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Protocol for purging inactive moderators? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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A few sublemmys I moderate have accumulated some inactive moderators.

They weren't bad mods, and I'd happily welcome them back if they become active again, but several accounts have had zero activity for several months. This gives the impression that the sub is better staffed than it is, and I wouldn't want users reporting a problem to a dormant account.

Should inactive moderators be removed? If so, is there a standard etiquette of messaging them every x days for y weeks before removing them?

Some moderators have lower seniority than my account, but a few have higher seniority, often the original creator of a sublemmy during the Reddit blackout last June. How should these cases be handled?

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 months ago (1 children)

@[email protected] went on a campaign to find moderators and lock unmoderated communities a while back.

As far as I know, moderator seniority isn't such a big deal on Lemmy like it is on reddit. Mainly because the admins can easily overrule the moderators anyway. I don't think there is really any harm to leaving inactive moderator accounts on the team. All reports are sent to all moderators as well as admins, so it's not like inactive moderators are preventing admins or other moderators from doing what they need to.

However, if you would still like to remove them as moderators, I think a reasonable standard would be 30 days without any activity or response to PM. Just PM me whichever accounts you are concerned about and I can demod them if they don't respond in the allotted time.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Worth noting appeals can only be sent to one mod, so managing inactivity is important on that front.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Thanks for noting this.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Maybe bring this up on the [email protected] as a discussion to get more feedback.

And yeah, I agree. I needed to message the mods of a community once, and I decided to dig a bit. Only one has any kind of activity within the past few months, so I reached out to the only one with activity and didn't get a response (granted, my request didn't need one).

So I agree it's a real problem. We also need to have a mechanism to identify under-modded communities and encourage finding new mods.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

The Agora might also be a fantastic suggestion for this because agreeing on an instance-wide definition, and policy, for removing mods who haven't been active for several months might be a good idea. Beyond that, maybe some light formal policies for moderators specifically? I don't think excessive, or any, policies for moderators beyond that of a regular user, is necessarily a good idea, but it might be an interesting question to discuss.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, a set of guidelines would be good. And perhaps some rules for moderation that could result in removal of mod privileges by the admin.

But yeah, discussion here is key. I'm sure a lot of people have opinions here, and many have experience with moderation on other platforms.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I'm definitely interested in hear other people's opinions. Posting something in the Agora seems like a good idea. If nobody in this thread does it then maybe I'll put something up myself in a few days.

For now, @[email protected]'s suggestion is the way to go: PM one of us admins on a case-by-case basis and we'll help out.

In the long term, maybe we should set some criteria for identifying dead or unmodertaed communities and locking them? Our instance has hundreds communities, many of which are hardly used and likely abandoned by their creators. I made an effort some months ago to find active mods for the busiest communities, and remove communities with no assigned moderator. I'm not sure what to do with the rest of them, if anything. They aren't causing immediate problems. And confirming the activity status of every mod is one of those dull chores that has lingered at the bottom of my to-do list.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

Perhaps it can be automated then?

Basically:

once/week, compile list of communities with no activity for >1 month
ping all mods of that community that haven't been pinged recently (say, once/month)
if a mod responds, mark the mod as active
ping admins with a report about communities with unresponsive mods and no activity for at least 3 months
admins would manually review that list and remove mods/communities as necessary

I'm sure some passionate individual could easily write such a bot. But soliciting feedback from the community in the Agora would be the right starting point to determine the rules, and then the follow-up would be a script or something to make admins' jobs enforcing that suck less.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

I would recommend either messaging the accounts, or contacting the admins about it. If there are no replies after a set amount of time (maybe a week?), then remove them. The admins can also confirm that the account hasn't logged-in in months, which simplifies the decision

Since they're welcome back once they become active again and want to rejoin, you don't need to make too much work for yourself in removing them :)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Just throwing it out there that I'm willing to mod some active general communities if need be. Though I generally assume nobody wants that, as I tend to come across as an asshole and don't really care to change. But throwing it out there nonetheless