Indicate when a changrset comment is added by a moderator.

[InsertUser]

Problem

After vandalism it is common for DWG members to comment on the malicious changeset to indicate that it has been dealt with (example). While the DWG accounts themselves are marked with a star to indicate that they are moderators, their comments are not so you have to click through to the username to check that these aren't impersonators.

This means that for anyone reviewing local changesets there is an extra step to check that vandalism has been dealt with. While I don't know of anyone putting disinformation in the changeset comments to help keep vandalism around longer, I have seen vandalism submitted with a comment= tag that made it look like it was fixing rather than introducing vandalism so it seems like someone might try it at some point.

Description

Add an indication that a comment is made by a moderator to the comment heading. I think this would probably be best displayed after the "date" so that it's not possible to tack something to the end of a username to make it look like a moderator when it isn't.

For the example changeset above:

Comment from SomeoneElse_Revert 17 days ago

Would become:

Comment from SomeoneElse_Revert 17 days ago ⭐

or

Comment from SomeoneElse_Revert 17 days ago (moderator)

Screenshots

No response

[tomhughes]

The problem is that we don't currently record if a comment is added by a moderator.

We could add the marker for users that are currently moderators but that doesn't mean they were a moderator when they left the comment, and it would also vanish when a user stops being a moderator.

So the question is should this be marking current moderators, or that they were a moderator when they left the comment? The second would need a schema change and would be a fair bit more work and wouldn't apply historically.

[mmd-osm]

I would display the ⭐ icon exactly the same way as on the profile page, i.e. current status, without taking history into account.

For anything history related, it might make sense to store when a moderator role was assigned (or removed) to/from a user, and calculate the historical status on the fly, rather than storing this info for every comment. The number of moderators, and changes to their status should be a few dozen db table rows at most. At the moment, this feels like a bit too much effort, though.

How about moving the icon right next to the name and use superscript (+some alt text):

Comment from SomeoneElse_Revert ^⭐ 17 days ago

[InsertUser]

I think most vandalism is caught fairly quickly so current status should be "good enough" most of the time. If something is old enough that their status has changed in the interim then the history of the modified elements can still be queried so see if it really was reverted later (as you might for a "mundane" contributor doing a revert).

How about moving the icon right next to the name and use superscript (+some alt text):

My concern with this is that with the ever-growing number of emoji there might be ones that could be confused with the "mod symbol" if you stick it on the end of an impersonation account's username. Separating it from the name by putting it after the date makes it clear that it's not attached to the username via some recently invented sequence of joiner characters but added by the system.

An alternative would be to say "Moderator comment from USERNAME". but that degree of prominence might imply that they are always commenting in their capacity as a moderator, even if they're just making a comment out of personal interest. Grouping it with the useful information at the end doesn't have quite the same implication to me.

[mmd-osm]

@deevroman has posted a similar idea in https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/TrickyFoxy/diary/404417 -> "Highlighting moderators and blocked users"