Enforcement

Enforcing the rules is a daunting task. However, keeping the following guidelines in mind will make your enforcement of the rules more practical and effective:

Easier to ask forgiveness than to rebuild trust

Asking for forgiveness from a single person that you overmoderated on is an easy task.

Rebuilding the trust of a community that loses faith in you is a daunting task.

It is better to overmoderate and ask forgiveness from the people you overmoderate than to erode the trust of the community by going lax on them or taking time to investigate every last detail to meticulate the perfect punishment. Speed to the hammer is more important to the perception of a moderation team’s quality and trustworthiness than correctness.

Rules are guidelines

Rules are only guidelines. It is ok to deviate from them in good faith to ensure your server is a hospitable place. If you feel it necessary, have a FAQ channel clarifiying your interpretation of the rules and other related things to your moderation approach.

Rehabilitation

There is no use in doing anything other than swiftly banning a member who is a net negative on the community.

If other members ask a member to stop doing something and they refuse or ignore them, they are *not* a member you can rehabilitate. A slap on the wrist such as a warn or an epheremal mute will erode your trust with the community you administrate fast.

The trust you lose from trying to keep a toxic member around and making them into a good person far outweighs the benefits of trying to make them into a productive member of your community.

Time is of the essence

Moderation should never take more than 30 seconds to respond to a report. If you find your team taking more than 30 seconds frequently, expand it.

When expanding your team, keep timezones in mind, as they dictate availablility of the moderators.

Disasters

These types of events indicate something is going severely wrong in your community.

Exodus

If members are leaving in response to a perceived transgression, you have seriously f*cked up something and need to figure out what you’re doing wrong, fast. The conditions that lead to members performing an exodus are generally indicative of systemic faults in moderation. Common causes include being too lax on toxic or trolling members, unacceptably long wait times from report to action, and an abusive moderation team.

Chaos

If your community has generally devolved into a state of chaos, something has rocked the boat hard and you should take measures to identify the cause of the chaos and to reduce it while also calming the community down. This is generally not caused by poor moderation, but by external events such as a prominent member leaving or a raid.