Hello forumers! As @anomalily steps back, we’re looking to add 2-4 people to our moderation team. We are particularly looking to include at least one moderator in European and Asian time zones in order to respond for our global community.
The expectation of a forum moderator is that they log in to the forum at least 3x/week (more is encouraged) and perform moderator duties. Generally, there is less than 10 minutes of work per week.
Duties as follows:
- Look at new posts that need approval, and approve them if they’re not spam
- Make judgement calls on spam flag posts
- Add spoiler tags if requested
- Lock and hide journals if requested
- Remove spam posts, and immediately ban a user that is obviously a bot
- Remove posts that violate the Forum Rules and Forum Guidelines, and give the author a warning (or ban them after discussion with other moderators)
- Communicate with other moderators
- grant badges during special challenges like Budgetober
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Use the private #discourse-moderators discord channel or the Staff category in Discourse to discuss things like:
- Tougher flagged posts that need discussion (discussing -isms, etc)
- Changing organization of topics
- Asking for help with moderation tasks
- Discussing improvements and best practices
- Discussing users (for example, for promotion to moderator status or how to talk to a user about a code of conduct violation)
- Commitment to moderation duties
- Ask to renew your commitment to being a moderator on an every-six-month basis - if it turns out you no longer want to or have time to moderate, please make space for another person (we have a limited number of moderator seats). It’s fine to step down, we all have other commitments. It’s much better to say you can’t do it than to just disappear!
- Moderators who have had little to no active moderation activities for 3 months may be proactively asked to step down.
- Work to identify community members who may be interested in becoming a moderator, based on their interactions with the community. Discuss with fellow moderators before offering the position.
- Ask to renew your commitment to being a moderator on an every-six-month basis - if it turns out you no longer want to or have time to moderate, please make space for another person (we have a limited number of moderator seats). It’s fine to step down, we all have other commitments. It’s much better to say you can’t do it than to just disappear!
If you are interested in being a moderator, please DM your answers to these questions to @anomalily. Don’t stress about the questions, it’s not an exam, just a conversation. Applications will be considered based on forum history and participation, availability, and ability to make judgement calls on tough topics.
- Name and handle
- Time Zone
- General times you would be on the forums
- Why do you want to be a moderator?
- Are you comfortable making judgement calls about nuanced topics, such as racism, ableism, religion, fatphobia, transphobia, and anti-semitism? Is there any area you feel you need support in?
- Have you moderated an online community before?
- Our moderation policies are biased in favor of the OP in the journals section, which might include removing or spoilering content at the OP’s request. Are you willing to remove content, even when you might disagree personally with the OP’s request?
- Anything fun things you’d like to see implemented on the OMD forums?
All applicants will be notified by end of March, with a kickoff zoom meeting in April.