With 76% of internet users admitting to participating in an online community, it comes as no surprise that 60% of companies are deciding to jump on this trend. Setting up an online community, whether e-learning or interest-based, can lead to a stable and lucrative career for entrepreneurs, business coaches, and brands, regardless of their niche. However, not just any community is built for success, and only healthy community spaces with high engagement will stand the test of time. The key to creating a healthier online space lies in effective community moderation.
Specific community platforms such as Podia, Patreon, and Teach.io offer features to moderate communities. But how can this create a healthier online space?
Community moderation involves implementing processes that manage the community’s discussions and topics, providing its members with a safe and secure space. Community moderation is essential for maintaining a healthy, engaged, and, thus, sustainable paying community.
Effective community moderation should:
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Here’s what good community moderation can do for your community:
Pre-moderation involves reviewing community content before it’s published to the community platform. This could be a document, video content, a poll, or a simple text post.
With pre-moderation, moderators can check if the content aligns with the rules and guidelines of the community. They can flag disrespectful or abusive language, personal information, unsafe links, or posts that are off-topic.
However, although pre-moderation reduces the risk of harmful content, it can slow down the community, especially when there is a backlog of posts to approve. Due to this, pre-moderation is best for smaller and more tight-knit communities with fewer posts, as this will make pre-moderation easier and smoother.
Post moderation lets moderators review content after it has been published on the platform. Moderators can flag offensive content early on and remove it without disrupting the flow of posting and hindering community conversation. This approach increases community engagement and helps retain content authenticity, as users will publish what they want to, rather than what they think will be approved.
However, post-moderation may mean that there’s a delay in removing harmful content, and other users may spot it before moderators do. There is always a risk of missing something, especially if you’re running a big community. That’s why post-moderation may be more suited for medium-sized communities, where pre-moderation would hold up large batches of content from being posted.
With reactive moderation, moderators respond directly to complaints from community members, whether that’s abusive and harmful content or discussions that have gone off-topic. Moderators then review the content; if it doesn’t follow the guidelines, they remove it.
This form of moderation is cost and time-effective, as it doesn’t require moderators to be actively policing at the community 24/7. Furthermore, it means that you may only need one or two moderators as opposed to an entire team. This approach also allows content creators to share their content without feeling like they’re being micromanaged, which may reduce engagement.
Despite this, direct reliance on user reports may mean that harmful content may be missed. This can lead to inconsistent moderation, which can make your members feel unsafe and harm your community’s health.
The moderation type is better suited to larger communities where there are enough users to flag inappropriate content.
This form of moderation lets your community members vote to determine whether the content is appropriate for the community. The advantage of this is that it engages the community. However, although distributed moderation can seem the most diplomatic option at first glance, ir can lead to biased moderation, especially for more popular community members, and may even create cliques or mob mentalities, which can hinder the community in the long run.
Distributed moderation may be best for interest-based communities where the goal is to make connections.
Automated moderation uses AI-powered algorithms to automatically moderate and remove harmful content, as opposed to a human completing it manually. Moderators feed the technology data, and the AI picks up on harmful content based on its existing knowledge bank, such as abusive language and sexually explicit images.
The advantages of automated moderation include speed and large-scale moderation since the technology can screen and remove harmful content much quicker than human eyes.
However, technology is not perfect, and harmful content can still slip through the cracks. Furthermore, the AI may remove content that’s not harmful, which may impact engagement if users feel like their posts are being removed without a reason.
Using a combination of AI and human review is the best way to approach this moderation type. The technology can flag and remove harmful content, and then human moderators can choose whether to delete posts permanently.
Automated moderation is best for large-scale communities with lots of content that needs moderating, as this will speed up the process.
A community moderator is essential for creating a positive and welcoming space for all its members. Moderators use guidelines given by the community owner to moderate the community and ensure all rules are followed. They identify issues before they have a chance to escalate and impact the experience for the wider community, creating a positive and welcoming space for all its members.
The core responsibilities and tasks of a community content moderator include:
Clear community rules and guidelines are essential for setting expectations regarding community behavior and content. Here are some tips for setting effective community guidelines:
For example, Duolingo, a community for learning languages, makes it very clear that they prohibit the following behavior:
However, their guidelines also encourage positive behavior, too. They ask users to “always be respectful” and “help and support across all skill levels.”
If you’re looking for more information and examples of community rules and guidelines, check out this article.
Community moderation shouldn’t just discourage negative behavior. It should also encourage positive interactions. According to a recent study, The Role of Moderators in Facilitating and Encouraging Peer-to-Peer Support in an Online Mental Health Community, moderators play a critical role in promoting engagement from community members.
To encourage respectful and constructive interactions among members, moderators can:
A big part of community moderation is ensuring conflicts are managed effectively and quickly before they impact the wider health of the community. It’s important to address violations fairly and consistently. Don’t just kick community members out – ensure you have all the information you need before proceeding. For example, if a community member has posted harmful content, the moderator should investigate it themselves.
If community members have violated guidelines, take action immediately. For example, if a member is making threats, using racist language, or doxing others, you may need to remove them from the community ASAP to prevent further harm.
Some community members might need warnings, but others may be suspended or even banned from the community, depending on the guidelines broken. If the same community members continue getting warnings due to their behavior, make it clear that you will have to remove them if they continue.
However, not every single situation requires drastic action. In a community that houses such a range of people worldwide, disagreements are bound to happen. More minor conflicts can be dealt with through mediation and listening.
Ensure to log and document all community violations in a spreadsheet or folder in case you need to revisit specific events.
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Maintaining transparency and accountability will help you build trust with your community, leading to a healthier online space. The biggest benefit of maintaining transparency is trust. If your community trusts you, this will lead to higher engagement and retention rates, helping you grow a healthy and sustainable community where every member feels respected.
Moderators can do a few things do to be more transparent with their community.
Implementing new moderation methods will contribute to community health. Stay updated on new trends and best practices, such as developments in AI technology and new features released by community platforms. Look for articles, sign up for newsletters, and check community platform blogs to discover moderation changes.
If you choose to implement one type of moderation, such as pre-moderation, but find it doesn’t work for your community, recognize that it’s okay. Every community is different, and each moderation process will be too. Try different ideas until you find the best way of creating a safe and healthy community.
Choosing the right moderation team will help you create a healthier online space. Good leadership is important for moderators. They shouldn’t just police the community but also provide an example of how other community members should behave. Here are some qualities you should look for:
Training and development for moderators will help you create a professional team that will contribute to your community’s health. Share onboarding video courses or documents that contain all the rules, regulations, and guidelines so that moderators know what’s expected of them. Update these regularly and let moderators know when you do.
You can also offer mentorship programs, where older moderators teach and advise new team members. This will encourage consistency in the moderation style.
Offer regular check-ins and meetings for moderators, especially new members, so you can iron out any issues or concerns they may have. Peer support is another excellent way to create and nurture a supportive environment. Create a separate moderator-only channel or space in your community where moderators can discuss issues, such as conflicts and inappropriate content. A supported and happy moderation team will naturally lead to a healthier community.
Providing feedback for improvements and recognizing moderators’ contributions will also help them feel supported and valued within the community.
When moderators engage frequently with the community and its members, this builds rapport and trust, which will ultimately improve community health. To interact with the community, moderators could get involved in community discussions and host live events. This will highlight that the moderators are part of the community and also ensure moderators stay up-to-date with what’s happening. Furthermore, apprehensive community members will feel safer if they can see moderators actively engaging with the community.
Moderators should be approachable and friendly, as this will encourage members to come forward when they have an issue. Moderators should also respond to issues in a timely manner before they have a chance to escalate.
Different platforms will have different community moderation tools. For example, social media platforms, such as Instagram and X, have mute and block features, whereas Facebook Groups will let moderators approve and remove content accordingly.
However, as your community grows, so does the challenge of moderation. It can become easy to miss harmful content and disruptive members, which can harm the overall health of your community. Although social media may be effective for drawing in expanding reach and drawing in new community members, it falls short when it comes to moderation features and tools.
Platforms designed for community building, such as Podia, Thinkific, and Teach will have built-in community moderation features to help you curate a safe and inviting community for all your members.
Teach.io is specifically designed to turn your passion into profit. Create a community with everything in one place, including chat, live events, calendars, posts, course builders, and, of course, moderation tools. Focus on creating a healthy community where your members feel safe.
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Although it comes with many rewards, running a community is challenging. Effective moderation is important to keeping your community stable and sustainable. Once you’ve worked out which moderation techniques work best for your community, you can remove harmful content, lower the rate of disruptive behavior, and create a healthy community space where your members feel safe enough to engage.
