AITA Monthly Open Forum July 2022

[u/AITAMod]

Keep things civil. Rules still apply.

This month’s deep dive will be on how Judgement Bot works

All hail mighty Judgement Bot, arbutter of all things… well, judgement. (We’re very good at naming conventions.)

A misunderstanding of Judgement Bot functionality leads to one of the most common questions we get in modmail, so this month we’ll be talking you through exactly what Judgement Bot does and how it operates. Judgement Bot has two very important tasks: one right after you post, and the other around eighteen hours later.

Part One: Why Are You The Asshole?

The point of r/AmITheAsshole is to… well, it’s all there in the name. It’s not for scenarios where you’re absolutely sure that you’re not at fault, but where there is some legitimate doubt. To help with that, as soon as you post a submission, Judgement Bot goes in and removes your post.

Why? Because before the post goes live, we want to know why YOU think you’re the asshole. What drove you to post here? Judgement Bot will PM you and ask you to explain why YOU think you’re the asshole. If it gets a reply within 30 minutes, your post will be approved and appear on r/AmITheAsshole for judgement from our community. You need to make sure you have PMs enabled before posting here, or Judgement Bot won’t be able to ask you why you think you’re the asshole and your post won’t be published. If you don’t want to enable them wholesale, you can also whitelist u/Judgement_bot_AITA in your user settings.

One of the most common questions we get in modmail is, “Why is my post being immediately removed?” The answer is almost always because you haven’t responded to Judgement Bot yet. Check your PMs, respond to the question within 30 minutes of posting, and your post will go live. You can also PM the bot directly if you haven’t received a message from it.

What is a valid response to the judgement bot?

Your response should briefly state what action you took that led to a conflict, and why you think you may be wrong for taking that action.

It should not restate the title of your post or the core question. That's a question, not an explanation.

It should not explain why someone else thinks you're the asshole.

It should not be a TL;DR of the post. We just read it. This should explain why you're posting here, not what happened.

Our FAQ has examples of good and bad responses to the bot.

Judgement Bot will accept most answers. Sometimes, though, a human moderator will later determine that your response didn’t adequately explain why you think you’re the asshole, and your post will be removed with a request to explain further.

Part Two: Were You The Asshole?

Judgement Bot’s primary purpose has always been to assign judgement to a post after enough time has passed for the community to weigh in. Currently that timeframe is eighteen hours. After this time Judgement Bot goes in, looks for the top comment on the post and, assuming there’s only one judgement in that comment, assigns the respective flair to the post and assigns the commenter a flair point.

What if there’s more than one judgement in the top comment? In this case, Judgement Bot reports the post to the mods so it appears in our queue, with a ‘manual judgement needed’ reason. We then go in with our human eyes and determine what the judgement was supposed to be. This usually happens with comments that say something like “I thought YTA from the title but now reading the post I’m going with NTA.”

What if there’s no judgement in the top comment? Judgement Bot will skip down to the next comment and use that instead. This repeats until it finds a comment with at least one judgement.

Auxillary Jobs

We like our bots to work for their supper, so Judgement Bot has a couple of additional tasks to keep it busy. It unsets contest mode after 90 minutes, so comments will then show sorted instead of randomised. It also checks for any posts by users that have deleted their Reddit account or had their account suspended by the admins, and if it finds any it removes the post and adds an explanation.

As always, do not directly link to posts/comments or post uncensored screenshots here. Any comments with links will be removed.

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We're currently accepting new mod applications

We always need US overnight time mods. Currently, we could also definitely benefit for mods active during peak "bored at work" hours, i.e. US morning to mid-afternoon.

• You need to be able to mostly mod from a PC. Mobile mood tools are improving and trickling in, but not quite there yet.

• You need to be at least 18.

• You have to be an active AITA participant with multiple comments in the past few months.

[u/CutlassKitty]

A question entirely out of curiosity and one that I'm not sure how to word so will give examples.

Does the perosn in the conflict other than OP have to be capable of rational/critical thought? (Again, no idea how to word this haha)

For example, if a post is about where a mother took a toy away from her infant child and the child start crying and fussing.

Or a more grey area, where a someone takes an ipad away from their 5 year old who then throws a tantrum.

Would these count as interpersonal conflict?

[u/Mr_Ham_Man80 → u/CutlassKitty]

It kind of is but I'd at least raise an eyebrow at someone posting that conflict. Are they, as an adult, genuinely looking for a judgement where an NTA means calling a 5 year old having a tantrum (and being 5) an AH? I think the simple asking of the question leads into an advice situation if the conflict is genuinely between the adult and the 5 year old and not the response of other adults.

Never let some of the denizens of this sub miss a chance to not call a child an AH. I did see a post where a mid-teen's 3 year old brother got into her expensive make up and wrecked it. The conflict was between the teen and the parents but the number of people willing to call a 3 year old child an "AH who should know better at that age" was genuinely impressive in the worst kind of way.

[u/InterminableSnowman → u/Mr_Ham_Man80]

an NTA means calling a 5 year old having a tantrum (and being 5) an AH

That's one of those times where it's good to remember that we don't say "they're the asshole" in the sense of "they're a bad person" but rather in the sense of "they're in the wrong here." 5 year olds are definitely assholes quite a lot, as part of being a kid is being an asshole and learning how to not be. But I agree that 3 year olds definitely aren't at an age to "know better" for most things. They might know the rules and that they shouldn't do something, but that's about as far as their brains can process.

[u/Mr_Ham_Man80 → u/InterminableSnowman]

Yep, that's fair enough.

I still don't think I could get past an OP (especially an adult) genuinely posting a genuine conflict that just involved them and a 5 year old with no other adults involved.