The biggest mistake new moderators make is allowing bad actors to use the rules against them. You can’t be too prescriptive, you can’t give them ammo to go “well this doesn’t technically violate any rule.” And when they complain you have a “don’t disrupt the community” rule and say it’s “too vague” just tag them as potentially a problem and see what they do. In my experience, they inevitably deserve a ban.
This is my experience moderating communities as well. The worst trolls get a kick out of testing how far they can stretch the rules and provoke mayhem without getting banned. Excessively explicit rules also trample over people who would usually cause no trouble, but get too tense under exceptional situations.
The biggest mistake new moderators make is allowing bad actors to use the rules against them. You can’t be too prescriptive, you can’t give them ammo to go “well this doesn’t technically violate any rule.” And when they complain you have a “don’t disrupt the community” rule and say it’s “too vague” just tag them as potentially a problem and see what they do. In my experience, they inevitably deserve a ban.
This is my experience moderating communities as well. The worst trolls get a kick out of testing how far they can stretch the rules and provoke mayhem without getting banned. Excessively explicit rules also trample over people who would usually cause no trouble, but get too tense under exceptional situations.
It’s amazing how disruptive 2-3 people can be in a community of hundreds or even thousands.
Users may hate “moderator discretion” as a rule, but by fuck do users hate not having it as well
spoiler
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