OrunLeon and Resisti - Thoughts on Group Support and Moderator Community

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{OrunLeon and Resisti} Hello readers, we are the most amazing couple of twins ever (Resisti wrote that), and after discussing this in private messages, we've decided to talk about some things about the current state of the member/guest Support Rooms and Community Rooms for a while. We would much rather prefer that this post be used as a learning/educational/discussion opportunity rather than the hub of a complaint contest. Well just talk about our experiences and feelings with the chatrooms and itd be cool if you guys leave some feedback about your thoughts too.

Thoughts on Moderator Community Events

So first of all, there were these really awesome programmes set up by the mod leaders that ran in June which unfortunately havent really been updated recently. These programmes were: Group Mod Training Sessions and Mod Leader Office Hours. I (OrunLeon) absolutely loved both of them! However, for me it was bad timing because they were both most active during the period of my exams. I did manage to book one of each session though, and I found them both thoroughly enriching and worthwhile to take part in. Its quite a shame to see these things not available to people anymore because to build a better group chatroom community, we need to start from the foundation which is knowing how to be an effective and professional moderator.

Learning more on how to guide the flow of the chatroom was one of the things I needed to improve on (having identified it in the session) and that was one of the things I loved about the Group Mod Training Sessions in particular because for a 30 minute session, it was extremely useful (thank you for hosting it, @Sarah). The Mod Leader Office Hours spreadsheet is another stroke of genius. As a moderator, I love the idea of booking a time slot to chat with someone in charge about things that have been going on, much like how I am doing with you guys right now. I remember talking with @Jake about many topics relating to group support rooms and feeling much more at ease knowing that people were working on stuff, and progress was happening.

Trouble is, lately theres been very little news on whats next with the chatrooms. We would be very glad to see those spreadsheets updated on a regular basis if possible. Every few weeks a new batch of moderator badges is given, and the inexperienced ones might need further training - the programmes mentioned above were a great opportunity to improve and discuss concerns, yet nowadays moderators might feel like they are on their own. Some people were not able to book sessions at all which is a huge shame. It would be nice to understand what happened to the Training Sessions and the Office Hours and whether they can be reintroduced, as we believe there is always something to learn from those.

Other great events we used to have were weekly moderators meetings. We advertised them a lot for [teen] moderators because they made some important changes. It was very nice to have a gathering and just talk about the past week together but also trying to improve the upcoming week. Admittedly yes, they did turn sour on many occasions but it also shows how passionate we are about something that is simply a volunteer job. Weve been looking on the Community Calendar for the scheduled times for moderator meetings which are actually there, but found they havent really been hosted. Now that one of us is an Adult/Teen listener, there were high hopes to be able to attend more of these meetings but that hasnt turned out to be the case.

@Heather always did a very good job of leading the Teen ones, which everyone is thankful for Im sure, this is why we would love for them to be reintroduced in their original format if possible. Many times the meetings were planned without actually happening, we can totally understand Mod Leaders might be busy yet these moments were the only opportunity we had to speak all together and point out any problem or how we were adjusting to changes. Maybe one every 2 weeks could be possible? We hope to receive news addressed to us as a moderator community about upcoming meetings soon.

Thoughts on the new Chatroom Warning System

For reference. this can be seen here:

Wed now like to address how the new warning system has impacted our performance/efficiency as moderators and member/guest opinions. A big influencing factor on bringing out a new warning system was to better protect moderators from being attacked by groups or negative cliques of members or trolls. For new moderators in particular, this is an excellent strategy to prevent them from being discouraged or hurt. For all moderators in general, it reduced the hassle needed to type out a full length warning and instead allowed us to focus more on the chatroom rather than a troublemaking individual(s).

Of course, there is always two sides to every story; the second side of this one being: members/guests are becoming more frustrated at lurking moderators who give out warnings but do not show themselves in the chat. This problem was uncommonly faced with the old system because we had to manually type out every warning to people who broke the rules. So our main concern is with the anonymity of warnings being given out which is leaving the member/guest community in the dark (consequently, this reduces the use of a Moderator Report Form greatly as put forward by a member I spoke to). The old system had its flaws, the new system does as well. Nobody is expecting it to be perfect, especially for a site which cares about the wellbeing of both parties. However at the moment, this system is shifted in favour of moderators rather than members/guests which (in our opinion) is not as purposeful as the other way around. Weve observed that members/guests under the current system show even more agitated behaviour compared to the old system. Most of the time, its along the lines of: Who gave me this warning? or Why did I get warned?. Then if the moderator was to answer their question, it would spark the exact same arguments. If the moderator didnt answer (which is in most cases to avoid confrontation), the entire flow of the chatroom would become directed towards the person complaining, which does not help the situation.

These custom computer warnings perhaps dont have as much of an impact as manual warnings because they carry nothing for the receiver to be thoughtful about. Similar to how Noni works, an automated warning message will have less of an effect compared to a real human telling someone to abide by the rules. Food for thought.

Essentially, the problem has always been (even now): there is no real way to sort out complaints regarding warnings unless its brought to 1-1s. If anyone complains of a moderators decision, the best thing to offer them is a 1-1 to talk about what has happened and work things out. This way, we would avoid discussing warnings and mutes in the chatroom. On the flip side though, moderators are often busy and cant answer to messages in a prompt way, so this could only cause more frustration from the member. Management of the situation is key.

{Resisti} We also appear to have an issue in the technicalities of the warning system: the number of warnings given before a user gets muted is often unstable, and sometimes endless. We encountered situations when after 5-6 warnings someone still wasn't muted. Sometimes, it could have been due to the time we have to wait between warnings (30 seconds) however this has happened so many times it can't always be caused by that.

A minor issue we would like to take note of is the fact that moderators cannot remove their own messages anymore. That might seem pretty obvious because as soon as we click the "x" button, the warning window pops up and moderators can't mute or warn each other, anyway there are some situations when we feel like removing our messages - a bad typo, the wrong chatroom, message not worded as intended etc. Although it's not a huge deal, we miss having the ability to remove our own messages if needed.

{OrunLeon} Furthermore, I personally have very high expectations of the future Support Room Mentors. Preferably, their roles would include directly working alongside Group Mod Leaders and filling in more spaces for the Office Hours and Training Sessions. Hopefully theyll be even better than we imagine. I would strongly recommend for anybody who is eligible and seasoned in group support room situations to please help out with this cause and apply. Here is the form. Another quite nice resource is the Group Mod Log which I suggest taking advantage of.

Please note that this post simply reflects on what the two of us have witnessed and experienced in the support chatrooms since the release of the New Warning System and in group moderator help events. It is not intended in any way to provoke rude debates and unconstructive criticism, this is purely just an informational piece describing our own PERSONAL encounters and desires. So any new mods, existing mods, take from this what you will and best wishes.

- Leon and Ila (the best twins ever)

@Laura @Carisssa @Zedda @Pickle68 @Mobbsy @Chrissy @Josh-NYX @Lyra @Cadence @SwordsandPens @EtaAlpha @Zoff @15Sydney @Ace13 @Kash216 @Philbear @poeticguy @Miracle @AkankshaP @FlowerinDisguise19 @RocketsMom @Flourish @MissZ @Dan117 @Acinonyx @Resisti