10 Things to Know as a First-Time Moderator

About seven months ago, one of my favorite streamers made the jump to being a full-time streamer and, with that, came the need for more moderators. I was still relatively new to the community but threw my name in as a candidate and, along with two others, was chosen to join the team. This was my first time as a Twitch or Discord moderator and there are so many things that I wish I had known beforehand. To be clear, I have zero regrets and it is one of the best decisions that I have ever made.

I still consider myself a “baby mod” and know that there is still plenty left to learn. But honestly, it is an incredible experience, and every single day brings something new. I was wildly unprepared going into this adventure, but it has been incredible, and I have learned a few important things along the way. So, for the other new mods or people considering becoming moderators, here’s the top ten things you should know. This is more aimed at those who are moderating for streamers, but a lot of the same principles also align with Discord!

1: Expectations and Responsibility

While you can still sit back and just lurk or vibe with chat on occasion, most time spent in stream, or Discord, will require an extra bit of attention. All the Discord channels are no longer a ‘I’ll check when I feel like it, if at all’ situation. They are a ‘I need to make sure people are not breaking channel rules or forgetting to spoiler things’ situation. This does vary by channel as there are some larger Discord servers where certain mods are assigned a certain section to keep an eye on because the whole server can become a lot. In Twitch chat there is an extra layer of expectation to help new members feel welcome while dealing with trolls or people who are being blatantly rude and inappropriate before they can become a distraction to the streamer or chat.

2: Teamwork is Key!

Mods are part of a team for many reasons, most of which will be expanded on in other sections. Going into moderating with the ideology of doing it alone is a quick path to burnout. With a small server and just a few trusted people, it can be done. However, most situations need that team mentality. Teamwork is an important part of making decisions because some decisions require input from the team and different perspectives on a situation can make or break those decisions. My biggest recommendation here is to just trust yourself and your fellow mods and the team dynamic. Listen to one another and consider all angles.

3: You Don’t Have to Know Everything

If you don’t know, just ask! Your fellow mods would much rather you ask them something when you don’t know what to do in a situation than end up in a potentially tricky situation. Will tricky situations happen? Yes. Will you make mistakes? Most likely. The important thing is that you learn from those situations and mistakes and use that information to grow and become better. I have lost count of the amount of times that I’ve hit a button I did not mean to and yelled that I need a “moddier mod.” Just take ownership and do what is necessary to fix what happened. No one is going to be upset with you. Your team wants to help you succeed, use that.

4: Ask Questions! All of Them!

This tidbit came from a fellow, more experienced, mod that I work with, but is also extremely important! It is always better to ask for clarification than it is to assume. A simple “what do you mean by that?” when you are unsure of someone’s intentions is all it takes!

It can be easy to misinterpret meaning when it comes to text, even when you know the person well. If you are unsure, asking them to explain allows you to find out if what they said was actually something bad, in which case you do the necessary thing and hit them with a timeout or ban, depending on the situation and how your team handles that particular thing. Sometimes it will make them realize what they said is wrong, and they’ll make it right. While other times it really is just a misinterpretation and what they actually meant is nothing bad, it just required slightly more context or explanation.

5: Trust Your Instincts

This may seem contradictory to the previous section but part of being a good moderator also means trusting yourself! There are so many times where I doubt if I’m making the right call so I ask and get the “yeah that’s fine, we trust you to handle that” response. You will learn what needs done and how to do it, so when certain things happen that are slightly out of the norm, trust your instincts. Another of my fellow mods has said that it is more important to have good intuition than to have a list of things to specifically keep an eye out for. Are there things that are very clearly black and white? Sure! But most things fall in a grey area which is where intuition, teamwork, and clarification can all help with a decision.

6: No Two Communities are Alike

Not all chats or Discord servers are the same, and there can be very different limits or rulesets–even if the communities themselves are very close to each other and have a fair bit of overlap. If you feel up to the task of being a mod, and especially if you become one, you will already know how your chat or server works. However, it makes it almost more important to be mindful of other servers or chats and making sure that you are following their rules as well. This feels like it shouldn’t need to be stated, but I can tell you of at least four different situations where mods in communities peripheral to mine have been banned or lost their moderator role for actions elsewhere. Just be smart and remember that you also represent another group or person once you become a moderator.

7: It’s Okay to Leave Them on Read

I’m going to start this one by saying that you can not ignore problems and you will absolutely have to deal with difficult situations. That being said, there are certain situations where it is better to leave someone on read. This can happen for a few reasons. The one I encounter most frequently is that the person messages multiple mods and, once we know someone is handling it, the rest of us just leave the message there because the situation has been addressed.

However, there will be situations where it may be best to not respond at all, which is a call that is best made as a team. I had to do this very thing less than a week ago when someone DM’d me that had been banned in our chat for several months. Through a community discord, we already knew that this person had been banned in several other chats and the account was just back from being suspended. This particular person would message mods asking to be banned or say things in chats to get banned. So when they DM’d asking to be unbanned, the mod team decided it was better not to respond as they had previously put in an unban request that was denied and are likely to do the same thing again. We decided it was best to not respond at all as giving a response telling them that they would not be getting unbanned would likely make things worse. It’s also likely that is the answer they wanted and responding would have only fed the problem.

8: There’s More Behind the Scenes

You don’t see it sitting in chat regularly, but there are a lot of different aspects to modding and there are a lot of conversations and situations that are dealt with for more than just the few seconds it takes to remove someone from chat or discord. Removing someone from a Discord server is usually a bigger deal than removing someone from Twitch chat. The most recent example I can think of for this is when a fairly active member of the channel I mod for made a culturally insensitive comment and, in doing so, offended another member of the community. When mods tried to explain to the poster what happened and how her comment was received, they doubled down and refused to acknowledge that anything they said could have been offensive when it very much was. It took several days of discussion between moderators and this person trying to find a solution and explain what was wrong. In the end, we did end up removing them from the server over the situation. Removal of an active member of the community is not something we take lightly so that decision took several discussions over the course of about a week to make.

Multiple streamer communities also have groups where the mods can work with each other across streams. As an example, the streamer that I mod for plays on the GTAV NoPixel whitelist server. The mods and streamers of this particular community have a whole separate discord to log and share info on bans and potentially problematic chatters, such as the one mentioned in the last section. If someone hops between chats to be toxic, backseat (trying to tell streamer how to play their character), metagame (telling the streamers things they don’t yet know and that they should find out in server, not from chat), or is repeatedly being difficult/breaking rules in multiple chats, we know and can use that information to pre-ban or just monitor. It’s a way to protect the community but is an extra thing to keep an eye on and use to make decisions.

9: The Sword Follows You

When becoming a mod, I never expected that I would be worried about chatters in other communities. Now, even when I go into other chats where I’m not a mod, not only do I get excited to find our chatters there, but I also find that it is slightly more difficult to just vibe. Instead of just hanging out and relaxing, I end up keeping an eye on a few people that I’m used to watching out of habit and typically don’t realize I’m doing it for a while. Chatters also recognize the moderators from other communities as much as they do other chatters who are really active in chat. It is incredibly sweet to have a group of people excited to see your name pop up elsewhere and I love finding other members of the community out in the wild, even if it does put me on alert sometimes!

10: Take Care of Yourself!

The last and most important piece of advice I can give. If a situation is too much, or you need a break, just say something! We have ALL been there. Mental and physical health are important. If you aren’t feeling your best, that’s okay! Mods work as a team for many reasons, and this is one of them. We see it frequently around subathons, but the active mod team will dwindle as some of us are busier in chats where we are needed the most. During other times, we are all just equally busy doing what we do. Balancing life and moderating can be extremely tricky, especially at first. You’re going to want to dive in and spend every single second with chat–whether on stream or in the Discord. There is nothing wrong with that just as long as you remember to focus on yourself as well and take care of yourself!

Being a moderator can be daunting at times but as long as you remember to be kind to yourself, trust yourself, and remember that you aren’t alone, you’ll do great!