Mastodon: Add the number of moderators for an instance to the About page for that instance

[codesections]

Instances vary tremendously in the number of users per moderator they have—some have ~50,000 users for every moderator; others have ~250 users per moderator. Individuals who are particularly subject to harassment may wish to join instances that have a high number of moderators because those moderators would be better able to protect vulnerable members.

However, the total number of moderators is not made public in any way. I suggest adding this information to the About page for the instance so that people who are vulnerable to harassment can view this information before deciding on an instance to join.

I believe that this change should be (relatively) easy to implement because Mastodon already shows that a user is a moderator by displaying a badge on the user's profile page. So this info is already present, it would just need to be incorporated into the About page.

[EDIT: A post with more details about the problem this solves is at https://www.codesections.com/blog/mastodon-mobs-and-mastodon-mobs/]

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• [X] I searched or browsed the repo’s other issues to ensure this is not a duplicate.

[nolanlawson]

I like this line of thinking. Since you point out that follower counts also matter, and since active users are arguably more important than registered users, maybe (active users * followers / moderators) would be a good number to show publicly? Or alternatively just average weekly active users / moderators.

[codesections]

I would like either of the numbers you suggest—I agree that they are more precise than just the number of moderators.

I suggested the number of moderators in the spirit of minimalism. It seemed like the smallest possible change that would still mostly achieve the goal of giving potential new users insight into how much moderation support they can expect in an instance. But I'd definitely be open to a (slightly) larger change that gives more details.

[trwnh]

I think the number of mods is maybe more useful than some other arbitrary number based on that number. "Home to x users who authored y statuses, moderated by z staff" at least sort of flows.

[lrmikestone]

I like both ideas. Do I have to decide? Why not do both. On the standard "About" page, where most users who have normal follower counts and don't really care _too_ much about the details, update the text to show "Home to x users who authored y statuses, moderated by z staff". After that, make the "Administered by:" section more visible, maybe by including it in the same box as the above text. The it doesn't get lost in the rest of the page, and people can easily find the "Learn More" section of the About page. On the "More" page, include all the more specific stats, like what nolanlawson proposed. I think the number of users, active users, moderators, moderators per post, moderators per user, etc, would all be valuable information to include on theses pages and have visible to the public.

[Cassolotl]

"There are x active moderators on this instance, which is y active users per moderator." Maybe?

[rkingett]

I like both ways too! This would be good to know.

[SuperSandro2000]

The total number of mods does not yield any useful information cause all of them could be inactive which would give a false sense of security. Also do a lot of active mods not mean that they ban users which are disregarding the rules.

If this becomes a thing I think it should be opt-in.