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.
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if you haven’t noticed: we have begun making appointments already; if you’re selected we should get to you shortly, thanks!
Hopefully your vetting process weeds out infiltrators from Exploding Heads and Lemmygrad. The last thing Beehaw needs is to have “criticizing Russia’s government in any way” or “criticizing China’s government in any way” to quietly become criteria of Not Nice behavior.
We will be keeping an eye on moderator behavior. If you ever see a concerning pattern please let us know. To be absolutely clear, criticizing government is general well regarded as a cool thing to do 😎
That is very reassuring to hear, I was just reading a thread about moderations and saw some very concerning posts from admins and moderators over at lemmy.ml so I was starting to worry that the same might have been the case here, I think they do themselves a disservice, as the people that really suffer from the Russian/Chinese governments are the russian and chinese people.
I’m slightly worried I won’t be picked because of my username so I do want to say I have a hardline stance against red fascism and would never support the Soviet union or China.
Edit: and also I don’t want to mod the politics boards at all.
I would be proud to serve with you, comrade.
The USSR and China weren’t/aren’t perfect but if you claim to be a leftist and spend more time criticising them than the West, you’re completely suspect IMO.
I’m an anarchist, do you honestly think I don’t criticise the west too?
All states are evil.
Thank god you guys are taking a brave stand! There’s so few websites out there where parroting the US state department line is accepted!
Sorry, I’m going to have to deny your attempt at forum sliding. That will be all, we’re done here now.
This is a joke comment. Asking for applications always makes me think of this when people are applying for positions of power. In my mind, asking someone who didn’t apply is always the better option but that’s not workable when there is a lot of work to be done asap.
“The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made Moderator should on no account be allowed to do the job.” - Douglas Adams
Being a mod on Reddit for 7-8 years (r/beards with close to 900,000 users and r/moustache with 114,000 users) and new here?!! Submitted!!
Ayy, some great subreddits!! Those are some seriously awesome and wholesome communities that you’re moderated, thanks for that!
Hey!! Thanks for your comment!! It’s been fun but it’s truly upsetting what’s happening over on Reddit. To see things unfold the way it has is just really crappy to see. I’m just happy to be here now, it honestly feels like Reddit of old. Thanks to the mods/admins for approving my application here if you’re reading this!!
Great to see Reddit mods moving over! 🥰
I spend an almost embarrassing amount of time here, might as well put that to productive use! I put my name in the hat 😊
I hope I’ll be considered for animals and pets, because I am studying to be a herpetologist and have made my life around helping people find pets, if you look at my lemmy.ml (I didn’t know about the human rights problem until recently, hence the switch) I was already helping people find pets that would suit them, and am very prepared to deal with misinformation surrounding reptiles and amphibians which I hope makes me somewhat uniquely qualified for such a position.
Ootl, what human rights problem?
A lot of the the moderators and administrations are tankies, so basically left leaning authocrats, they do ban people and delete posts that talk about the genocide of uyghyr people in china for example, or talking against the russian invasion in Ukraine. I have seen both administrators and moderators over there say very dubious things that makes me feel really uncomfortable.
Not sure you’ll be able to answer this, but do you have an estimate of the time commitment for this?
while we’re not totally sure on what the future will look like: we only get a few reports a day on the instance itself right now so… maybe an hour on the worst days, depending on how much you want to steward the community with activity threads and whatnot? it really shouldn’t be that much for the time being, and we’re especially hoping so if we proactively get people in place.
I used to moderate a couple small - medium-small community on reddit. Ill gladly help where I can if you’ll take me.
yeah we’d be happy to, but just so we can all keep it in one place do use the form for this–it’s just easier for all involved than trying to keep track of tons of comments lol
Hey! I know I’m new but I have been admin for large 25k groups!
I am admittedly quite new to Beehaw. What challenges does Beehaw currently face when it comes to moderation?
so far? just scaling up, and that’s about it–but we want to be proactive about that on account of our whole mission here, and the fact that we’re taking in lots of new people who might not immediately vibe with that since a lot of social media primes you to be awful.
Good luck for your search. As a moderator elsewhere, I know how tough it can be to find motivated people.
Never done it before, new here, feeling confident - applied!
If we get the Community Betterment/Do-gooders community I would be happy to mod that or the creative space, or the nature gardening but I don’t think I have the mental bandwidth for moderating politics, news, or the knowledge for the tech groups. Is there an option for moderating specifics?
the form does ask what 3 specific communities you’d prefer to moderate most yeah, specifically so we can accommodate where people feel most comfortable tending to the community. since it doesn’t exist yet i can also add your suggested community as a write in on the spreadsheet we’re using to keep track of form responses
Awesome thanks heaps 😊
I’m here from reddit, where I was hitting a good flow with moderating r/edc. I need more time to get up to speed on how lemmy works before I’m ready to try it here unless you get desperate lol.
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.
That makes a lot of sense, thanks.
To add to this: most other Lemmy instances do let anyone create communities
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.
