Thank you for your support <3
We might never know...
So, there's two overarching questions here: what I intend and expect of the role - and what I think discord moderation should look like moving forward.
Starting from the benninging:
What I intend to do with the role is also what the role should be in my view. A discord-focused moderator should ideally be doing three things with their role, which mirrors what most of the in-game staff do in-game as well:
- Activity - Just as in-game staff get on the game and run repops, I think a natural part of the discord moderation role is to be active in a variety of Discord channels, initiating conversation, responding to others, keeping an eye out for ways to improve the user experience in our channels, and having a constructive, critical perspective on what we're doing to identify what we can be doing better.
- Welcoming - And just as in-game staff are responding to people and engaging with people in-game, whether in text or voice, I view that as a natural part of the moderation duty in Discord. Both in general in keeping it a fun, relaxed space where people will want to hang out. But especially also in 'onboarding' new arrivals; interacting with them, welcoming them (literally), and helping them get their bearings in the discord to settle in. The first impression is very important for people arriving both from the GL in-game offerings AND from the promotions done on external platforms. A good first experience makes people more likely to hang around and overall gets the discord to be a more fun place - the more the merrier, after all.
- Moderating - This is unavoidably a part of the role as well. But it should not and does not necessarily mean warning, kicking, muting, and or banning every time someone does something quirky. Usually, leading the conversation in a different direction or otherwise deescalating it without pulling staff powers into the blend should be the goal. In my view the best standard for moderating a discord is mediating. Sometimes, inevitably, people irk each other. Not everyone is going to be friends in a community. But it's going to make the discord a very unwelcoming, stifling space if minor cases of personal friction are resolved with moderation. The flipside to that is that sometimes it's necessary to pull out the big guns and drop warnings, mutes, what have you, to keep it a fun and healthy space for the community as a whole, as well as to clearly define what is acceptable and what is not. I think navigating these two options - mediating or moderating - with some level of discretion is a crucial part of getting discord moderation right.
Which leads me to the second question, namely what discord moderation and staff should look like going forward.
I think it is good and positive that all active staff have a hand in discord moderation. It is the core platform and gathering for our community. We all have different interests and foci. Things we care about and things that don't interest us. By having as many people as possible be a part of moderating the discord, we ensure that all channels are frequently having staff eyes on them. So I don't think that should change, but I do think more can be done to improve clarity of discord moderation and expectations for the team as a whole. It often feels like people are hesitant to act, whether for fear of being called biased, abusive, or for uncertainty on whether or not it warrants stepping in in the first place. Clarifying a standard for that would go a long way.
As for the structure of discord-focused moderation, I think it should be fairly loose, ideally. I think it would suffer from having a strong hierarchy such as the TTT team does. I'm unsure what exactly the engagement team structure is. The way I see it, discord moderation - as mentioned above - necessitates a degree of discretion because it is almost entirely social moderation (barring the use of slurs or similarly offensive material) - which can be more tricky to get right. It's certainly more tricky than whether or not you T-baited me, which is indisputable with a deathscene. To that end, I think the ideal structure is having a current lead admin overseeing the discord-focused moderators, who are at the moderator level of privilege, but with a fair bit of leeway in applying specifically lenient discretion to enforcement/punishment lengths. So let them scale down punishments, but not up. This allows the discord-focused moderation team to fulfill their duty of care toward keeping the space welcoming, by both clearly establishing lines in the sand, but not over-enforcing where the offense itself is technically a violation but in itself small. Comparatively, I think for starters that level of discretion should only be afforded to discord-focused moderators, while the broader team applies the protocol enforcement.
My reasoning for this disparity is that this way, the discord-focused team can start building a standard and general vibe of enforcement, before inducting the wider staff team into applying that same level of discretion. Pioneering what a fair and functional enforcement looks like before guiding the wider team in applying that same standard. In my view, that's both something I could contribute to but also something that would greatly benefit the team in the long run, and give the broader team confidence in handling discord moderation as well.
Thank you for your support, it's my hope that I can live up to those expectations <3
