a reflection on my time as a discord moderator

[vincent]

Hi everyone. I want to post this just as a personal reflection on my time as a mod, what I felt worked and what didn't, and my ideas for the future.

Feel free to respond with criticism, agreement, how you saw this from your perspective, etc. Everyone's voices are valuable to me.

Also, thank you for reading/

--

In the run up to my being a moderator on the Yesterweb, I had been talking with some friends on the server about the culture issues I felt were happening.

To make it short, there were a lot of issues we were feeling with the community at the time. We felt that conversation was often stagnant and repetitive. A lot of social habits had started to form that were either unhealthy or otherwise just didn't work for the size of the community.

So, I posted what I would semi-jokingly refer to my manifesto. For ease of reading, I will post it here for reference:

"Hey everyone,

I wanted to open up a bit of a discussion about some behaviors that I and a few others in the chat have been noticing. This is not an indictment of everyone, just an ask that you’re aware of the space that we’re in and what we’re about here on the server.

To start:

There’s been a lot of voiding going on in the chat. For those who don’t know, voiding is referring to sort of ‘speaking to the void’ – speaking without an intent to start a discussion. This can look like a lot of different things, for example:

1. Venting with no clear purpose. Venting if you need advice or just support is, of course, something that we all do. However, be aware if you’re just venting to vent without any desire to have people converse with you, then you’re voiding. Frankly, voiding in this way can be incredibly draining to everyone in the chat. We care about people: seeing people in bad situations can be really emotionally affecting especially if it is something that is happening every day and feels like it is hopeless to try and give advice for. Also, consider that a lot of topics are very traumatic/triggering to just dump on people without warning or consenting to a triggering conversation, especially if the conversation as a whole is otherwise lighthearted and/or doesn’t contain any other major triggering subjects. If you feel the need to bring up a triggering topic in conversation, always consider using a spoiler tag and clearly labeling it so people can decide if they’re willing to participate.

2. Random updates on your day. It’s one thing to say, “I’m doing [x] today, has anyone else done it? What should I expect?” That opens up a conversation that people can participate in. It’s another entirely to go, “I’m doing this today.” without any indication that you actually want to talk about it. A lot of us have blogs and use websites like status.cafe for small updates like this – please consider doing that rather than dropping something into the chat that it may be hard for others to respond to. If we’re all discussing our days – for example, a lot of people will ask ‘how’s everyone doing?’ which can be a good way to get people talking. But if no conversation like that is going on, consider waiting until the next time that the conversation comes up rather than attempting to just drop an update that doesn’t ask a question or serve as the basis for discussion.

3. Interrupting conversations with non-relevant information. If you have nothing to discuss or something that people can reply to, consider just using reacts or quietly reading the conversation. It can be frustrating when someone interjects into a conversation just to assert a random fact about themselves. This also includes attempting to start another conversation in a channel where one is already happening – we have a lot of channels for a reason! Consider going to another one that fits better for what you’re trying to discuss.

As I said previously, don’t take this as an indictment. These are things that all of us – even I! - need to work on too. However, I’ve felt a general decrease in the quality of conversation on this server recently and that’s upsetting as someone who has been here for a bit and has appreciated that this – unlike many other online spaces – encourages and houses productive, meaningful conversation. Please consider the messages you send, the reason you’re sending them, and how others may interpret them. The Yesterweb hopes to break out of some of these more negative behaviors that we fall into due to social media and larger online trends, so consider if you are re-creating these behaviors here when we should be working to move past them."

I stand by this statement still, and I think it sums up a lot of the issues that led to my personal desire to want to shut down the Discord.

So, this statement led to me being offered a moderator position, which I took.

I don't regret this decision at all. In fact, I will continue to moderate through the forum.

What I do regret, however, is a lot of how I went into the moderator role.

The changes that needed to be made were known to the staff for a while, but unfortunately life often got in the way, and the other staff members - rightfully - did not want to add another layer of stress onto their lives through this sort of massive 'course correction' for the server. I had some lofty ideas of myself as moderator: that being that I was going to be the person who finally pushed the Yesterweb more on-course. The behaviors listed were going to be shut down. A new era would dawn.

This never happened, of course. I think there are a few reasons for this:

1. One person cannot be the crux of massive change, especially in a community of almost 3,000 people.

2. Relating to number one, inconsistent moderation is often worse than no moderation at all.

3. A lot of people had firmly been set in their ideas of how the Yesterweb discord should operate, and I could not change that.

I had essentially given myself a sisyphean task to be a hardass enough to make people change. A lot of this was guided by what I feel are good intentions. I, after all, am someone that believes that sometimes being harsh or strict is the best thing you can do for someone. I was willing to put myself in the line of fire for a better future for the community, to make it more in line with the idea of the internet that we have had all along.

This idea of using tough love to force the server into a new era, of course, came at a price. Conversations in which I tried to enforce some less popular rules/ideas (such as the one against voiding) would often leave me feeling dehumanized by the community. The wave was there, and I was throwing myself in the way hoping I could make it turn around. This is one of my fundamental issues with how big the space had gotten: it was easy for people to get drowned out in the few most active users, a lot of whom exhibited behavior that I was trying to stop.

Becoming a moderator means you're balancing the needs and desires of your community while also trying to keep things as peaceful and organized as possible. There are a lot of negative stereotypes about online moderators out there, a lot of which I feel like are started by people who just don't like being told what to do, which is fine. I think becoming a moderator, however, turned me from a member of the community into Staff to the eyes of many. I will not deny my part of this. I was a hardass, even if it was an intentional effort to get people to see what I felt the issues were, and I'm sure there are many things I could have done differently. Nonetheless, it was a remarkably draining experience to often be treated as 'the fun police' or someone who was some sort of outside entity to The Community who just didn't get it.

This is not meant to guilt those people who may have done this, though. This brings me to a larger point, as I mentioned earlier, about the size of the space and why the Discord was never going to work long term. We didn't have enough people who were active enough on staff to really make these big changes. We all agreed things needed to change, but there is only so much you can do when you're an adult with a busy life.

So, what did I learn from this experience?

1. The best community work is done early and as a group. You cannot stop a train in motion without something big on the tracks. One person is not enough. The staff was always encouraging of my efforts, which I appreciate greatly, but we just didn't have the manpower to do something big. The problem only gets worse as people get set in their ways because it isn't moderated consistently.

2. Not every space needs to be for every thing. The Discord wanted to be an organizational space, a social group, long-form with the ability for short-form, etc. The centralization started to make the server collapse in on itself as we were filled with a lot of people with different goals who all wanted different things from the space.

3. It is important as a community that we do not take our goal as something that exists in opposition to something but rather as for something. I think a lot of the Yesterweb messaging got lost because people thought that we were just against social media rather than for a better internet, two things that connect with each other but are fundamentally different in terms of how you experience them. This, to me, is what led to the biggest schisms in the community with regarded to what everyone wanted.

My biggest hope for the community is that now that we have as close to a clean slate as we can get without completely throwing out everything, these three lessons are taken into account and we can all work together to create a better future for the internet.

To end this, I just want to thank the wonderful staff team of the Yesterweb. Everyone involved has been helpful and supportive during the worst of it, and I appreciate having their insights and companionship as we go into this future together. I couldn't have done it without them.

[amethyst]

So, I posted what I would semi-jokingly refer to my manifesto.

I went back to check, and I can't believe that message was barely two-and-a-half months ago; feels like ages more.

Thank you for sharing your reflections, vinny; they add even more credence to the idea that the server was not closed down without a lot of deliberation.

I'm quite hopeful for this new chapter, and appreciate the tremendous effort expended by all staff to keep the server going as long as they did. I will continue to support this community—and the seeds it has planted—as best I can.

[nikkiana]

This is a really great retrospective and I appreciate that you've shared it, Vincent.

I think the reality of the matter is that moderating a sizable Discord server that grew more quickly than expected is incredibly difficult, and I think that the fact that the Yesterweb community leaders recognized that it was likely going to be unsustainable and made a decisive decision to steer the community in a different direction shows a lot of careful thought and maturity, and I think overall we'll find it a good decision for the community's health overall and shows that Yesterweb really is committed to it's mission.

I also think you've made some really insightful points about chatroom etiquette and troubling and disruptive patterns that can arise within, and I think that's the sort of thing that can be helpful insight to anybody who might be currently running or want to start their own Discord server.

On the subject of voiding in particular, I have one server I'm on that handles this behavior incredibly well... They have a dedicated channel that's just for people who need to vent with no replies allowed, so people who need a moment to void their thoughts but still have the catharsis of having their thoughts be seen and the support of being able to see people respond with reaction emojis, and the channel is set to delete every 24 hours so things don't stay visible. It's definitely an idea that I'd recommend to other server admins to consider if they're having issues with voiding in their channels.

This lesson in particular is one I'd like to highlight:

2. Not every space needs to be for every thing. The Discord wanted to be an organizational space, a social group, long-form with the ability for short-form, etc. The centralization started to make the server collapse in on itself as we were filled with a lot of people with different goals who all wanted different things from the space.

I think this is a big lesson. Discord is not the best format to try and do everything on, and I think often Discord community leaders have historically tried to do that because it was the tool they could figure out how to use to build out a community. I feel like the channel bloat that most servers tend to have is its key design downfall.

One of the things that I think is really challenging about Discord in general is that it took a very basic, very old social pattern and essentially put it on steroids. In a lot of ways, Discord takes some of its inspiration from IRC, one of the oldest chat networks on the Internet.

There are many ways those things are different, but one of the key things that's different is that IRC runs on a model of being a shared server with dedicated system administrators where individuals can then create and moderate their own channel. There were always people who modded several channels, but for the most part a mod's attention wasn't being as severely divided as what happens with most Discord servers that have a lot of people and a lot of channels on them today.

In conclusion, I think you and the rest of the moderation team did the best you could and it was clearly time to shift and try to do something different. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens in the future, because this is a really great community trying to do some really interesting things from what I've experienced so far.

[soggybasahan]

Gonna share my own experience in the server for this response - and I wanna start by saying that I agree with what you felt about the situation in the server.

I don't know when I started not to really vibe with the discord server - I don't have an exact date but I guess looking back now things just generally felt off with an indicator that few, if not no one was mentioning the fact that the community felt really welcoming in the community about channel or elsewhere. I just know that there was a point in the later part of 2022 where the server didn't have the same welcoming vibe that it had when I first joined in the beginning of 2022.

Now, of course this might have been due to the moderators not having time to well, moderate - and I don't blame them! You mods, the community, and the yesterweb have done a lot for me and my sanity this 2022 LMAO by helping me be more mindful of how I use, and act on the web.

However, I really did feel that the community was getting more into that voiding thing, and I noticed that more and more introductions referenced seeing the yesterweb as this old web aesthetic website building community - but it is so much more than that. I also noticed that a lot of the conversations tended to like, not be related to internet discussion at all and was more like a group of friends hanging out in a casual group chat.

And yes that could be a good thing! But I found it hard to jump into conversations now that there's a bunch of inside jokes and I could guess the same of those newcomers. Sometimes I wish I had said something about it??? Or maybe even just nudged the conversations along but I didn't feel like I could change that by myself LMAO

So I guess when you tried to say something about it, I kinda felt like this??? Secondhand frustration with the resistance to the statement. I agree with the statement itself a lot, but I didn't agree with you saying it, in a way, cause I knew that people are already long used to talking that way in the chats so it only looks frustrating. I'm glad though that it sparked a discussion in the community about channel regarding the current state of the server. It was nice to know that I wasn't the only one who felt a bit dissatisfied with it.

I didn't know what to do about it, in the end, honestly, but I did talk about the whole situation to my irl friends and how I felt like leaving the server because it didn't (pun not intended) serve my interest in making the web better anymore. My personal solution was putting my energy into getting the people I know irl to care about how they use the internet, or, keep in touch with the friends I made from the community through email or guestbook.

Lo and behold though, around a few days after that I woke up to the discord announcement saying that the server is going into read-only mode LOL and I can say that I'm somewhat glad this change happened, and it was the solution I guess that I've been looking for regarding the yesterweb being a central, trying-to-be-something-for-everyone kind of server. I think that branching out would definitely accomplish several things and purposes:

1. Release from the burden of having to be an all-purpose server; people can now make their own yesterweb-aligned interest servers and communities focusing on more specific aspects instead of having to rely on one server to cater to everyone's interests.
2. Hopefully be less of a burden to moderators as having niche communities would mean less people to moderate
3. If done correctly, set a standard of healthy, friendly communities for members.

Thank you Vincent, and mods for all that you've done for the community!

[vincent]

On the subject of voiding in particular, I have one server I'm on that handles this behavior incredibly well... They have a dedicated channel that's just for people who need to vent with no replies allowed, so people who need a moment to void their thoughts but still have the catharsis of having their thoughts be seen and the support of being able to see people respond with reaction emojis, and the channel is set to delete every 24 hours so things don't stay visible. It's definitely an idea that I'd recommend to other server admins to consider if they're having issues with voiding in their channels.

I just wanted to address this part briefly because I think it is a good idea, but it has actually been tested in the Yesterweb discord and didn't work. This is before my time, so I can't speak to the exact situation of the Yesterweb's version of a vent channel, but here's my experience with them:

1. They're an incredibly emotionally draining thing to have, even if they are opt in, even if the posts are deleted after a while. It is unsustainable for people, particularly the moderators who are going to see all of these messages, to see the constant march of the misery that people experience. There is only so much empathy you can give.

2. Vent channels are great if you want voiding in separate spaces, but in a large server, you don't want much voiding at all. Inevitably, you will have people who's only interaction with the space is to use it as a mental health venting spot. These spaces should exist, but as mentioned, not very space needs to be for every thing, and I think that is best left to it's own dedicated community rather than as a channel to an unrelated one.

I think venting channels inherently encourage a sort of mindless behavior which - again works for some communities - but just doesn't fit for all of them. So I do agree with you! However, I do think it is something that needs a lot more support than perhaps most server staffs have to give for a channel that exists purely for people's emotional problems.