You spend time and effort managing your group, and safety is a top priority. There are a suite of tools available to help you moderate and manage your chats.
“Everyone's either got a full time job, or family, or some combination of those things to where nobody's keeping an eye on [chats] constantly. So why not make our lives easier if we can?”
Justin B., SneakerHeads®
Moderating a chat is different from moderating a feed post because it requires real-time oversight. A moderation team can help assist with your workload, resolve issues faster, and empower members to engage authentically. Consider building your team by promoting passionate members of your group.
You can start by recruiting a range of people who have varied interests within your group’s core purpose. That’s what Davicia H. did for her group Black Girl’s Culinary, a community of Black women who share recipes and learn from one another. She has an admin who can give recommendations to those pursuing keto, an admin who has experience cooking for the military, and two admins who are skilled at baking and can assist members with measurements and techniques.
Admin Assist helps automatically moderate chats by stopping messages from being sent based on author and/or message content criteria. Only admins, not moderators, can access Admin Assist.
Set up the following criteria to stop messages based on the author:
Whether or not the author has a profile picture
Whether the author has a new account
The percentage of posts the author has had approved in the past 28 days
If the author has violated group rules in the past 28 days
Set up the following criteria to stop messages based on the content:
Credit card numbers
Email addresses
Links to specific sites
Phone numbers
Photos
Videos or gifs
Specific or commonly reported keywords
For those with a moderation team like Black Girl’s Culinary, they appreciate how Admin Assist lets them focus on other tasks.
“Admin Assist has been so helpful because we don't have to spend as much time going through each post and chat. We don't have to spend as much time cutting out comments and things like that, we can focus more on the content of the group that we really want.”
Davicia H., Black Girl’s Culinary
The admin and moderator-only chat is designed to help streamline communication among your moderation team. It’s created within your group, and admins and moderators are added automatically. You can access it from your Admin Home or your Messenger Community inbox.
This chat can serve multiple purposes; think of it as your moderation team’s home base to discuss a wide range of topics, including the following:
Welcome and onboard new admins and moderators
Define roles and responsibilities
Set boundaries and create schedules
Collaborate and discuss moderation situations as they arise
Share items from your Admin Home (like member post requests and join requests) to get your team’s input
Plan group activities for team bonding
Ask for support in times of need
Show gratitude and recognize team members for their work
Max T. of blockbuster movie group MediaVerse: Comics Unwrapped encourages open communication among his moderation team. Moderators are always welcome to use the admin and moderator-only chat to ask questions and get second opinions before taking action.
“We have the moderators reach out to the admins and say “I don’t know about this post, can you please check it out?” And then we’ll make a decision based on a consensus, if we think what we’re interpreting is really bad, or if it’s just meant to be something else. And that has helped us a lot of times, because we’ve had members talking about something that impacts them, and they’re saying something that’s coming off one way, and we’ll follow up with them and realize that they’re just trying to express their feelings about a specific topic”
Max T., MediaVerse: Comics Unwrapped
