What Is Community Moderation? And How Do You Do It Well?

You need to have excellent written and verbal communication skills, as well as the ability to adapt your tone, style, and format to different Wishedromance platforms, audiences, and situations. You also need to be able to communicate clearly and concisely, using simple and direct language, avoiding jargon and ambiguity, and providing relevant and useful information. Communication skills also involve listening and responding to feedback, questions, and concerns, as well as acknowledging and appreciating contributions and achievements. Venessa Paech is Australia’s leading expert in online communities. She is Director of Australian Community Managers, the professional body for online community practitioners, and teaches community management at the University of Sydney. She founded Swarm, the APAC conference for community managers, and All Things in Moderation, the only professional conference dedicated to online moderation, launching May 2023.

Tips For Choosing The Right Community Management Tool For Online Moderation

• Explore event types, proven strategies, and how tools like Wylo keep members coming back.
• You should also form a dedicated moderation team to be responsible for keeping an eye on activities and handling toxic behavior online.
• When emotions run high or members complain, you’ll have clear guidance to reference.
• Community moderators set the tone for respectful, thoughtful interactions.
• But then things take a turn, and the group is flooded with spam and abuse.

In her spare time, you can find Jessica cheering on the Caps, watching British reality television, and planning out decorating ideas for her new condo in Washington, DC. When it’s a complaint in your community, you have direct access to the individual and the problem, so you can address it immediately. Even though having to make moderation decisions is hard, it’s easier if you have a plan.

They also try to ensure everyone has an equal chance at participating in conversations without fear of being called names, either overtly or covertly. Facebook is one of the largest platforms for online communities, with 1.8 billion users on Facebook Groups every month. Their main goal is to encourage lively and engaging conversations by promoting a safe space for every member to express their opinions, voice concerns, and share ideas. AI moderation tools, user-reporting systems, engagement dashboards, and workflow platforms.

But building and sustaining an active community takes time, strategy, and thoughtful effort. Community moderation best practices include setting rules, monitoring interactions and addressing issues promptly. Use tools like Bettermode to streamline moderation tasks, manage content and ensure a positive and respectful environment.

Facebook Group Moderation Tools

Bettermode equips community managers and teams with tools to monitor interactions, enforce guidelines and keep members satisfied. You don’t need to enforce your community guidelines single-handedly. Identify people you trust in the community, people who get your vision and interact well with others, and deputize them to be your moderators. Well, the real world of online communities is a bit… um… messier. But the good news is, with a bit of work, your community can be that amazing place where people feel safe, know they belong, and can thrive. My ultimate goal as the Community Manager is to create a safe, fun, and productive space for members to connect, share ideas, and support each other.

On the other hand, it helps to keep people talking, so it’s good to send a conversation starter every day, says Lucas Duncan from Whop. While moderators should have a presence in the community and step in when needed, they shouldn’t dominate. The role is mainly to monitor the activity and look for signs that things are going off track.

A great online forum moderator builds a community that eventually moderates itself, letting community members feel as if they have some control and pride in what they’ve built. Place them on full moderation and send a second written notice of the violation, offering to talk on the phone or via video chat about the infraction and what community means to you. Have the template all set up in your email – keep the process clear and concise. We recommend a three-strike rule to protect the community forum and to give your users the benefit of the doubt. If you have it from the beginning, you always have your policy to rely on when you need to back up moderation decisions.

Research shows that peer-driven moderation improves member trust and reduces rule violations by 40%. Explore 11 examples of thriving brand communities and learn how top brands build loyalty and improve customer service through online brand communities. Learn how online communities help telecom providers boost customer service, enable self-service, and reduce costs — while increasing loyalty and retention.

To conclude, it’s important to understand that community moderation plays a vital role in establishing and sustaining healthy online communities. The key to effective moderation lies in establishing clear rules and guidelines, enforcing them consistently and promoting a positive and inclusive community culture. Creating a private space or sub-community for your moderators is an essential strategy for strengthening and unifying your moderation team. This dedicated space serves as a hub for moderators to collaborate, discuss challenges, and share best practices for managing conflicts.

The community guidelines are in place to help you keep unhelpful or unproductive content away. If a member asks why their post was rejected, the community manager can always point out that the content goes against the stated community guidelines. When this type of situation happens, let the member know they can always rewrite the post to fit the guidelines and resubmit. You can even integrate some gamification elements like badges for members who have moderated other community members and allow them to display their badges on their profiles. Stack Overflow community uses gamification elements in the form of badges that other members can earn for moderating content and contributing to discussions. They even created a whole list of moderation badges that community members can earn based on their contributions.