Relationship Advice lead-ish mod here.

I've posted this elsewhere on hackernews (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23259595), but I'll repost it here since it's relevant:

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We're (r/relationship_advice) rarely transparent with removal reasons. Our templatized removal reasons generally look something like this:

> u/[user], please message the mods:

> 1. to find out why this post was removed, and

> 2. prior to posting any updates.

> Thanks.

or

> User was banned for this [submission/comment].

The reason is because we have a high population of people who:

1. post too much information and expose themselves to doxxing risks, and

2. post fantasies that never happened.

So in order to protect the people who inadvertently post too much information, we tend to remove these posts using the same generic removal template. However, if people know that the post was pulled for one of these two reasons, the submitter may still end up on the receiving end of harassment as a result, meaning we have to fuzz the possibility of the removal being for one of these two reasons by much more broadly withholding removal reasons.

This is specific to r/relationship_advice. Other subreddits have other procedures.

As I'd have expected, it seems providing an explanation does indeed reduce the likelihood the user will break the rules in future, and make them more likely to contribute in future.

Surprised there wasn't much difference between a human provided reason and a bot provided one though (and in fact, the latter performed slightly better). Wonder what the reason behind this could be?

> s.Our results show that controlling for other factors,explanations provided by automated tools or bots are associated with higher odds of moderatedusers posting in the future

Either way, I always make sure to provide an explanation why a piece of content was removed on any site I manage, with the sole exception of obvious bot submissions (since the latter are literally incapable of understanding feedback).

Few years back Jeff Atwood on coding horror (which I can't find now) had a "guide" that partially match this data. The poster, and everyone else, must know see the original post and the reason it was moderated so the rule is clearer for everyone.

I think in Reddit, like other communities, the problem still is that most users still don't see moderated content because only upvoted/popular content is seen.

Maybe that could be future analysis comparing communities where moderated content is regularly visible by the overall community vs small set of the community vs only the poster.

I wonder whether there's a membership size threshold where, after crossing that tipping point, the community implicitly looses some degree of transparency whatever the moderation rules are. At some point the increasing impact each decisions have will skew the potential motivations of members and moderators. Intent become very difficult to judge meaning the degree of transparency decreases.

I've seen so many comments from people about the changing nature of some online communities as they grow. Perhaps capping memberships could curb the increasing politicisation of user behaviour and the weight of any individual action would be limited as a result.

Too much transparency can result in people "gaming the system" if the full workings are known.