The mods ask you to join them. When I was recruited, I received a message with the line, “We offer an amazing package of imaginary perks, including the illusion that you’re always right.” That made me smile.
You receive some training sessions to start out, as well as a document that details the rules of modding. Also, there are old Meta threads and annotations by former mods (and especially our long-time community manager Augustlan) to look at. The idea is to preserve Fluther’s spirit and continue with moderation as it was intended by the founders. Part of that is moderating posts that don’t meet the Writing Standards, but the more important aspect is preventing flame wars and feuds. We’re striving to ensure a kind and helpful atmosphere of thoughtful discussion. Basically, we want Fluther to be very different from the YouTube comment section.
Most days, being a mod is just like being any other jelly, except instead of flagging spam, you can remove it. And you get to see more of it, including many excellent business proposals from Scamdinavian princes via email.
It can be really satisfying to log in just in time to ban a troll who’s made it their goal to post “haha u guys suvk” 140 times. On the other hand, there’s a bit of a mental trap to that because when we stay away too long, it’s always clearly visible. So because of that, it can feel like we’re abandoning this lovely lagoon when we want to stay away from our phones and computers for a while.
What it’s like to see all the bad stuff that gets nuked…hm, I think I’d say you become desensitized. Some of the spam is fairly graphic. It used to shock me, but now I can often delete it before even really reading it. A minute later, I couldn’t say what it was about.
You do learn a fair bit about people as a mod. But because Fluther attracts unusually lovely individuals (and only the occasional troll), I’ve mostly learned very encouraging things about humanity. Like that virtual strangers will offer cash to people in financial trouble. That a community like Fluther is the replacement for family to some. That people can be fully loved and respected for their thoughts on a page, and that they’ll be missed when they stay away, as well as truly mourned when they’re gone.
“I don’t think people would be mean…would they?”
Not usually. People are overwhelmingly polite and patient with us. But when we make mistakes or appear biased, jellies become very protective of their lagoon. They hold us accountable, as they should. We always appreciate feedback and questions. At times, however, people are so appalled to witness seemingly inconsistent moderation decisions that they immediately doubt we would provide an honest answer when asked about it. It is a bit difficult to realise that people can instantly lose trust in us like that, even if we’ve done our best to faithfully protect this community that’s so important to us all for years. Luckily, this doesn’t happen regularly. And when it does, it’s not a reflection of the people here. Rather, it comes with the territory: a lot of our work is invisible. We routinely destroy evidence (we can still see it and absolutely everything we do is logged automatically, but everyone else just sees a string of moderated responses). And additionally, we often can’t go into detail about our actions because publicly discussing how a specific user violated the community guidelines is a violation of the moderation guidelines.
Overall, being a mod has been a very interesting experience for me. I learned a lot about the inner workings of both websites and communites. Spam is boring and frustrating, but helping people solve problems or protecting them from harassment is quite rewarding. It’s fun to see the occasional note from veteran mods on ancient threads, and it’s lovely to work with the insanely smart and wise mods I’ve been lucky enough to know personally. They’ve inspired and influenced me, and the respectful way we disagree has utterly spoiled me for less-than-stellar teamwork.
“I really don’t think I could handle all that responsibility since I cause so many of the problems around here.”
Please. I’d love to have only problems caused by you. Where do I sign up?
Composing members:
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Composing members:
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