And, of course, many users would merely dispute the findings without much in the way of evidence (which is a lot of message replies we get). In some cases, those replies would be ignored, commonly because the reply is rude/abusive and evaluated to be frivolous, but in rare cases because the reply was missed (the tooling for moderators in this area is ... poor, particularly as SO's volume).
The tooling here is not just poor on the moderator side. The one time I got a mod message, back in 2019, I was caught out by the terrible UI on the ordinary user side, which only lets you send one reply to each message from the mods but gives no hint of this in advance.
It's not at all surprising, given that basically broken UI, that users give short replies! The mod message UI renders like a one-on-one chat of the sort users are used to from other applications like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger, and naturally we expect to be able to send multiple messages as is the norm in such a UI. But that's not how this UI behaves, and instead if you start by writing "Huh?" and hitting Send, then your chance to write anything more substantial is gone forever.
Worse, the sidebar of every mod message - regardless of what it's about or whether the mod actually intends it as a suspension threat - states that:
Our goal is to amicably resolve issues in a constructive way through direct communication. Please note that continuing to persist in problematic behaviors is grounds for timed suspension.
All this gives the false impression to the user that this is going to be a one-on-one, realtime conversation (basically not true in my case, and probably not in most cases), and also that they may be on the cusp of suspension and need to immediately rebut the accusation against them to safeguard their account, without taking any time to compose their thoughts, or indeed to wait for any anger or alarm they feel at receiving the message - natural responses for anyone who has been unfairly accused of something! - to fade.
(It's also aggravating wording in its own right that probably contributes to mods getting angry responses. You can't tell someone you aim to resolve things with them "amicably" and then follow it up with an explicit threat in literally the next sentence! Only crime bosses in cheesy mafia films are allowed to behave like that!)
Worse still, several small bits of evidence over the years have hinted to me that the non-mod user experience of mod messages is poorly understood by the mods:
- Back in 2019, the mod who messaged me denied on Meta that they had threatened me with suspension, even though every mod message threatens the user receiving it with suspension - it's right there in the hard-coded content in the sidebar when we view the message! You simply don't have the option of mod-messaging someone without threatening to suspend them.
- Also back in 2019, at least one mod (from another Stack Exchange site) that I spoke to in Tavern On The Meta had no idea the user-facing UI was deceptive in this way and said that it explained the mystery that had always puzzled them of why so many users waste their one reply without saying anything substantive.
- Machavity's post here doesn't give much acknowledgement that the "frivolous" replies the mods receive "without much in the way of evidence" are probably often not the entirety of what the user intended to write, but that after sending their first DM they've been unexpectedly prohibited from completing the thought that they were writing.
In the context of staff concern over people being suspended for a behaviour they're innocent of and then reaching out via the Contact Us form, this strikes me as an issue of great importance! People should be able to appeal unfair warnings and suspensions via mod message replies, and this system effectively denies them the chance to do so, leaving them to seek out some other recourse.
There are things that can be done by both staff and mods to improve this state of affairs:
- Staff: fix the user side of the mod message UI! Either make the UI actually behave like a chat, and let users send multiple replies without intervening mod messages, or else put a warning into the UI that you only get one reply and show a confirmation dialog when the user sends the message.
- Mods: as long as the point above goes unaddressed in the UI itself, agree a stock warning to include at the end of every mod message you send, warning the recipient that the system only lets them send one reply, and that they should therefore take some time to compose their thoughts before replying.
If - as it sounds like - much of the motivation for conflict here is staff wanting to reduce the number of suspensions and warnings that get appealed to the staff, this seems like an easy win that wouldn't involve lowering our quality standards like the staff's current demand does.