How are mods chosen?

[native crown]

Hi, so this isn’t a complaint or anything, I just wanted to inquire on what the process is for choosing moderators. I do find it somewhat unnerving to log onto this server some days and find that a new person has opaquely become a moderator now, without any kind of announcement or anything. In particular, I believe the most recent modding was of @young pendant, which seems like an odd decision given that they are much less active than many other members. I can spectulate that this came from Inferno vouching for them through the lccc connection, which is fair enough, but at the same time runs the risk of the moderation team feeling like a clique rather than a representation of the community.

Note that I don’t object to the modding of Ray; I’d just in general like a bit more transparency here.

[crimson swift]

there isn't really an official process at the moment. what we've done in the past (before the last round of enmoderatorifications) was discuss among the existing moderators any people that we think are regularly active and show to be relatively level-headed and well aligned with the server atmosphere as we want it to be. when we come up with someone and all the active mods (e.g. we didn't wait for people like @left radish who haven't talked on this server in a while) agree with that person, we send them an invite in DMs.

The latest round (that elected @coral swift @echo ibex @young pendant and @dense galleon) was a little different from the usual process in that @rain bear talked in public a few times about wanting to push for more moderators and a few people offered in those precise moments "yeah i could imagine doing that". That gave us a shortlist of candidates and after that, it basically went as usual: discussion among the existing moderators, hearing from a reasonable quorum that there were no objections and then sending out invites

[native crown]

That makes sense. So when you say it was discussed in public, I’m assuming that means in #offtopic? Because the new moderators seem to have a bias toward the users of that channel

Which explains why it confused me slightly, because #offtopic is one of the few channels I mute in this server, as there’s usually nothing of value in there

I don’t think it’s particularly justified, but I do feel some amount of resentment, because it sometimes feels like there’s quite the separation between users of #offtopic and users of the rest of the server. so when a significant portion of the mod team is chosen from the former group, it does feel somewhat like the rest of the server is beïng ignored.

[crimson swift]

it might've been there. i wasn't around for that and it probably was very informal, but it's best to ask @rain bear themselves about that

[crimson swift]

yeah, i understand that sentiment. one reason is definitely the difference in moderation load. Right before the last round of new mods, I went through all reports that we've received since starting the new #modmail channel and almost all reports came from #rust-discussions-1, #rust-help-1 and from #offtopic , so these channels simply need the most eyes on them

so in a way, it's useful that somewhat more mods hang out in #offtopic, but it's definitely been accidental that the latest four were effectively recruited from there

whenever we look for new mods again, we'll have to make sure to focus more on the general channels. i'm not quite sure how to remind myself of that in an idiot-proof manner though …

[frigid cypress]

just say it out loud in public and other people will remember it for you

[robust acorn]

B-but our weekly particle physics talk… :<

[echo ibex]

There's a lot of value there.

[rain bear]

For what it's worth, I was actually concerned in the months preceding us appointing those who were chosen that if I were to do the recruitment myself, it would feel to others like I was just aiming to put my friends in positions of power. So I don't think your concern is unjustified, it still feels like that's kinda what happened. I don't know how to fix it, though. (I did at least wait for some other mod to actually nominate any given one of them in #mod-chat, but I suppose I didn't voice this worry in there. The most concern of mine that's publicly documented is me flailing on process for finding mods, which you can find on my blog and on the Rust subreddit.)

While I do think the result is suboptimal, having a new set of mods has lightened the load we feel, and none of them are bad people as far as I know. They do still need training, but then, so do I.
Still, I'd like to work out new process for mod recruitment, because yeah, it isn't very transparent (there was an announcement though, I think), and it's also not very good. For one obvious thing, we're still missing enough people in a timezone appropriate to moderate in those hours even I can't stay awake into regularly. (Like, 2-7 ish AM in my time.)

[rain bear]

Anyway, so you know what happened from my side, the rundown of what happened for these four new ones is:

1. I asserted that we don't have enough mods, on a frequent basis. This is because, well, we didn't. I definitely felt the burnout, and I was the newest member of the team.
2. People volunteered when I said that, and I generally speaking responded with the vibes of "idk maybe 🥴"
3. Other mods at the time picked up on those people, and eventually one of them posted a list of three that they thought were good picks in #mod-chat. Pretty much universal approval was voiced.
4. The next step is recruitment DMs, in which Pen drafted a message to send to each one in #mod-chat, we all looked it, gave it "OK" after some fixes, and he sent it off.
5. An accident was had. Turns out we had some confusion over who "lccc" was at the time, and Pen messaged Inferno instead of Ray.
6. We voiced approval for the accidental pick anyway and carried on. We all were feeling the effects of burnout, I guess, and more mods better.
7. Each of the four people said yes, and we assigned the appropriate roles. At this point, we did onboarding. But, for the record, our onboarding is quite simple and "learn on the job"-ish, because, well, we didn't exactly have time to design better or do better

[echo ibex]

Wait, fr I was chosen by accident?

[rain bear]

lol yeah

[crimson swift]

sorry

[echo ibex]

[wintry wolf]

sorry you had to find out this way :(

happy little accident

[robust acorn]

You or rdr, see the pin in #mod-chat =)

It was a funny moment, but we were all like: »Ya know what, sure, why not?«

[echo ibex]

Oh, I mostly find it funny.

[wintry wolf]

I'm parodying parents to a child finding out they weren't planned

[crimson swift]

for clarification, though, iirc we noticed before you'd even answered and everyone else in the mod chat was like "actually, inferno is cool too, why not"

[echo ibex]

I should make that my status.

[crimson swift]

but yeah, this round of onboarding was much more formal than the previous ones, and it still was basically a ten point list of "these are the things we found out the hard way"

it's certainly more prep than i got when i got on board

[robust acorn]

For comparison: When i became mod, there was an internal slow discussion over days, i was name-dropped and accused of being well-behaved, »yeah, why not« was voiced, and i just got a random message à la: »Ya wanna mod?«
Similar energy, but very different in formalities and sampling.

And by discussion i mean: »Hmm… what about X?« — »… hmm… nah…« (next day) »And about Y…?« — »Hmm… ehh…«

[robust acorn]

Weren’t you, like, mod before Melo was admin? Certainly feels that way.

[frigid cypress]

but I've always been admin?

[rain bear]

lol

[crimson swift]

oh, nah

feb 2020, apparently

[rain bear]

...wait, I was a member here before you were a mod? It felt like you were always there.

[crimson swift]

it's certainly been a while, but also, i was member here for a long time before becoming mod

[rain bear]

Mm.

With all that fun out of the way, though, we should probably workshop the process for finding mods. We'll want a proper document for this somewhere. I propose that we use a Markdown git repository on Codeberg for the purpose, and use HackMD (or my self hosted instance of it) for real-time editing when we're all talking about it.

[crimson swift]

we could also use https://github.com/rust-community-discord/ for storage, since it already exists

[rain bear]

true, I just don't like GH

[crimson swift]

I mean, same, but I also don't want to spread our eggs into too many baskets

[robust acorn]

+1 to Codeberg for EU bias and having-an-account-already bias.