Moderating Discord Servers

In case you're unfamiliar, Discord is a messaging app similar in many ways to Slack. It was originally created for gaming communities, its voice chat making it a great option for staying in sync during cooperative play.

It's also useful for organizing conversations around particular topics or events.

Discord:

Women of React is my first online conference of 2020. The organizers (Rachel Nabors Sara Vieira Jenn Creighton and Kevin Lewis) used YouTube for streaming as well as Discord for community engagement. It worked really well and allowed a lot of customization. The video was available for everyone to view live. Only registered attendees were invited to the Discord server at the same time.

The added step of needing to sign up for the conference was likely a deterrent for trolls who would have seen an event by and for women in tech as a target.

Discord enabled us to set up custom commands, post to channels when certain events occurred, and generally gave more control than most other platforms.

Personally, Discord's desktop application is my preference over its web app. You can choose either one or both. Create your free server. To get started, all you need is a name.

Roles

You can set up as many roles as you like for your Discord servers. However, I recommend keeping them to a minimum. Start with roles such as moderators, speakers, and organizers.

Any organizers who will be involved in moderation or otherwise need administrative access to the Discord server can be given Administrator permissions. Don't give permissions to organizers and other staff members who don't have special permissions. You can always add roles or take them away later.

At a minimum, your Mods role should have the following permissions:

- Kick Members - Ban Members - Read Text Channels & See Voice Channels - Send Messages - Manage Messages - Read Message History

You can add additional permissions to suit the needs of your particular community. Some (like "Change Nickname") are totally unnecessary but can serve as a fun way to give volunteers a little extra freedom.

Channel permissions

Everyone has the default permissions (write, read, and reply to messages, etc.) You can create a new channel public. You can make it a private channel to limit access.

Create a channel specifically for conversations and notifications related to moderation. Use the roles you've created to set channel permissions.

These permissions can be very specific, down to determining who is allowed to use external emojis. As a rule, give each person only the minimum permissions they require to fulfill their role. Your mods do not need to manage the webhooks. Participants don't even need to use the @everyone command.

Welcome channel

Add a channel purely to guide new members of your server. Lock it down and post your code-of- conduct and any Discord instructions to this channel. (In the channel's settings deny everyone permission for messages to be written. This will ensure everyone who joins your server will at least be able to see the information. It is not certain if they will actually read it.

Make sure your welcome channel is at the top of your channel list! New members will be routed directly to the first channel. Drag and drop can be used to reorder your channels.

Installing Dyno Bot

Now let's get to the fun stuff! Dyno is a customizable bot for managing Discord servers. Sign up for Discord and click the "Add to Server" button. Choose the server you'd like to add the bot to and then confirm the list of permissions you'd like it to have. Not all permissions need to be granted. Use your best judgment (you can probably uncheck "Speak", for example) and make adjustments later if and when you need to. Discord servers

Once you have done that, you will be redirected back to your Dyno dashboard where you can customize it to suit your needs. Direct your attention to the modules section. Hit "See All" or navigate to the modules section by selecting it from the navbar on the left.

Don't get overwhelmed by all of the options. For now, you should be focusing on the Automod/Modulation modules.

Configuring Automod

Select "Settings" to begin with the Automod Module. Create a new Discord channel for mod-log and make it your log channel. This will allow you to quickly read your log, without having to search through the conversation. This channel can have exactly the same permissions as the mods channel that you already created. You can then determine what should happen to each filter that catches a message from your server. I suggest the following settings:

Banned Words: delete, warn – All Capitals: Warn. Delete - Mass Mentions - Delete. Warn. Auto Mute. Warn. Link Cooldown. Warn.

These settings can be adjusted if necessary. Depending on the event's focus, you might choose the All Links filter. This filter will prevent members from posting any links.

You can adjust the filters' trigger limits. You might be more relaxed about using emojis. Increase the limit from the default 4 to whatever you consider reasonable. You might also consider changing the time that users who break the rules are automuted. Setting these up now, before things go wrong, will allow you more bandwidth to deal with more pressing issues that Automod might not catch during your event.

After you have finished setting up Automod, you should list the channels and roles that Automod should ignore. Your rules should be applied to all channels. If you need the rules to be relaxed for staff or mods, you can adjust each filter's settings individually. You can do so by clicking the gear icon next to the filter you'd like to adjust.

Configuring the Moderation module

The Moderation module can be a little easier. First, check the settings you'd like to enable. I recommend checking the following options:

- DM users on kick/ban/mute – Delete mod commands once executed – Enable ban match command

Sometimes moderators make mistakes. Moderators sometimes make mistakes. A list with mod actions will automatically be added to your moderation log channel. You can also use your mod log channel for this.

Writing custom commands

Dyno Bot can perform most of the operations you need, but it doesn’t allow members of Discord to report violations. You can give your participants more control and flexibility by adding custom commands. Below are a few commands that I recommend.

Once you are ready, click "Add Command" to fill out the form. The command members will need to enter will be listed under "Command", prefixed by a questionmark to use it. The text under "Responses", explains what happens when the command runs. For more detailed documentation, see Custom Commands on Dyno.

Report

This command is run with?report [username][message]. The command will be deleted as soon as possible and the response to the mods channel will be sent. The response will include information such as the time and username of each reporter, as well the username of their reporting person. The $1 represents the first argument or the first word after? discord server report, and the $2+ represents all subsequent arguments.

Anonymous Report

You could call it a day and congratulate yourself on a job well done... or you could take one more step to give your participants the option to report code of conduct violations anonymously. Remove the **REPORTER:** user.name line from the responses and you've got yourself an anonymous reporting system!

This method is not perfect. Be sure to give the command an individual name. If you notice that you are receiving a lot spam via anonymous reporting, you can create another anonymous reports channel (the exact same way as mod-log) to send responses.

Call mods

The?mods command is used to call moderator support privately, and could draw unwanted attention. It will be deleted once it is used but will still send a message via the mods channel. You can replace the third sentence with anything you want to use as an alert for moderation.

Next steps

Once you have your server set up, make sure all moderators (and your community members) understand the reporting process. Make sure they also know how to use your custom commands. See my post about moderating online events for more tips on training moderators.