity or other places just since we're here a lot.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 12:39 PM on July 21, 2010

Metafilter: spammers, jerks, or others
posted by Jaltcoh at 12:48 PM on July 21, 2010