My name is Shadowhite, and I have been moderating various gatherings across Discord, YouTube, and Twitch since 2016. Outlined hereinbelow are the qualities that I believe will make you a better moderator or administrator. It is through my past mistakes that I can bring this insight to you. I do hope this is of help.
In this guide, I refer to both moderators and administrators. The latter has more responsibilities, but everything I say is worth keeping in mind for both roles.
Table of Contents
Humility
You are not powerful. Sure, you may have total control over how your membership may talk in your presence, but the banhammer is a tool that wears with overuse. You are few and your gathering many; if they can no longer stand your behaviour, you will be overwhelmed with ease. Worse still, they might forsake you entirely for somewhere more worth their time.
As a moderator or administrator, it is your duty to make your gathering somewhere worth staying. You serve them, not the other way around. Remember that always.
If you believe you have done wrong, as we all have, then you must be willing to admit your mistakes. Your members may say mean things to you, and it will not be very nice, but doubling down will only make you a greater object of mockery.
Clarity
That wall of text you call a ruleset is what stands between the new member and the thing they actually want to do. Yes, be precise in your meaning, but with as few words as you can.
It is often said that you must set strict boundaries with harsh penalties to keep your gathering in line, but I think not. You may draw your boundaries wherever you wish, so long as you can explain why they're there. If your members understand why a rule exists, and the penalties are proportionate, then they are far more likely to listen to you. If you cannot justify a rule's existence in two or fewer sentences, get rid of it.
That being said, if your rules count beyond single digits, you have too many. Watch out for any overlaps. For instance, I often see rules such as Only use bot commands in the bots channel
and No NSFW content outside of the NSFW channel
, which are both of the form X topic should only be discussed in the X channel
. Therefore, they can be compressed into something like Please only use channels for their intended purposes
; the same meaning, but without redundancy. And none of that mod team decisions are final
rubbish; such speech restrictions are unneeded if you follow my guidance above.
If a member does break a rule, tell them to their face where the rule was broken and why they oughtn't do so. If you cannot, then moderation is not your role. Do this in the open; not to shame them, but so others may see how justice is done. If the membership witness you enforce the rules consistently, then they will grow to trust your judgement.
Proficiency
In practice, you will spend most of your time answering members' questions instead of dealing out warnings, more of a guide than a guard. The membership are putting a great trust in you, so you ought know the platform like the back of your hand to repay it. A peruse of the basic controls will save you time and stress for if you must respond quickly.
Should you seek to expand your toolbox with third party offerings or bots, read the documentation carefully so you know what it does and whether or not it's something you will actually use. This mostly applies to Discord, but other platforms still have trinkets of their own to consider. Some common uses are notifications, rewards programmes, action logging, or just something funny.
Prefer open-source tools in your search, for the likelihood of them erecting a paywall before you is much lower. I'm looking at you, MEE6; fuck you in particular.
Automation can save both you and your members time, but one thing I have never found worthwhile is automoderation. Like an antivirus program, I held onto it in my early years, yet not once did it catch anything remotely worth the hassle it brought me. Maybe if your membership grows beyond one thousand, then you might consider this, but take great care to minimise false positives.
Trust
The best administration involves as few as possible doing as little as possible. However, if your gathering grows big enough, then you will need help to manage it. Your deputies must be those whom you trust to take your place if you die; a rogue moderator can do far greater harm than a regular member ever could.
Aside from that, here are some other things I consider:
- Track record: A moderator who themselves breaks the rules shows a lack of care for them, and thus cannot be trusted as an enforcer. That being said, no one is perfect and outlooks can change. Having a specified length of time from their last rule break is a good way to demonstrate this.
- Activity: The longer a member participates in your gathering, the more likely they are to care for its wellbeing. Such a person is in turn more likely to be known and trusted by others, and to know the local slang, yo.
- Location: Something might just happen whilst you sleep, which a trusted person who's active at that time could stop.
If you have read this far, and heed my words, then you will likely have a better start than I did. Good luck to you!
Oh, and don't touch kids.
