In February of 2018, I joined the staff team of a fledgling Discord community for an up-and-coming Youtube channel. After becoming head administrator after a genuine coup d’etat, I would move on from that role and eventually the community entirely. Having gained a level of management and moderation experience I had never previously had an opportunity to put into practice, I saw just how hard and how rewarding that kind of environment could be.
This was not the first time I had joined an online moderation team. I had moderated for gaming servers, forums, and IRC servers in the past. This time, however, I found myself in an environment much larger in scale than I had ever been a part of before. Over the next 7 months, the community saw incredible growth of hundreds of users. As the server reached one and then two thousand users, the staff team found ourselves dealing with a seemingly endless barrage of situations.
After my departure, the lessons learned during my tenure would prove to be invaluable as I involved myself in more online communities, eventually culminating in the founding of my own successful community. Throughout the process of moderating, I had to learn hard and critical lessons about how online communities are governed.
While I was coming into the position already with years of cumulative experience as a moderator, I had to learn what it took to actually foster and support an online community; I started developing my Modagogy as a way of understanding how to make my moderation and governance strategies work.
Modagogy vs Community Management
What distinguishes modagogy from other concepts, such as “community management”? The short answer is: where community management and other similar approaches are focused around what a community can provide to a product or brand, modagogy is focused on spaces where the community is the primary focus.
Community Management
Community management puts the brand first, using the space and community as an opportunity to market the brand and develop a rapport with its customers or users. This approach tends to be coordinated as part of marketing or customer relations strategies, often with a dedicated Community Manager to act as a liaison between the organization and the community.
A common example of community management in action today are product or brand focused Discord servers, such as those for game development companies. These servers tend to be structured around the products or services that the company offers, including channels for brand updates, product feedback, service support, and brand-focused discussion. While there may be other channels outside of the purview of the brand, such as those for hobbies or general discussion, they tend to be categorized as “off-topic” and are not provided as much structural support or official attention.
Modagogy
In contrast, modagogy is structured around the community at its core. The most important thing for the space is not to engage with a brand, but to provide a place for members to congregate and engage with one another. This congregation may often (and should often) be focused around a specific topic, theme, or purpose, but at the end of the day the interaction between members is what matters. The structure of the space, the way policies are implemented, and the overall emphasis of governance is on facilitating meaningful, lasting, mission-driven engagement between members.
While both areas of understanding may involve mission-driven policy, top-down governance, and content moderation, modagogy comes from striving to create a space where the individual members want to be a part of, rather than an environment that elevates an outside entity.
This all isn’t to say that modagogically driven spaces can’t be affiliated with a brand or entity. The Discord server that I administered was owned and operated by the creators of the aforementioned YouTube channel. As such, it hosted a number of more traditional aspects found in community management focused spaces: product launches, media events, content marketing, etc.
Where it differed from the traditional branded server experience, however, is its growth into being its own community brought together by a shared interest, rather than just a space to market to and engage with channel fans. By the end of my tenure, it had become one of the largest spaces on the platform for a number of hobbies and interests, separate from and parallel to the YouTube channel it was affiliated with. The team which governed the space, moderated the userbase, and fostered the community operated autonomously from the brand management.
Who is this for?
In short: this section is for moderators, server owners, and staff teams. The people who put in work to make their online communities inclusive, engaging, and driven.
I want to share the accumulated knowledge from my experience and the multitude of discussions I’ve had with other moderators, server owners, and staff teams to help others improve their own approaches to community moderation, space development, and growth.
Involving sociology, public speaking, negotiation, rapid decision-making, crisis response, and many other aspects, Modagogy can be a complex topic to fully understand. From highly visible enforcement actions (mutes, kicks, bans, etc.) and community events, down to the behind-the-scenes of policy communication, culture-setting, and structural dynamics, there are countless approaches and pitfalls.
In particular, this is an opportunity for prospective and experienced moderators who want to learn more about the process of community moderation from a member-led perspective. With any hope, they can themselves make their teams, communities, and spaces better places through the lessons I have learned.
What will this include?
So, I invite anyone interested or involved in online community governance to join in on this journey!