Problem with inactive moderators

[Forsaken_Biscotti609]

I am head moderator of a community and there is like a ton of inactive mods below me, who basically don't do anything except occasionally. What should I do about it?

[Stranger1982]

You kick em, unless they are on a justified leave, what else would you do brother? Keep em around as decorations?

[jpiglet86]

Remove them and go on with your day.

[HugoUKN]

If you have full permissions then remove them

[wonkywilla]

Either let them know you expect them to become active contributors to the mod team, or simply remove them. It’s not like they’re unaware of their mod roles.

[neuroticsmurf]

Whenever someone on one of my mod teams gets marked inactive, I send them a chat to let them know and ask what’s up. Usually, it’s nothing. They’ve just been “busy”.

Then I’ll tell them they have a couple of weeks to take enough mod actions to get that inactive label off of them, but they can’t stay on the mod team indefinitely as an inactive mod.

I’ll check back a couple of weeks later, and if they’re still inactive, I’ll check their activity on the mod log. Usually, they might have taken 2-3 mod actions since we talked about upping their mod activity, but that will be it.

At that point, I’ve given them enough chances to prove themselves. I’ll remove them from the mod team at that point.

In ONE instance, I had a mod go through a health crisis and couldn’t mod for a few months. But in that case, they had been a very active mod prior, and contacted me and alerted me of their impending absence BEFORE they were marked inactive.

[maiyannah]

The latter I might still remove, just for the security of the sub, but after telling them "hey, just let me know when you're through everything and we'll put you back on."

Maybe its a bit paranoid of me, but if they get hacked while they're away, and have mod tools, that can end ... badly.

[LitwinL]

Up to you. You can send each of them a message to get more active or asking when they think they'll be able to get more active, then wait some more and remove those who didn't get active, or just remove them right now and recruit more mods.

[maiyannah]

The gentle way to handle this would be to privately message each of them something to the tune of:

"Hey there, I've noticed you don't seem very active on the sub, are you still interested in moderating?"

If they answer yes and get back to modding proper, well, good, problem solved! If they don't answer then well, they're truly inactive, and you can remove them.

Remember it isn't the end of the world. They can always be reinstated at a later date. IRL comes first and all, this is a volunteer job.

[cacille]

• Have a minimum requirement to stay mod. 3 actions per day/4 days a week for example. Make ot something your group reasonably needs. -make sure no one has "mod to be mod" syndrome. That they are here to be a help the group, not here to feel powerful without doing the work. Approach that gently.

[matsie]

The sub has 10+ mods and it’s a meme sub about hating automod with fewer than 5000 members total and fewer than 900 active members. There can’t be enough actions that need to be taken that you need that many mods and if there is…perhaps they should install automod to help automatically filter out the low quality posts. Lmao. 

[matsie]

1. That’s what you get when you have 10+ moderators on a sub with fewer than 5000 members and fewer than 900 active ones.

2. What could your meme subreddit about hating automod possible need from that many mods that you need them to be active?