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).
That's about it, I think, so:
Applications can be made here.
Thanks in advance, folks.
This is a related question that maybe will help some other people to volunteer.
I don't see a way of creating new communities here. I was considering the possibility of creating communities I will miss from Reddit and moderate those. But I guess this goes hand by hand, right?
You are a moderator of the whole instance, not just one community. And then to create a new community you have to have admin rights on the instance?
That's a purposeful decision on the part of the Beehaw admins, to disable new community creation. Avoids the issue of people splintering off into hundreds of communities with like one user each and no interactions. They're taking regular requests for new communities as the existing ones get big enough for it to make sense splitting them up.
I see the logic they're using, but I'll also note that the niche hobby communities were always the best part of reddit. (Heck I even know of a similar specific hobby group on Facebook that's still great.) If they don't exist, will people be interested?
Honestly not really sure which side I come down on it, but as long as I've got somewhere to spam pics of craft projects I'm happy lol. I'm sure plenty other craft communities will start popping up on other instances as soon as it gets too much in Creative.