Welcome to r/modmailbeta!

This subreddit is for mods who are in the modmail beta to provide feedback on their experience. We are deliberately starting with a small pool of beta testers, and will ramp things up once we confirm everything is stable.

Please read the wiki and FAQ here

Please take the time to do the following, to help the beta experience go smoothly:

1. Add user flair in this subreddit that indicate which subreddits you mod that are in the beta.

2. Read u/allthefoxes excellent guide to providing great beta tester feedback.

3. Watch the demo video that explains most of the new functionality

Thanks for helping us make Reddit better!

So in the now infamous dm slack we were talking about new modmail. I mentioned that in /r/history we discussed how to use new modmail as a team. Some people displayed an interest as it seems not all mod teams did consider they should rework/rethink their workflow.

So here is basically what we discussed in /r/history as far groundrules go:

to make sure we all are talking about the same thing this is what I mean by "private moderator reply", these are replies not visible for the user and only for us.

Ok, this is what I roughly have in mind:

• When muting someone always try to leave a mod note. Maybe a bit much, though feel free to leave a mod only reply ;)

• Never archive something that hasn't been replied to or handled in some other way. If you handled it without replying also leave a modnote private moderator reply so fellow mods know what's up.

• Don't archive something to get it out of the way, if you don't feel like handling it let other mods handle it.

• If you feel that a modmail has been handled archive it.

• When replying to a mail and you can reasonably expect an answer soon hold off with archiving for a bit so you don't get a clutter of "archived" and "unarchived" in the conversation.

So far with these groundrules things are going pretty well in /r/history.

I also made a quick guide pointing out all the main features of new modmail:

It isn't all that difficult. It is basically a ticketing system.

1. Regular mail comes in and arrives in the "new" directory.

2. As soon as someone replies to a mail it moves to the "in progress" directory.

3. You then have the option to move the mail to the "archive" directory once you are done with the mail.

Other directories are:

• Highlighted, which is exactly that. A mod can highlight a mail and it will appear here.

• Mod discussions: basically discussions just for us mods.

• Notifications: Things send from automoderator and ban messages.

Then when opening a conversation you will basically get a flat conversation view with on the right side a bar that shows things like:

• Recent posts

• Recent comments

• Account age

• If the user is banned the ban status and reason.

• Option to mute and mute status.

• (if you use toolbox you also will find the mod button, history button and usernotes here ;))

Within a conversation you have the option to reply as:

• Yourself which is basically how old modmail also worked.

• The subreddit which will not show your name but just the subreddit as sender.

• Create a private moderator note which makes it so your reply is only visible to your fellow mods.

In addition to this, many people seem to get a bit daunted by the amount of folders/directories/channels (whatever you want to call them). The thing is that you do not need to use them all:

• You don't need to actively watch the archived folder and highlighted folder.

• Many teams have a backroom sub, so you can choose to not use "Mod discussions"

• This means that (assuming people archive messages nicely) you can basically get by through using "all modmail" and "notifications" only. Of course if you want a more fine grained picture you can still use the "new" and in "in progress" folders as well but they aren't a requirement. This means you can be on top of everything needing attention by actively watching two directories.

Hey mods,

What we've added since the last update:

• Ban notification messages are automatically routed to 'Archived'

• Mute notification messages now append to the conversation where the mute took place

• Recent posts and comments in the user info bar are sorted by new

• Added a subreddit setting to allow certain subreddits to enroll in the new modmail (in preparation for general release)

• Some small visual tweaks

We also have 2 changes that should go out early next week Both these changes are now deployed:

• Display recent modmail messages from a user to the subreddit in the user info bar, alongside recent posts and comments

• Automatically route messages that begin with [Notification] to the notifications folder (allows for custom bots to integrate with modmail in the same way AutoModerator does.).

As ever, let me know if you have any questions or feedback.

Here are the user-facing changes that went out over the last week:

• Improved contrast between read/unread

• Bolded subject lines

• Changed visual highlighting for mod discussions, mod actions and internal mod notes

• Username in infobar now links to userpage

• Sidebar text is not selectable

• Added spacing to user content displayed in infobar

• Alt-clicking and clicking on links in thread preview won't step into the thread

• Markdown formatting fixes:

  • paragraphs

  • blockquotes

  • tables

• Removed SR to SR message issue that was generating unreadable messages

• Fixed ban and mute note error

• Prevented the creation of unread messages for mods without modmail perms

• Fixed issue that was causing errors when accessing a thread from a deleted user

We're also currently looking into reports of muting and the mark-all-as-read button not working.

edit: fixed the muting bug edit 2: fixed the mark-all-as-read bug

Thanks again to everyone who has provided feedback on modmail.

When you get a high volume of modmail, it's impossible to find a thread from a user in archived mail that's even a few days old. What's worse, because of the way the inbox view is set up, ctrl-f only searches through the threads that are actually visible on the screen, even if I scroll way down to load a ton of chains at once.

I think it defaults to "post as me".

If the mod mail comment I'm replying to is a mod note, perhaps it should default to a mod note.

Better yet I would like to be able to change it.

Ok, so clearly the new modmail system adds some much needed functionality, and it shows some real promise. However, at the same time, it's stripped away all the old features that were actually helpful from the old system. Specifically, there's a couple of key things that will be a big turn off to experienced moderators. Specifically, some of those things include:

• Threaded modmail, with the ability to reply to specific individuals.

• An overview page that lists all posts in the way modmail does now. Yes, the sorting options you have added are helpful, and even needed. However having an overview page where you can see all threads expanded, and quickly reply without clicking through to see all the messages is absolutely paramount.

• Making it more obvious what threads are "unread" for each moderator. Think about how outlook highlights and bolds unread messages. Right now it's unclear.

Please don't remove everything that worked from the old system in this upgrade. Adding new features is great, but not at the cost of removing existing features that are useful.

Over at our sub we have a rather large mod team, meaning collisions on modmails are very likely to happen.

Take this scenario: A user has sent a mail to the moderators and you see it and decide to answer it. You get slightly distracted and quickly returns and sends the reply. What you don't realise is in the 10 or so minutes in-between another mod came to the mail and answered with a short message. Suddenly the user receives two messages from the mod team.

What I suggest: Adding a check on the submission of a reply to check if a reply has already been made in the time of writing. It isn't a hard implementation by any means.

If we take a MySQL scenario (what I'm used to) 'timechecked' could be the time the moderator checks the mail, 'replytime' be the time a moderator has replied, and 'mailID' be the ID of the mail. Here we simply need to make one short line of code to check if a moderator has already replied in the time of writing like so:

SELECT mailID FROM mail WHERE replytime > 'timechecked'

Now we just make an if statement in the language of the web application to check if the query gives 1 or more results. In that case we give a warning to the moderator, where he can double-check if he wants to reply on a message that's already replied to.

A similar collision system is in use by the WHMCS billing software for their Ticket System.

Quick idea: Every modmail post (not just a modmail thread) should have a small Agree or Disagree button. Kind of like reactions on Discord.

Only moderators could see these. It would reduce clutter on a modmail thread, especially examples like where an internal modmail thread is started asking the mod team about a proposed change. Agree vs Disagree could be made with these buttons, while actual discussion content could continue in the thread without being disrupted by clutter of a mod just saying "Agreed" etc.

I feel it would encourage more mod participation in a thread (even just using the buttons). And it would cut down on length of modmail threads too.

[EDIT] You should be able to see a list of who Agreed or Disagreed too.

This is my first time making a Stylish, it's probably buggy and can be formatted better. The nighmode is based off m.reddit.com's nightmode.

• applie to > url's starting with > https://mod.reddit.com

• http://pastebin.com/qfveTfc5 outdated

• https://www.reddit.com/r/tizorres/wiki/modmailnm

edit screenshots

• all/ https://i.gyazo.com/74cfa5c0fb9805d359393fb5ea4d0890.png

• mod thread/ https://i.gyazo.com/adbba4256a2458d2ebe1535b22834bda.png

• user thread/ https://i.gyazo.com/40b6ce351a223757b704b73dd1b08da4.png

Last week we mainly worked on non-user facing improvements. We fixed:

• A bug that was preventing muting from within modmail

• A bug that was causing mark all as read to error

• A bug that was causing the modmail sheild to remain green for users with unread messages (if you're still experiencing this issue, please let me know)

We've received a lot of great feedback in this subreddit so far. We're going to pause adding new subreddits to the beta while we work on incorporating some of these suggestions. Thank you to everyone who has provided feedback - please continue to do so.

It's confusing in a team not to know from the inbox whether the user has actually been replied to. Just adding the "Private Moderator Note" greentext to the inbox pane when appropriate would fix this.

Thanks!

Someone else already requested it but it got zero response.

Currently ban messages completely clutter up the notifications view which is a shame because it makes it easy to overlook important automod notifications. (we have automod modmail us in cases of possible doxxing and other stuff requiring more context and/or fast response times)

So can we get an option to either automatically archive ban messages or give them a separate view?

edit:

Having a sent folder where all outgoing messages go until they are replied to would solve all of this.

I would expect it to show the OP's name first and then possibly the name of the person that replied last.

I am also still not sure that showing the preview text is of use either since it is devoid of context. (A compact view that just shows the title and OP would be great).

I just saw this error. In Firefox I had to delete all the reddit.com cookies before that error went away. There's a month old thread about this, but it's easy to miss: https://www.reddit.com/r/modmailbeta/comments/55tg1p/cant_view_mail_necessary_permissions/

Hey mods,

Here are the modmail changes that went out in the last week:

• Ban & Mute notification messages won't generate unread records for any mod. As before, if a user replies the thread will move to from 'Notifications' to In Progress' and appear as unread.

• Conversations in the archived folder won't generate unread records for moderators. I.e. If you archive something, it will be marked as read for your co-mods.

• Added 'All Mail' view which displays mail from all folders except 'Archived' (we're planning to add an icon indicating which folder a thread belongs to)

• Fixed an issue that was causing the modmail icon to stay lit for users who demodded*

• UI Tweaks:

  • Removed underline from links in markdown

  • Bolded subject lines in message view

  • Renamed 'archived' to 'unarchive' to be consistent with the action

  • Renamed 'highlighted' to 'unhighlight' to be consistent with the action

As ever, please let us know if you have any feedback.

* If you're having issues with modmail telling you you have unread mail but you can't see it, please let me know.

Hey Mods,

We've been working on adding instrumentation and monitoring for modmail. What that means is we now have a dashboard for modmail performance.

The load is fairly light at the moment as there are currently only 30 subreddits in the modmail beta. Tracking performance as we add more features and expand the beta pool will help us optimize our code and make sure things keep running smoothly.

As I mentioned in the week 4 update we're currently focusing on making some feature changes before expanding the pool of beta testers. Stay tuned.

I am using the new modmail system with some very large subs, including /r/documentaries. I am also a member of several subs in which the purpose of modmail is chatting and discussion.

The largest problem is this:

• Under the old system, all new modmail could be reviewed using only the scroll wheel.

• Under the new system, only the first comment is visible from each modmail thread. To read new material it is necessary to click on the message to read it, click once more to return to the modmail page, and then reestablish context. Each operation can take several seconds, resulting in a time of perhaps ten seconds to review each modmail thread with new content.

Given that moderation is already a labour-intensive and arduous task, changes which increase the amount of labour are simply going to result in demotivated moderators and less moderation.

It is nice that I am required to explicitly acknowledge new messages by either clicking them or by clicking "mark all as read", but the process as a whole adds a substantial time cost to moderation.

I believe that if all of my smaller subs are forcefully migrated to the new system, then moderation on reddit will become unmanageable for me.

Hey mods,

Since the last update, we have added the following features:

• Sort by unread

• Mark all as read now marks all threads in the current view, not just the ones you have loaded

• You can archive threads from the listing view

• Mod discussions no longer appear in the all mail view

• Added a 'to' field to the tagline where appropriate (we have a plan to make this more explicit by adding a 'From:' and 'To:' field to every thread).

We currently working on some visual and error message fix ups and adding subreddit preference so communities can opt themselves in to the new modmail.

For new users,

Please read the wiki and FAQ here

Please take the time to do the following, to help the beta experience go smoothly:

1. Add user flair in this subreddit that indicate which subreddits you mod that are in the beta.

2. Read u/allthefoxes excellent guide to providing great beta tester feedback.

3. Watch the demo video that explains most of the new functionality

Thanks for helping us make Reddit better!

It's a bit annoying that I cannot archive a mod discussion sent by myself or any other mod and just clogs up modmail, Could we get a feature that will allow us to archive mod discussions?

Short one this week:

• Added quoting

• Fixed bug with All Mail view not updating after taking actions

We're currently working on improving 'mark all as read' as well as adding a 'sort by unread' option for listings.

As ever, please let us know if you have any thoughts or feedback.

I would find it intensely helpful if we had a tab that let us look over all the recent messages for the sub in one place rather than with the various tabs. I'm on a slow internet connection and would much rather wait for one large page to load than several small ones.

This is mostly a usability feature, but I'd wager I'm not alone in this.

Those additional clicks make me not want to deal with mod mail. List of messages is truncated to the same height, threads are collapsed by default. It's a chore to even scan the contents of mod mail to see if there is stuff I can help with.

On top of that, typographical contrast is poor. I can't easily see where the message begins because the metadata is set in the same style as body.

There is known bug where you can't access old modmail by visiting http://www.reddit.com/message/moderator. Reported here.

We're working on a fix for this. In the meantime you can either:

• Access old modmail by visiting http://www.reddit.com/r/subreddit/message/moderator

• De-mod yourself from the subreddit that is in the new modmail beta - This will return http://www.reddit.com/message/moderator to its usual state.

Let me know if you have any questions.

It will be a big disadvantage to not know who is replying to who. It destroys a big part of modmail communication. I consider the destruction of this feature a bug.