thinking about moderation and community building again

having a clear set of rules and being active about enforcing and updating them as necessary is extremely important to building a healthy community and not something you should put off until it becomes a problem, be proactive, not reactive

there's a reason I wrote an extensive set of rules for my ffxiv static covering a variety of stuff that may never come up, if it does I want to have a clear policy ready, for my group of like 10 people with no intention of growth, it's even more important for growing communities

without a clear policy on things like venting, drug/alcohol discussions, politics, content warnings, etc people will hurt other people unintentionally and it can become a big stressful drama, or more often nobody will speak up and people will be silently hurt

speaking up about issues you see in a space is hard, it sucks, conflict sucks, you will silently lose people who would otherwise be a good part of your community because they were hurt by something but didn't feel comfortable enough to speak up

which to bring this back to the point, can be heavily mitigated with proactive moderation and rules which is why it's so important and in my opinion why communities should be built from the ground up with this in mind

anyways community management is a big passion of mine and I have *opinions* about it, this thread brought to you by me having to be that person who spoke up about something that bothered me almost certainly made other people uncomfortable too

and which there was no official policy on because said community had extremely minimal rules because they didn't plan ahead

anyways if you need help moderating or help setting up rules for your space please hmu, I have a lot of experience and am happy to lend my expertise, alternatively even better somebody pay me to be their remote community manager