hey folks, as you may have noticed we have a lot of new users and a lot of new activity, and with Reddit's... interesting decisionmaking in the past 14 days we're not expecting that to ebb. however, we're currently just 4 people + some very helpful volunteers, and we can't have eyes on everything. so, we're taking mod applications for community moderators to keep things running smoothly!
we don't want this to be a full-time job for anybody and that is not the expectation—but we also want to underscore this is also not a completely trivial commitment either, so please only apply if you're comfortable with making that commitment. (if you think it's becoming overwhelming or too much for you at a later point, that's different and we can discuss that then.)
What is expected of community moderators?
I'm sure you can surmise, but to be specific:
Encourage and promote respectful and constructive discussions, and address any behaviour that goes against our community's spirit to be(e) nice.
Assist people by answering their questions, offering guidance, and helping them navigate the platform effectively, ensuring they feel heard.
Where possible, give us and/or your fellow active mods concerns, improvements, or insights you have from your section of our community.
What powers do community moderators have?
You'd be expected to use these responsibly, obviously:
The ability to remove or hide posts, comments, or other content that violate our community guidelines.
The authority to issue warnings to users who breach our mantra, and in severe cases, temporarily suspend their accounts.
We generally encourage a compassionate approach to moderating, though. Unless someone is clearly unproductive, we encourage you as a mod to engage in constructive dialogue before banning. And if you don't have the energy for this, you can flag a post to bring it to our (or another mod's) attention.
Additionally: blatantly misusing these or using them maliciously will be instant grounds for demotion, and in the latter case likely permanent banning from the site. Do not do that, please and thank you.
If I'm selected, how can I report stuff to the admins?
On site, you can flag it and leave it for us to deliberate. You can also reach one of us by DM on here.
If you need to immediately contact us, you can currently do so in through Discord (where we have a specific channel for community mod reports), Matrix, or again with a DM on Beehaw itself.
How will mods be selected?
As of now: hand selection. We're still deciding if we want to supplement hand picking mods with another method—any mods selected by that method would most likely serve on a temporary basis (and that would be made clear to them on appointing).
Hopefully your vetting process weeds out infiltrators from Exploding Heads and Lemmygrad. The last thing Beehaw needs is to have "criticizing Russia's government in any way" or "criticizing China's government in any way" to quietly become criteria of Not Nice behavior.
We will be keeping an eye on moderator behavior. If you ever see a concerning pattern please let us know. To be absolutely clear, criticizing government is general well regarded as a cool thing to do 😎
That is very reassuring to hear, I was just reading a thread about moderations and saw some very concerning posts from admins and moderators over at lemmy.ml so I was starting to worry that the same might have been the case here, I think they do themselves a disservice, as the people that really suffer from the Russian/Chinese governments are the russian and chinese people.
I'm slightly worried I won't be picked because of my username so I do want to say I have a hardline stance against red fascism and would never support the Soviet union or China.
Edit: and also I don't want to mod the politics boards at all.
The USSR and China weren't/aren't perfect but if you claim to be a leftist and spend more time criticising them than the West, you're completely suspect IMO.