Given the limited length of thread titles that would largely obliterate anything else in the title field.
This. Also, it’s a lot more of a PITA to change the thread title than to use red font. Especially if you are moderating on a laptop.
(changing color on a phone can be done by typing the code directly. It can also be done by clicking, but you have to insert some blank space and expand the height of the edit window, first. At least, that’s what works on the other board I use that’s vBulletin. Some of the settings are different here, and I haven’t actually tested it here.)
Tested. Works.
The limit appears to be 100 characters.
[Note: moderation @9999] is 23 characters. So yeah, there might be some truncation of titles that went over 77 characters.
I’m willing to take your word for that. Having never moderated any board, I really didn’t know.
The main problem is long threads with multiple notes and instructions. In the “Breaking News” thread in the Quarantine Zone, I have given no fewer than 14 mod notes and instructions. Most of them are for political commentary, which is prohibited in both the forum description and the forum rules. (Some of them are for religious jabs, posting conspiracy theories, posting links without description, junior modding, and BBQ Pit style posts.) Some of them are repeated notes for ignoring my my previous notes. So if I edited the title, it would be to tell people about instructions not to do things they already should know are against the rules. So editing the title isn’t really going to help in longer and more contentious threads.
I’m not talking about stuff that’s already against the rules; while mod instructions and the like in those situations are appreciated, they aren’t strictly necessary. I’m talking about stuff where a mod says something like, “no more of this particular digression - let’s keep it on topic and not go down this rabbit hole.” If digressions were against the rules here, most of us would be banned, but obviously if a mod says that, and you keep pursuing that topic, you’re asking for a warning.
Which is fair enough if you’ve been alerted to that instruction. The problem comes when you wander into the thread and say something contrary to those instructions without knowing they exist.
What is this reddit? It sounds pretty cool. I think I’ll go check it out. Thanks, Ruken!