Dev.to has "trusted users" that can moderate posts/comments.
If you've got this, how have you used it, or when do you not use it?
For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse
Dev.to has "trusted users" that can moderate posts/comments.
If you've got this, how have you used it, or when do you not use it?
For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse
Top comments (8)
I've found that the moderation guidelines are a pretty solid breakdown of 'how to moderate'. Luckily, I've only had to use the puke emoji in only a couple very obvious spam situations. I do wish there was a way to use the moderation tools (thumbs up/down/etc) from posts that I've found in my feed. There have been a couple situations where I couldn't quite track it down in the mod center, but they were worthy of some feedback (good or bad).
Do you not get the periwinkle shield button floating in the bottom-right corner?
Sure do! I guess I don't look at that corner too often :)
I mistook it for one of those live customer service widgets (like intercom or whatever) for the longest time! 🤣
Same! That corner is typically where the 'bots' sit on other sites!
Not sure when/how I became "trusted", but I've basically ignored the moderation bubble/features for months.
Previously, I'd only bother to report posts/users that seemed to be in clear violation of the Code of Conduct. Mostly blatant advertisements/spam or ham-fisted attempts at SEO.
After seeing the Nth post/comment bemoaning the proliferation of certain types of articles, I realised the obvious: I could help. A simple thumbs up or thumbs down; perhaps coarse, but meaningful. I've more or less settled on:
I try to be as objective as possible and separate it from my personal opinion (instead reserving 💖/🦄/etc. for that). Predictably, the majority of posts end up in the "do nothing" category. This includes the majority of "listicles", similar articles (posted weekly/daily by different users), and so on. Why? I've repeatedly gotten the impression that dev.to strives to be friendly to new people, encourage devs to start technical blogging, etc.; inclusivity is a "core value". If the community chooses to 💖 articles, well... that's fine.
In short, I moderate sparingly. I definitely don't "like"/👍🏽 everything. On platforms where people do that (or give everything 5-stars) it becomes meaningless. Everything is not "awesome".
What's "higher-quality"? Ok, that's pretty subjective. I use my judgement but I have a vague, informal, mental scoring system based on:
I haven't started using the "experience level" value. Mostly because I don't actually read the posts I'm not interested in, and the bottom part of that UI is a bit wonky on mobile (where I generally read dev.to).
Oh, and I never moderate my own posts (actually, I haven't tried- it might not even be possible). I assume that goes without saying for obvious reasons.
I do occasionally pop into the "moderation" queue to skim the post titles and see any obvious noise or spam and flag it up.
Otherwise, if I come across a particularly good post I give it the extra thumbs up, mostly on posts that don't have many obvious interactions.
I try to avoid the thumbs down on anything that's not truly junk, but perhaps my feed would be better curated if I was a bit harsher?
I've wondered that as well. Feed curation is another topic, but I've tried:
With mixed success. There's probably not quite enough content to filter down to just your interests.