Appeal Advisor

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  An example denial message

Inspiration

One of the more time consuming aspects of moderation is handling ban appeals, particularly if the ban isn't recent. It'll often take time to trawl through a user's history to ensure that their behaviour has improved.

What it does

This app will analyse the user's appeal message and recent user history. It is aware of subreddit rules and any mod notes made about the user.

Using a custom prompt with payloads attached, the app calls OpenAI to produce a recommendation to the mod team, complete with most pertinent bullet points and a more detailed explanation.

How we built it

I used a bespoke Devvit Web template that I use for my more recent mod apps, focussing on server only and using Hono. The app responds to modmail triggers from mods only, looking for mentions of the app name. If the user is banned, it will call OpenAI using the prompt and respond with a private moderator note.

The app uses a "free quota" model, with all subs receiving ten free ban appeal analyses per month without having to provide their own OpenAI API key, which should result in subs being able to try the app without having to commit up front to spending. I expect that ten per month is probably going to be enough for most mod teams. Note: for the judging period, there is an infinite free quota available.

I decided that it was not worth having the app automatically do an analysis of all banned users as they write in. Very recent bans are unlikely to ever benefit from this kind of analysis, neither are messages from banned users that are abusive in nature.

Challenges we ran into

Testing the app was tricky because it's hard to synthesise test data in a way that will produce meaningful representative scenarios. Really, you need to be able to test this on real users with real histories following their bans. I ended up testing the app on a production sub, r/unitedkingdom, which often deals with complicated ban appeals.

Devvit's APIs currently only let you know whether a user is banned or not, and not useful context about the ban itself (when the user was banned, reasons and so on). I'm working around this somewhat by using the mod log to store the date and time of the most recent 1000 bans on the sub.

What's next for Appeal Advisor

When Devvit gains the ability to retrieve more detail about a user's ban, I will integrate it into the app.

I will continue to revise the prompt to improve the app's output.

I'll be very responsive to user feedback and make changes that will benefit the community. The version submitted for judging has already taken into account feedback from several experienced Reddit moderators including one former Reddit employee.

Built With

• devvit
• openai
• redis
• typescript