This post is the official saidit guide for content administrators to better understand how to apply the rules of saidit. Any questions about being a content admin should be answered in this document.

The rules of saidit are available at this link, and are linked in the footer of every page under "Terms and Content Policy": https://saidit.net/s/SaidIt/comments/j1/the_saiditnet_terms_and_content_policy/

Q: What is a 'content admin'?

A: Content admins watch over the stream of new content arriving on saidit and remove material that is illegal. This is an important duty for saidit to stay online. Content admins are the guardians of saidit. Content admins also remove spam to keep saidit clean, and can remove a few other things against saidit rules, outlined below. But content admins are also limited in that they can only remove things that are clearly against saidit rules.

Q: What is the difference between a ‘content admin’ and an ‘admin’ and a 'moderator'?

A: A content admin can remove the content from the website (posts, comments, and users) but does not have access to the code, backend, design, funding, or rules of the website like a full admin does. And a moderator only affects one sub.

Q: What can a content admin do?

A: A content admin can remove posts if they violate saidit rules. Content admins cannot remove things that do not violate saidit rules. Generally, content admins go to www.saidit.net/new and www.saidit.net/comments and look at the newest content and see if there is anything that needs removed, or anything that has been flagged by users as needing removal. But finding things as you browse around normally is fine too. Every bit helps.

Q: How much time should a content admin work a day?

A: Even just 5-15 minutes a couple of times a day is extremely helpful. Sometimes there won't even be much to do. The important thing is checking it regularly. If multiple content admins check /new and /comments regularly at different times, then saidit will look and work great, and the workload will be very light for each person. Saidit has on average about 100 posts a day and 600 comments a day and about 1-5% of those will need removal because they violate saidit rules, much of that being obvious ad spam. So if that is split across 10 people each checking twice a day at different times, it will only take a few minutes each time for each person.

Q: What are some things that can always be removed by a content admin?

A: The following things can always be removed without question:

1. spam (obvious advertising, blogspam, etc)

2. pornography (for reasons explained in the rules, mainly to deal with legal liability of illegal material) or content that sexualizes children

3. posts or comments advocating violence (direct threats of physical violence toward an individual or group)

4. vending or selling of illegal items such as guns or drugs

Items 2 through 4 can be federally illegal in certain cases, so it is important to saidit's longevity that these be enforced without hesitation. This is the most important task, beyond all other content admin tasks. Keep us legal, and keep saidit alive. Enforcing these 4 rules is the core responsibility of the content admin, and why the content admin position is so important to saidit's survival.

Q: Can content admins ban users?

A: Yes, content admins can ban a user that repeatedly obviously breaks the rules. So for example if a user is only spamming, or only advocating violence even after repeated warnings, or is clearly a bot, or is posting illegal material, or only posting porn, then the content admin can ban that user as they're obviously repeatedly breaking the rules outlined above. If a content admin is unsure if a user needs banning, please contact /u/magnora7

Q: What are some things that can never be removed by content admins?

A: Content Admins can never remove:

1. Never remove posts, comments, or users they are unsure about. Please raise the issue to /u/magnora7 if you are unsure if admin action is necessary.

2. Never remove, ban, or quarantine entire subs, or threaten to do so. Content admins may NOT affect entire subs as a way to enforce rules. Any issue that may affect a whole sub should be escalated to /u/magnora7

3. Never remove users who are name-calling but still trying to debate in earnest with actual ideas and facts. Leave them alone, they're just upset.

Q: What else can a content admin do?

A: If a content mod wants to do all of the above and nothing else, that is great and very welcome. However, if they choose, content admins can choose to take on the additional responsibility of enforcing the pyramid of debate. But this part needs to be done with a lot of thought and with a light touch, so it's totally acceptable for content admins to opt out of this additional part. The saidit rules state that "repeatedly dragging discussion down the pyramid of debate" is a reason for content removal and potentially banning if repeated. However enforcing pyramid of debate rules must be done with a very light touch, and only in cases where it's obvious or certain beyond a doubt. If in doubt about how to apply these rules, please contact /u/magnora7.

Q: What does "repeatedly dragging discussion down the pyramid of debate" in the rules, mean exactly?

A: It means that an individual user or comment, relative to the thread they're participating in, is denigrating the quality of the thread in an obviously downward direction on the pyramid of debate. And for a user it seems like they do this in almost every thread they are in, or with every post they make. They are lowering the quality of saidit compared to everyone else around them. Comments and users like this can sometimes be removed, if the violation is extremely clear-cut and they offer no other content of even slight value in their posts or comments.

Any user who advocates violence (the bottom of the pyramid) should have the comment or post immediately removed. If they keep advocating violence repeatedly, especially if there is no other substantive content to their comments, then the user can be banned. Basically if a user is a death-threat generator, and never says anything else, they've got to go.

However if a user is throwing out ad hominems or name-calling (which we can effectively merge with ad hominem), it has to be judged on the context of the thread. Usually it is wise to ignore 95% of the ad hominems, but if someone is going around just calling everyone awful things constantly, with literally no other substance of value added to any conversation ever, then they can be banned or those comments or posts can be removed. But again if at all unsure, please just ask u/magnora7

Anything above ad hominems on the pyramid is good and should always be left alone, more or less. "Tone Response" type of replies are unwanted, as is ad hominem, but these cannot be enforced with an iron fist or it will break the culture of the site and drive people away with the censorship they were looking to escape, so ad hominem removal should be enforced with an extremely light touch, only used on the most extreme and obvious cases. If in doubt, just leave it be.

Q: What about subs not shown on the front page?

A: Some subs are not shown on the front page of saidit, but are still allowed to operate their sub on saidit, because they obey the 4 main rules and don't post illegal content. However they have opted out of the pyramid of debate system, and as a result in exchange their sub is not allowed to be shown on saidit's front page. Many large subs on saidit operate this way and are perfectly happy with the arrangement, as they don't want to be disturbed. So don't disturb them. Comments and posts from these subs should NOT have the pyramid of debate applied to them at any point. Only the 4 rules of what is illegal. The full list of subs that fall in to this category is shown here: https://saidit.net/subs/notall/

Q: Can content admins lose their positions?

A: Yes, the following things can cause a content admin to lose their position:

1. Removing posts, comments, or users which should not be removed as per saidit rules. Content admins get 3 chances to change their behavior if they're removing things that shouldn't be removed.

2. Banning or quarantining a sub, or threatening users with sub-wide actions. Actions on entire subs are outside the scope of content admin abilities and problems with entire subs should be escalated to /u/magnora7

3. Repeatedly behaving in a way in comments or posts that obviously drags the quality of discussion downward on the pyramid of debate. Rule enforcers should follow the rules.

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(New questions as of Feb 16)

Q: Regarding posts and comments that violate the pyramid of debate and would warrant removal and/or a warning by your standards if they were recently posted, how old can such posts and comment be at max. for other admins like me to be allowed to still remove them and/or give a warning?

A: Ideally there's no need to remove anything more than a week old, unless you discover something illegal or something that is extremely obviously spam. There's really no need to apply pyramid of debate rules to anything older than a week, typically.

Q: I know every sub has its own modlog, but is there any way I can see, for example, the same thing but for users instead of subs, or maybe something like a collective modlog with all actions committee by any admin sitewide in it?

A: No there is no sidewide modlog, unfortunately. It would be very helpful to have, but it's not something that exists in the code. However all sub modlogs are public, so in theory we could just scan the most popular subs modlogs and this would be a good way to detect content admin abuse. It is also possible to look at multiple subs' modlogs simultaneously by adding them together in the URL like this example, which shows the modlogs for /s/news, /s/politics, and /s/videos: https://saidit.net/s/videos+news+politics/about/log so in theory it would be possible to make a long URL including all subs, but no one has done that yet.

Q: Regarding the admin mode, it came to my notice I costantly get logged out of it, and need to re-enter my password basically every uninterrupted session.

A: There is no quick way to adjust it in the settings unfortunately, but if you or someone else were able to figure out the timeout for logging out admins we could adjust that in the source code after review.

Q: I was wondering if conversing in the lower tiers of the POD is allowed as long as the discussion is already taking place there. For example a sub like reddit's /r/roastme takes place entirely in the name calling tier, but it's intentional. So that sort of thing would be allowed based on the context. It's the dragging down that's bad, like resorting to name calling in an otherwise cordial discussion. Is that assumption correct?

A: Correct. That's exactly what is meant by "dragging the quality of discussion down the pyramid of debate relative to the thread". It doesn't apply to threads that are already low, such as satirical name-calling threads like you pointed out. But anything advocating physical violence does need to be removed immediately, along with anything illegal.

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If you are a content admin, or looking to be one, and have further questions or need further clarification than what is given here, please contact /u/magnora7 and we will add your question to this list and answer it so everyone can be on the same page about how to apply the rules of saidit.

Thank you to all who have volunteered to help our saidit community by doing this much-needed service.