Ray covered some of this in the post above, but share some of my own thoughts:
Why be interested in rate limits
I think we got on to the idea of rate limits because of the shortcomings of bans:
Bans feel like a big deal. This means that us moderators are reluctant to issue them, and when we do, we spend a lot of time on them (deciding if it’s right, justifying it, etc.)
Bans don’t give you a way to redeem yourself, particularly where the issue a user is putting out a large amount of really mediocre (but not exactly norm-violating) content.
You can give a temporary ban of pretty short duration, see how goes, reapply, etc....but then you’ve just re-invented rate limits.
If I recall correctly, the teams interest in rate limits is closely tied to an interest in “automoderation” based on various rules. The idea is that under certain conditions, e.g. a user’s karma is negative, rate limits get applied. Rate limits have the nice property of being gradual and of letting your redeem yourself. They’re less of a big deal, so less scary for mods to apply, and if you tie them to a well-tuned automoderation, they’re a scalable way to keep quality high and restrict users who pull the site quality down with large amounts of meh to actively bad content.
(Karma on every individual post helps but I feel is insufficient and inefficient. 1) for karma to be the basis of what’s visible, still someone has to look at the low quality content, 2) seeing low quality content even if you don’t read it, still makes the site feel lower quality and like it doesn’t have standards, 3) it takes design/engineering work to ensure low quality stuff doesn’t end up “leaking through”, 4) Getting downvoted doesn’t necessarily come with any explanation of why you’re getting downvoted. All these reasons make me interested in means of maintaining standards beyond just having people vote on each thing. For example, if I user gets negative karma on all their stuff, maybe we should have them produce less stuff.)
Possible problems with rate limits
I don’t think we’ve used rate limits enough to be really be sure how real these are, but I think we need to think about them. Here are some:
I think many of these can be addressed with good design, but we’d have to get them right.
Possible costs on other users
In comment threads, I could see it being frustrating to interact with someone who is rate limited. Perhaps they wrote something and you asked a clarifying question, but they can’t answer for 24 hours. And maybe they won’t because they won’t prioritize responding to you over something else tomorrow. This is a problem even if you know they’re rate limited until some time.
There’d be questions of do we just signal when someone has exceeded their limit, or even before they do so (as a sign they might not reply).
It’s just weird to have a whole class of people who can’t act freely on the site. With a ban, a person is just absent. Here, you might be frequently reminded of the restricted “2nd class”, “being punished” users.
I’m guessing some number of rate-limited users will complain. Do moderators ban that? (Kinda dictatorial) or do other users have to see those complaints periodically.
Confusion of who is facing what restrictions where, e.g. users who are generally rate limited but have exceptions in some places.
More confusing than a ban
With a ban, you’re just unable to post and comment. Simple. If you ban expires, you can get back to it. But a rate limit, especially for commenting, could require this unfun mental rationing of your limit. “Oh, I have a thing to say there, but maybe I’ll read another post and want to use it there, so I won’t say this thing.”
Personally, this’d likely just mean I didn’t even think about using what limit I have.
There’s a question of UI. Do we have some salient thing that says “you are rate limited until...” or “N comments remaining” or something else that feels very punitive or something. I wouldn’t like seeing that, but also seems like UI that you need.
Misapplied and unmonitored could be bade
A think I’ll have the team do before we proceed is build something like a dashboard over user currently rate-limited, so we can track whether it seems reasonable or not.
I think we need to tread cautiously (and we will) with any rate-limited that happens as a result of an automatically applied rule. False positives here could be pretty bad and have a large chilling effect.
The details matter
I think there are cases where rate limits will work great to encourage good behavior or discourage users who contribute low quality stuff away from the site without it costing moderators a lot. For example, rate limits on making posts for new users will likely work pretty well. As an alternative to bans, we’ll have to get more of a feel for their effects.
Ray covered some of this in the post above, but share some of my own thoughts:
Why be interested in rate limits
I think we got on to the idea of rate limits because of the shortcomings of bans:
Bans feel like a big deal. This means that us moderators are reluctant to issue them, and when we do, we spend a lot of time on them (deciding if it’s right, justifying it, etc.)
Bans don’t give you a way to redeem yourself, particularly where the issue a user is putting out a large amount of really mediocre (but not exactly norm-violating) content.
You can give a temporary ban of pretty short duration, see how goes, reapply, etc....but then you’ve just re-invented rate limits.
If I recall correctly, the teams interest in rate limits is closely tied to an interest in “automoderation” based on various rules. The idea is that under certain conditions, e.g. a user’s karma is negative, rate limits get applied. Rate limits have the nice property of being gradual and of letting your redeem yourself. They’re less of a big deal, so less scary for mods to apply, and if you tie them to a well-tuned automoderation, they’re a scalable way to keep quality high and restrict users who pull the site quality down with large amounts of meh to actively bad content.
(Karma on every individual post helps but I feel is insufficient and inefficient. 1) for karma to be the basis of what’s visible, still someone has to look at the low quality content, 2) seeing low quality content even if you don’t read it, still makes the site feel lower quality and like it doesn’t have standards, 3) it takes design/engineering work to ensure low quality stuff doesn’t end up “leaking through”, 4) Getting downvoted doesn’t necessarily come with any explanation of why you’re getting downvoted. All these reasons make me interested in means of maintaining standards beyond just having people vote on each thing. For example, if I user gets negative karma on all their stuff, maybe we should have them produce less stuff.)
Possible problems with rate limits
I don’t think we’ve used rate limits enough to be really be sure how real these are, but I think we need to think about them. Here are some:
I think many of these can be addressed with good design, but we’d have to get them right.
Possible costs on other users
In comment threads, I could see it being frustrating to interact with someone who is rate limited. Perhaps they wrote something and you asked a clarifying question, but they can’t answer for 24 hours. And maybe they won’t because they won’t prioritize responding to you over something else tomorrow. This is a problem even if you know they’re rate limited until some time.
There’d be questions of do we just signal when someone has exceeded their limit, or even before they do so (as a sign they might not reply).
It’s just weird to have a whole class of people who can’t act freely on the site. With a ban, a person is just absent. Here, you might be frequently reminded of the restricted “2nd class”, “being punished” users.
I’m guessing some number of rate-limited users will complain. Do moderators ban that? (Kinda dictatorial) or do other users have to see those complaints periodically.
Confusion of who is facing what restrictions where, e.g. users who are generally rate limited but have exceptions in some places.
More confusing than a ban
With a ban, you’re just unable to post and comment. Simple. If you ban expires, you can get back to it. But a rate limit, especially for commenting, could require this unfun mental rationing of your limit. “Oh, I have a thing to say there, but maybe I’ll read another post and want to use it there, so I won’t say this thing.”
Personally, this’d likely just mean I didn’t even think about using what limit I have.
There’s a question of UI. Do we have some salient thing that says “you are rate limited until...” or “N comments remaining” or something else that feels very punitive or something. I wouldn’t like seeing that, but also seems like UI that you need.
Misapplied and unmonitored could be bade
A think I’ll have the team do before we proceed is build something like a dashboard over user currently rate-limited, so we can track whether it seems reasonable or not.
I think we need to tread cautiously (and we will) with any rate-limited that happens as a result of an automatically applied rule. False positives here could be pretty bad and have a large chilling effect.
The details matter
I think there are cases where rate limits will work great to encourage good behavior or discourage users who contribute low quality stuff away from the site without it costing moderators a lot. For example, rate limits on making posts for new users will likely work pretty well. As an alternative to bans, we’ll have to get more of a feel for their effects.