Community Moderation - The Basics

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Community Moderation - What are Community Moderators?

Community Moderators are trusted members of a server that manage discussions and comments from server members, comply and uphold the server rules, and align with the Terms of Use and Community Guidelines of Guilded.

Community moderators should: 

  • Have good "soft" moderation skills to gently remind someone of the rules.
  • Be able and willing to enforce the rules when the need arises
  • Follow the rules themselves and set a good example for other users.
  • Be available - there's no point in having ten moderators if they are all asleep when there is an issue to resolve. 
  • Be approachable, friendly, flexible, and reliable.

Community moderators passionate about giving your community members a welcoming, safe environment to engage in are more valuable than those who bark orders and are too quick to kick or ban members. You want people to join and stay, not leave at the first hint of toxicity! 

A good community moderator should be firm but fair and can find a balance between controlling conversations to keep "trolls" from dominating, they should be comfortable contributing to discussions, have a sense of humor, and allow users enough freedom to express themselves.  

The ban hammer is a powerful tool and should always be a last resort.

 

Rules and Guidelines

All servers should have clear rules that users should follow to keep the community running smoothly. Rules apply to everyone, including moderators, these should not be used as a stick to beat the community members but as guidance.

  • Ensure your rules are visible to new users in an easily accessible channel.
  • Consider creating a bot flow to welcome new members and signpost them to your rules channel.
  • Written rules in plain English, so everyone understands them.
  • Try not to have a massive list of rules.
  • Add a footnote stating that it is the moderators' discretion if and when rules will be enforced or changed to avoid conflict when a moderator takes action.

It's important to remember that the Terms of Use and Community Guidelines still apply regardless of the rules you put in place for your server. The server owner's responsibility is to ensure that user-published content that violates the Community Guidelines is removed quickly.

Doing your research and having an idea of how your server will be managed is a good place to start when creating the rules and guidelines for your server. 

The guidelines below from the Official Guilded Server are an excellent example of robust rules for a server.

You are welcome to use these or create your own.

Some rules:

  1. Be respectful. This includes insults, harassment, or otherwise hateful conduct. If you disagree with somebody, don't be disagreeable about it. 
  2. No NSFW / NSFL content. We all have to sleep at night. If you post content that would get you fired at work, you're going to get the boot. 
  3. No illicit activity. This includes account trading/selling, piracy, or any discussion of illegal or otherwise unseemly activity. 
  4. No spam. This includes but is not limited to brigading, link-spamming, or general rapid-fire trolling. 
  5. Keep profanity to a minimum. If you wouldn't say it in front of Captain America, you should avoid saying it here. 
  6. Limit self-promotion. Refrain from sharing your Twitch streams or team invites outside of applicable conversation or dedicated channels. 
  7. Stay on-topic. We know conversations will take their own route, but please try to keep the discussion to the appropriate channels. 
  8. No politics. This includes hot-button social subjects. While some commentary on politics and society is unavoidable, this is not the platform for those discussions. 
  9. English chat only. To ensure that our community is adequately moderated, please refrain from carrying on non-English conversations in chat. 
  10. No sharing of private information. Screenshots that include another person's personally identifiable information or private messages should be anonymized, or they may be deleted.
  11. No mudslinging. Constructive criticism and critical discussion are welcome, but personal attacks or defamatory and disparaging statements about individuals or entities are not.

Please note that these rules are not comprehensive. Moderators and staff may remove content, administer reprimands, or warn users for violations not codified here at their discretion. If a moderator or staff member asks you to stop doing something, please respect their request.

 

 

Moderator Role and Permissions

Granting additional permissions to a moderator is essential for them to carry out their role effectively. It is up to you to determine which permissions they should have.  

Permissions  

Mentionable and Display Separately should be enabled. The moderator role should be visible and easily identifiable as a moderator, and they should be mentionable by other users on the server. 

 

General permissions

Update Server: This allows you to update all server settings. This permission is required to turn off Open entry and to view the Audit log.  This role permission should be given to only your most trusted moderators.

Manage Roles: This allows you to update the server's roles, to apply and remove roles.

Kick/Ban members: This allows you to kick or ban members from the server. 

Manage Webhooks: This allows the creation of webhooks and edit or delete existing ones. 

Mention @everyone and @here: allows you to use these mentions.

Access moderator view: allows access to the moderator view to see all private replies.

 

Customization permissions

Manage Emoji: allows the creation and management of server emotes

Manage Nicknames: Moderators can change the nicknames of other members, useful if someone joins with a name that isn't appropriate! 

 

Bot Permissions

Manage bots: anyone with this permission can create, edit and delete bot flows. Make sure anyone with this permission knows what they are doing.

 

XP Permissions

Manage server XP: anyone with this permission can manage the XP on a server. 

 

Moderator tools 

  1. Create a mute/time-out role that can be added to category permissions. This is a quick way to stop a user who may be spamming. Consider adding a channel that only moderators and the user who has been muted can access for any discussion regarding the moderator action.
  2. Deleting messages quickly with shift-click 
  3. When kicking or banning users, the option to delete all message history is given, super useful for spam.
  4. Private Replies are a great tool for giving gentle reminders to observe the rules.

This is a basic guide to Community Moderation, more guides will be coming soon! 

 

 

 

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