Ariadne Conill 🐰:therian: on Nostr: now, there is the issue of managing moderation burnout. the solution here is: recruit ...

now, there is the issue of managing moderation burnout.

the solution here is: recruit more moderators.

in the case of treehouse, we have taken inspiration from the days of running EFnet IRC channels, and the War of 1812: if somebody looks like they know what they're doing, they're pressganged into service.

however, you can't just pressgang someone into 24x7 service as a moderator.

so building a system where carrying the pager is load balanced is essential. community members should not have to be expected to wear the mod hat all of the time.

there are a few options here. you can formally set schedules, or you can just set the community norm that participation in moderation is best-effort.

it would be cool if mastodon integrated with a tool like pagerduty directly, for example.

internally, we have some hackish tools that enable and disable moderation alerts to allow folks to take breaks as needed.

coverage -- to allow rapid response to incidents -- is also essential. in treehouse, we have built up a robust enough moderation team that there will basically always be somebody around, no matter what time it is.

this is because we followed the IRC model of building a mod team -- the more, the merrier.

but you can't just make every user a mod and hope that works. finding the right balance is very much dependent on the makeup of your community.