I've been a part of this community for a long time. It's given me a lot, and I want to contribute back to it.
I have some experience managing and moderating small discord servers. I have been in leadership positions in some IRL communities such as my high school robotics team. I have made suggestions for significant decisions on minecraft servers a few times, which ended up being implemented and having significant positive impacts on the community.
How would you handle a situation where two members are in a heated argument that violates community guidelines?
1: First, give them a warning that they are violating the rules and causing a disruption, and that they should stop of face potential moderation action. 2: If it continues against warnings: 2a: If both players are violating rules, being disruptive towards uninvolved server members, and willingly contributing to the argument's continuation: timeout both. 2b: If one player is continuing the argument, but the other player is trying to deescalate: timeout the player continuing.
3: If I believe one player has just cause to be very upset at the other player, this would not affect my moderation of the heated argument, but I would also suggest that they should file a moderation report through proper channels.
This would really depend on the situation, the rule, why it was unpopular, etc. In approximate order, I would prioritize: 1: not doing any lasting harm to the community 2: if possible, bringing up alterations or alternatives to the problematic rule in internal staff discussions on the matter. 3: try to enforce the rule in specifically the circumstances where it was intended to serve a benefit to the community, and where I believe the rule is functioning as intended, given that I don't think this enforcement will harm the community. 4: use my best judgement in remaining circumstances to balance what is best for the community.
Ideally, the purpose of rules is aligned with the purpose of maintaining a positive, welcoming atmosphere. If a enforcing a rule would make the community have a more negative or unfriendly atmosphere, I would treat that rule in a similar way to how I described enforcement of unpopular rules (try to change it so that the rules and atmosphere are no longer at odds to the extent that this is possible. Try to enforce the rule in a manner that is as consistent as possible with simultaneously maintaining the community experience, order, and my own judgement on what is right).
I think the most important qualities for a moderator are that:
1: They should understand the community they are moderating. They should understand which actions ought to be restricted for the good of the community, and which actions are harmless enough that restricting them does more harm than good.
- In past incidents where this has been a point of contention, I think I've done a good job in understanding what the community will be happiest with, and my approach is described in the "balance enforcing rules with atmosphere" section
2: They should be able to perform trials.
- I pay regular attention to the game-chat, and frequently see someone asking about trial when I have time. I also think I could do a good job of evaluating their level of understanding, and pointing them towards helpful resources after either a successful trial or an unsuccessful trial.
3: They should be able to contribute to staff discussions in a way that positively impacts what changes will be made on the server.
If a member frequently toes the line without technically breaking any rules, how would you approach them?
If the member is not disrupting other people's experiences on the server, leave them be. If the member is disrupting others experiences, notify that member that they may file a report with staff if they are uncomfortable with the situation.
If the member has been reported to staff for being disruptive, take appropriate moderation action proportional to the level of disruption, according to the broad rules against ruining others' experience on the server, and any relevant applicable rules where I believe the member has willfully violated the spirit of the rule.
1: First, perform basic moderation first aid immediately (Issue warnings, if there's a dispute tell those involved to stop making the issue worse, etc). 2: For full proper situation handling, prioritize based on combination of, in no particular order: -How important timely moderation is to the particular situation -How impactful the situation is overall -How much time the situation will take to resolve.
What improvements would you like to see in our community, and how would you help achieve them as a moderator?
I think the community is doing fairly well as-is overall, but I do think there are a few small things that might be worth changing, and I think that if I was there to voice these concerns in staff discussions, that would increase the chance that these could be implemented. I could also help with any development work of course. Overall though, I'm primarily interested in contributing towards the server as is, rather than changing things.
1: I think players should have the ability to block interaction with other individual players (/p deny, or a way to hide their chat messages, possibly in a way like how discord to shows [blocked message] but shows content on cursor hover or click), for the following reasons: -1A: There are circumstances where player A finds player B greatly unpleasant to interact with, and player B's actions fall mostly within the rules.
- 1B: Moderation cannot happen instantaneously, and this would help players deal with rule-violating nuisances in the time before moderation happens.
- 1C: There are other circumstances (serial rule offenders like 75rx) where known problem players persist on the server.
2: Consider tweaks to the trial system. The trial system has always served the role of ensuring that all builders possess a certain level of technical skill, and has also served the important role of ensuring that all builders have an earnest commitment to the server. In the past, by default, all builders could place blocks on all other builders' plots, and the trial system was necessary to ensure this level of trust. Over time, the bar has lowered the skill threshold. I think this is good overall (people still gaining technical skills can still deserve a chance to participate on /build and make use of worldedit), but every once in a while there's a player that has enough technical knowledge to pass trial, but who isn't necessarily worthy of the trust associated with the rank. I think as the technical threshold is lowered (which is good overall, to a point), there need to be deliberate mechanisms to ensure the builder is responsible and respectful of other members.
- I think one way to do this would be to have some sort of "new builder" rank, where they gain limited privileges (can be added to plots on build but can't claim a plot, worldedit but with limitations on blocks affected per operation), but need to have no incidents for the first two weeks or so or else they face demotion back to student. -- Considerations like this based on player trustworthiness could pair with other changes to the trial system to allow us to make the process simpler, perhaps lowering the technical bar, and perhaps requiring less direct moderator involvement gating access to worldedit.
And again, while I think these are worth considering changing, I'm primarily interested in contributing towards the server as is, rather than changing things.
Try to have a reasonable discussion about whether their actions were warranted and/or beneficial to the community. I don't think many circumstances warrant escalation beyond this unless the disagreement is a severe exceptional circumstance, to which my response would very much depend on the details of the incident.