As we near the end of Volunteer’s Week in the UK, the Talewind Team wanted to share some advice when it comes to hiring, managing, and most importantly, respecting volunteer moderators in your Discord community. This article is written from our experience of running communities within the games industry, but I’ve tried to keep it accessible to all, with most advice being relevant to any business making use of voluntary positions in online communities.
Moderators play a crucial role in managing game communities, particularly on platforms like Roblox, where teams are smaller and less resourced than traditional games studios. These passionate community members dedicate their time and effort to maintain a positive and safe environment for players in your community, and it is often impossible to manage a Discord server without them. However, it is essential to ensure that their utilisation is ethical and aligns with the best practices of community management, this post will outline key considerations and guidelines for you to keep in mind.
Clear Expectations and Guidelines
Firstly, it is important to establish clear guidelines in your community, so that not only your mods understand what rules are to be enforced, but also, your community and mod teams know what standards to hold themselves to. A community manager, if you have one, or member of the leadership team should develop a comprehensive set of community guidelines that clearly outline the behaviour expected from both players, and your volunteer moderators. Ensure that these guidelines are easily accessible and regularly communicated to all community members!
Foster an environment of open communication and transparency between the game developers, community managers, and volunteer moderators. Regularly provide updates on the community’s progress, changes in guidelines, and upcoming events to keep them informed. This not only helps improve clarity within the moderation team, but also builds trust between the game community and the studio in general. However, it is also important to be clear about when certain information can be shared outside of the team. The best rule of thumb for moderators is to only discuss information that has been formally shared in a public channel by an employed member of the studio team.
Recruitment and Selection
Implement a fair and unbiased process for selecting your volunteer moderators. Avoid any form of favouritism or discrimination during the selection process to ensure equal opportunities for interested community members. In a small community, this can be harder, as you tend to recruit those who are more engaged within the server, as you are better placed to build a relationship with them, but you never know what experience the average lurker has! To avoid this, whenever you are in need of new mods, it is best to announce you are recruiting, and provide an anonymous way of people nominating themselves for the role.
There are plenty of bots for this, or you can use google forms, for example.
Screen potential moderators based on their commitment to the community, maturity level, and understanding of the game/community’s values. Designing a standard set of questions to compare one applicant’s answers to another not only makes it easier on the community manager but also helps you to prioritise the experience you specifically want. If you know roughly the answer you want to see in advance, when you read through applications, suitable candidates will stand out.
Support and Recognition
Providing training is not only a way to ensure the standards are high within your community spaces, but also serves as a way of giving back to your mods. While paid community positions do exist, Discord moderators are usually volunteers donating their time on an ad-hoc basis, and personal development can be a great reward for their time. You should offer training and resources to help them understand their roles, responsibilities, and how to handle different situations effectively. Educate them on issues such as harassment, inappropriate content, and conflict resolution. Often junior in age or work experience, this training can provide them valuable skill sets which can help them to secure jobs in the future.
Offer resources and tools to assist them in their moderation duties, such as reporting mechanisms, moderation bots, and as mentioned above, guidelines on handling sensitive topics. Also, just being accessible as a manager is important as while a lot of these mods will take their responsibilities seriously, they are not paid employees and just hiring them and leaving them to get on with it is not an effective or appropriate way of managing a Discord Community. Lead by example and act with integrity, and your moderators will do the same.
Recognise the efforts and contributions of volunteer moderators regularly. Highlight their achievements, acknowledge their dedication publicly, and where possible, consider offering incentives or rewards as tokens of appreciation. Even if this is in-game benefits such as resource packs or limited items, the attention will be appreciated.
Wellbeing and Boundaries
Promote the well-being of volunteer moderators by encouraging them to take breaks and prioritise self-care. Sure, there is no contractual obligation to work any particular hours but the same is true for taking holiday, so ensuring they are not permanently active for long periods, or late into the night, is important. In a global environment, such as Roblox, you would benefit from recruiting a team from a mix of timezones, so there are always some mods online. Therefore, being familiar with your mods’ timezone and sleeping habits would not only enable you to ensure round-the-clock support for your community, but also keep tabs on who is potentially working beyond reasonable expectations. Providing resources and information on mental health support services, stress management, and burnout prevention is not only advised for your moderators, but should also be periodically shared with your permanent team, too!
Ensure that volunteer moderators are aware of their limitations and encourage them to set boundaries when it comes to handling challenging situations. Create a supportive environment where they feel comfortable reaching out for assistance when needed. In online communities, young and old, there can be a lot of oversharing of topics which may or may not be appropriate for all members and deciding what is to be deleted and what should be escalated will vary from group to group. Sometimes, serious topics are raised (such as abuse, self-harm or suicide) and while it can be easy to set a blanket rule of deleting certain posts, you as an organisation should also decide what role you play in the protection of your community members, as there is usually a reason these individuals have chosen to reveal this information in your community space. Formally training permanent staff in managing these situations can be costly, but there are also lots of free resources provided by organisations such as Safe in our World, and this experience can be passed down to any of your community-facing teams.
Continuous Feedback and Evaluation
While it is true that these individuals are volunteers and cannot be held to all standards demanded of employed or contract team members, they are still representatives of your brand and should maintain a professional attitude and approach to their duties. You should conduct periodic evaluations to assess the performance and effectiveness of volunteer moderators, and if members of your team are continuously dropping the ball then it is perfectly reasonable to remind them of the standards you expect, and remove those who are unable or unwilling to reach these levels. It is a team effort and you will find some people that would just like to have the title of mod, without wanting to commit to the role. Offer constructive feedback and guidance to help them improve their moderation skills and address any issues that arise in a timely manner, otherwise you may find these individuals will affect the performance of others in the team.
Create an environment where the community isn’t afraid to provide feedback on the performance of volunteer moderators and solicit suggestions for improvements. A good solution for this is to have a ticket system only admins (usually employed/senior staff) can access, which circumvents the mod team and where any user can privately flag any issues with your mods. Regularly communicate updates and changes based on this feedback to maintain transparency.
In summary, utilising volunteer moderators in an ethical manner is crucial for maintaining a positive and safe environment in game communities. By establishing clear guidelines, providing training and support, recognising their efforts, respecting boundaries, and maintaining open communication, game developers and community managers can create an inclusive and thriving community that benefits both players and moderators. These best practices will not only enhance the overall community experience but also foster a sense of ownership and pride among the dedicated volunteers who contribute their time and passion.
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David Statter
Marketing Director
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