By Victoria Tran, Communications Director at Kitfox Games, an indie studio in Montreal. Currently working on Boyfriend Dungeon, Lucifer Within Us and publishing Mondo Museum and Dwarf Fortress. This was originally written on their Medium blog.

Sometimes, your community grows to a size where you can no longer reasonably keep track of it by yourself — you need to sleep, go to conventions, do other work, etc. At this point, you’ll probably need a mod or two.

And honestly?

A community is only as good as their mods.

So let’s talk about how I found Kitfox’s mods on Discord, what qualities I generally look for, and management techniques!

When Do I Need a Moderator?

You don’t ALWAYS need a moderator — for instance, if your community is quite small, relatively calm, and you have enough bandwidth, you may get away with not having a moderator for awhile.

Artist credit: KC Green

At Kitfox, we have 6k+ Discord members, 6 mods, and a bot for general moderation. However, the activity of the mods varies drastically on their own work schedules and/or life business. Our Discord is pretty well behaved (I love them), the mod role is pinged infrequently, and we have steady streams of conversations everyday. I got our first mod in 2018, sometime after the Kickstarter of Boyfriend Dungeon.

I can’t say for certain when you’ll need a mod (I don’t know if there is a standard community size to mod ratio), but variables for how many you need include: the time zones you need covered, how active your mods are, how active — and not just how big — your game community is, strictness of the server, etc.

So maybe my best advice is: when you feel overwhelmed or know an announcement is coming up that will overwhelm you (e.g. a launch/new game announcement), look for mods! Preferably you will find mods before you are overwhelmed, but sometimes these things creep up.

Finding Moderators

Alright, so you’re ready for moderators but… how do you find them? There are a number of ways to do so:

Choosing Moderators

Choosing moderators requires a good sense of judgement. Personalities are, of course, extremely varied so I can’t give you some easy “choose only ISFJ people” or something. (Lol, can you imagine though.) Keep in mind being a pleasant person to chat with online is not the same thing as being a good moderator.

Overall, you can keep these things in mind:

When it comes to approaching potential mods, I’ve always asked them via private messages listing out why I’m asking them, why I appreciate their presence, mod expectations, and a clear statement that it is not at all mandatory for them to accept. No pressuring/guilting anyone into becoming a mod! I also tend to reitierate that mod work can be quite draining, so if they try it out and decide it isn’t for them, no hard feelings ever.

Knowing Your Mods

As the defacto leader for your mods, you’re essentially in charge of your own team. And so, all the responsibilities and leadership skills of a manager will be on you. That includes knowing the dynamics and personalities of your mods, taking ultimate responsibility for anything that happens, and ensuring their wellbeing as much as you can. Mods are not volunteers you get to ignore.

Managing Mods

Mods are still people with opinions, and often the times that call for mods will be instances that can be a bit divisive. Maybe one mod thinks the person should get a warning, while the other mod wants a straight ban. Either way, you need to be ready for things like this to crop up. Time to brush up on those leadership skills.

I highly recommend you have an internal moderator guideline outlining:

And while you’re at it, you should keep these questions in mind for yourself:

Keep in mind managing moderators isn’t just about handling arguments though, or telling them what to do. You need to respect their time and concerns. After all, they’re the ones helping you out! For example:

These are specific situations, and you may find you need different rules for your own moderators. And that’s good — every community is so different, you shouldn’t be purely copying/pasting rules. Morph them to fit your situation.

By the way — don’t forget that in the end, you’re the one responsible for your mods. No throwing them under the bus. And if one of them majorly messes up? That’s their bad as much as yours.

Be Thankful!

In a perfect world, we would be paying our moderators. But with indies, it’s not viable sometimes. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t actively be showing your mods that you’re grateful for their help because uh, let’s face it, we’d perish without them.

I can’t say exactly what you can do — part of the whole thankfulness part is to give non-generic thanks, in my opinion — but here are things I have done:

Conclusion

Mods are precious cinnamon rolls that must be protected, yet somehow they protect us. Once your community grows large enough, they’re imperative to not only maintaining the rules of your community, but also greatly contribute the overall positive atmosphere of it, if done right!

As community devs, we are in our own managerial positions, in a sense. Hint hint to people who undervalue or misjudge how difficult soft skills are: you try doing this and try not to get demolished.

We need to be conscious of the the people we welcome into our communities and the ones that we choose to help us. And together, you basically become the Voltron of a good community structure.

<3

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