In the modlog, make a distinction between mod actions and admin actions.

[db0]

I don't know how feasible this is, but I thought I'd ask.

In the lemmy modlog API, it does display the mod/admin ID for each action. Using this information, make a distinction in the community modlog whether an item was removed/banned due to a mod of the community, or an admin of the instance. I'm guessing this could be done by comparing the ID of the acting user, with the modlist of that comm. But this might be expensive in calls, dunno.

If it's not reasonably feasible, I can ask the devs to maybe include this info in the API.

[asimons04]

Good idea, and I would definitely implement it if I could, but it's not feasible currently. Sorry for the long reply, mostly just thinking out loud.

Explanation

Neither admin nor mod status is available in the modlog responses (admin used to be before they moved that attribute from person to local_user in 0.19.0.

From a local API lookup, "admin" status would only reflect local admins (e.g. if a LW admin removed a post, it wouldn't flag the action as coming from an admin when viewed on dbzer0, for example).

For each entry, that would require a call to getCommunity to get the list of mods. That could be cached and re-used, but it still would generate a lot of API calls that may be undesirable. Even with a limited number of results per page, that is the number of results per modlog action, so limiting that is not a solution. e.g. if the limit is set to 20 when calling getModlog, that's 20 items each for removePost, removeComment, banUser, featurePost, transferCommunity, etc. That's why toward the bottom of each page, you'll see entries that are possibly months old if they're not actions that get performed often.

Admin state would require a local call to getUser to determine if they're a local admin, or a remote call to getUser on their home instance to determine remote admin status (I can see the utility for indicating remote admins, but that would depend on a successful remote API call).

The best solution would be if the modlog API returned these attributes, and then I could just display them. (Note: AFAIK, at least in 0.19.3, remote admin status is not known locally, so only local admins could be indicated).

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Workarounds

In the present implementation, clicking the moderator, community, or moderatee usernames will bring up their respective modals. Those each do an on-demand fetch to get the user or community details from the API.

Local admin status is indicated in the user modal (though no longer in the modlog table entry since, again, that info is unavailable since 0.19.0).

Clicking the community to bring up its modal. In the "Community Details" panel is a list of the moderators.

So the info is there, currently, just not as easily accessible as would be desired

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Partial Solutions

Perhaps I could add a button on each entry to resolve those on an item-by-item basis.