Most of the moderator actions I perform on the forum are pretty boring: like changing the category of a topic or splitting a topic that’s become messy into two. But very occasionally I’ll actually delete a thread. This has happened three times: one was a spammy advertisement and two were posts saying essentially “I’m not going to use this product because you put #defundthepolice under your logo”.
I deleted those latter two because I think the message they’re trying to communicate is “fuck off with your radical bullshit” which my reply would be merely “fuck off”. There isn’t a discussion to be had here, so using the forum seems silly.
Though I did invite both users to join us on Discord where I’d be happy to tell them to fuck off, since the format is much looser.
I’m creating this thread because I want ya’ll to know what actions I take as a moderator and to give ya’ll an opportunity to comment on them.
This is something I’ve never considered before, probably because your userbase is so well-behaved (on the forums at least, I can’t vouch for the Discord crowd). Do you foresee the need for full-time volunteer moderation after leaving earliest access?
Leaving earliest access should decrease the number of Shmeppy users in the medium term. I think full-time volunteer moderation is a long way off and may never be needed. I think the most likely catalyst for that would be if users on the other side of the globe from the US became a larger part of Shmeppy’s userbase and I needed someone to keep an eye on things during my sleep-time.
But I hope I don’t have to. I have particular goals and beliefs (that I haven’t quite honed down into easily communicable ideas) around community-building and moderation and it may be challenging to find a mod who I’d be confident giving the reins to. Though I do have some ideas of how I’d find such a person…
