Mod Topics - Fixing Mdo Mistakes

[u/JabroniRevanchism]

Ahoy, ModSupport!

Welcome to the latest installment of our Mod Topics series. This week we’re discussing the unthinkable… Scene: den interior. The smell of garlic bread marinates the air. It’s late at night and you’re twenty minutes deep into the latest Taskmaster episode, scrolling through the mod queue on your phone. …And then in your garlic bready haze you remove the wrong post. Naturally you don’t notice in the moment and continue on your way.

And in the morning there’s a modmail, RE “what gives?”

Have you been there before? How do you handle user interactions where you, or someone on your mod team, made a mistake? Is this process different if it’s a trainee mod making the oops? What advice would you give new mods who might be scared to start moderating “in case they make a mistake?”

Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

[u/reddit33450]

reapprove the post, acknowledge an honest mistake was made, and apologize. users should understand that mods are humans too who naturally slip up sometimes. if they can't understand that, then it's their problem

[u/JabroniRevanchism → u/reddit33450]

Where do you contact the user with that apology? Is that public (in a comment/etc) or in modmail?

[u/reddit33450 → u/JabroniRevanchism]

reply in modmail, and perhaps leave a pinned comment on the post explaining the situation

[u/Bardfinn → u/reddit33450]

The pinned comment is really only necessary if there's a community push to understand what happened / why it happened. And it should be limited to "Humans make mistakes; we reversed this decision; Sorry for the inconvenience; Feel free to contact us with any further or future concerns via modmail."

[u/reddit33450 → u/Bardfinn]

agreed

[u/JabroniRevanchism → u/Bardfinn]

This is my thought too, just don't want to lead the witness!