Convener: Jaz @jaz@toot.wales

Participants (add yourself here if you want to be listed, no obligation): Name and Fediverse handle

• J. Nathan Matias (@natematias@social.coop, Cornell University)
• Rabble (@rabble@mastodon.social, https://planetary.social, https://nos.social)
• Sarthak Vijayvergiya(@workwithsarthak@mastodon.social, https://cooperation.org/)
• Manton Reece (@manton@manton.org, https://Micro.blog/)
• Akira Fukushima (@h3poteto@pleroma.io)
• Jayne Samuel-Walker (@TCMuffin@toot.wales)

admin and moderator resources: https://fedifence.social/

link to moderator needs assessment: https://forms.gle/iMEKYtKsoNw9E4Jt5

link to needs assessment results: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1D0VV2EKPY6_joA6d1jv_X67sPzlIfRPD

Wikipedia rise/decline chart (from Halfaker):

Post on Wikipedia about Halfaker’s article: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:The_Rise_and_Decline

Top needs / interests according to moderators:

• Basic legal guidance
• Library of resources, including moderation process manuals, codes of conducts, etc
• Connection to existing trust & safety organizations
• Additional moderator staff / outsourced moderators
• Wellness resources
• need collaborative space for moderators to give live example of “I doin’t know what to do with this” get feedback
• I lose sleep knowing the server is unmonitored

Outside references:

• FediFence formed to provide mutual support and guidance for new and long-time moderators. This group is now working systematically to discuss the needs and imagine what shared resources would be useful.

• FediFence did a needs assessment surveying administrators, and got 30 responses from admins/moderators representing 475,000 registered members. This included small and large groups

Findings:

• Most servers couldn’t provide 24/7 moderation, with most being able to offer at least up to 16 hours a day

• Shared moderation capacity:

  • 15% said they would be willing to share moderation effort- and many said maybe. This might be due to admins creating/providing space for marginalized communities, so there’s a healthy distrust that third parties could reliably provide contextually-aware moderation

• Capacity:

  • Most mods are spending 2-4 hours per day, which is a lot of work, but also not enough

  • The larger the server, the less capacity moderators were able to dedicate to moderation

  • 33% of mods/admins have experienced burnout

• Moderator guidelines: 40% of servers didn’t have a formal code of conduct for moderators, and 85% were interested in having standard legal language for moderator agreements

• Legal Advice: Admins reported a lot of uncertainty about legal risks, only 8% had insurance, many anticipated needing legal advice, and 89% were interested in a collective fund for legal support and advice

• Funding:

  • 81% collected financial support

  • 19% of those compensate moderators

• Training: 23% of servers provided moderators with training. Those were mostly a blog post, or a crib sheet for common issues. Most decisions end up in a chat room with whoever is in the room at the time.

• Where you find other moderators (there are roughly 6 disconnected spaces):

  • There’s a Matrix channel

  • There are discussions about creating a mod/admin channel in the Mastodon Discord

Next steps, if any

• Attend Day Two session to discuss non-profit trust and safety entity IFTAS being formed to provide support and resources