User blog:Mira Laime/Moderators Without Borders — a New User Group is Coming

As Discussions becomes more widely embraced across FANDOM, there are more and more communities with lots of posting activity. Not all of these have active admins with the extra time and inclination to moderate. That’s why we’ll be introducing a new global user group next week. Its members will step in across FANDOM to moderate Discussions where help is urgently needed — either because the community has no admins, because the admins have firmly decided not to take an interest in their Discussions, or because they’ve explicitly asked for support.



This group, called global Discussions moderators, will launch with a set of volunteers who have solid moderation experience in Discussions and on their respective wikis. In many cases they have already helped Discussions become a thriving and active part of their own communities.

When they come in to help out on a community, they’ll first check with the admins and local moderators to see what that community’s needs and challenges are and to work out a plan. If there are no admins they can talk to, or if the admins decline to get involved, they’ll consider any local guidelines or policies the wiki already has and come up with a strategy that works best for that particular community and its users.

The global Discussions moderators can help get an ongoing troll problem under control, help organize a community by introducing guidelines and categories where there are none, help improve the quality of posts, foster better relationships among the users and a better understanding for how wikis work, find potential candidates who could take over moderation long-term, and whatever else the local admins might need help with. They won’t interfere with how a wiki is run outside of Discussions.

Note that the new group can’t be everywhere. Unlike the VSTF, who have feeds and alerts that let them know where there is spam or vandalism to delete, the new Discussions moderator group won’t be called whenever and wherever there is trouble in a community’s Discussions. They are neither a police force nor a clean-up crew. They’re simply available if a specific community requests help or if FANDOM staff see that a large and active wiki is in need of support in this area. They will not come to a community where Discussions is already running well.

The global Discussions moderators will have all of the same tools that local Discussions moderators have, plus the ability to manage Discussions categories. They will also be able to set local blocks, which is useful for situations where admins are not actively involved in Discussions.

If you know of a community that could really benefit from support by this new group, check out the criteria for moderation help and submit your request here!