Discord Moderation Academy Notes and Thoughts

[ScriptAutomate]

Notes from Discord Moderator Academy
It is highly recommended that Dendrologists and Dendron Team members read through the moderator academy. In the meantime, here are items I gleemed that seemed of highest note.

Actions I've Taken

• (Server Setting): Changed Server Settings -> Safety Setup to High
• (Server Setting): Updated Server Settings -> AutoMod to block and alert on Commonly Flagged Words (alerts go to #Dendrologist channel)
• (Personal/Individual User Setting) Enabled User Settings -> Advanced -> Developer Mode per recommendations in Moderator Academy (this needs to be enable per individual, more details below)

Highlights and Guidance from The Moderator Academy

Setting Up Roles

103: Basic Channel Setup

• #roles - This is where users assign themselves roles that they can assign!
• #root - This is our #rules channel!

We currently have our channels and roles well-documented:

• Discord Channels
• Discord Roles

Guidance

• #root could potentially include a second message that is the contents of the Hacker News Guidelines
• #root should also link to the Discord Community Guidelines and the Discord Terms of Service, as all Discord users must be aware of them
• A common step that servers are configured with is a "I have read and agree to the rules" step where they click the appropriate emoji on the rules page, and get the rest of the channels unlocked for access. This deters automation/bots that simply join and spam all channels. We should evaluate using this type of feature.
  • Details: 301: Implementing Verification Gates
  • Could extend further, if we wish, via Server Settings -> Moderation: Rules Screening -> Set up Membership Screening

Reporting Content in Discord

104: How to Report Content to Discord

• Reports can be made here
• To report a user, it requires both the user ID/profile and a message ID/link
• I have previously banned users, and deleted all messages they have done that day when finding bot accounts just spamming all channels to join other Discord servers. Doing that makes it so we can't report the accounts. The better path:

Delete and Report the content if you wish to delete it. Delete and Report is a feature available to admins in the server with the “manage messages” permission. Messages that are deleted and NOT reported will be lost forever and you will be unable to use them as evidence. Some messages may contain content that you'd like to get rid of quickly. Using Delete and Report allows the message to be saved for the Trust & Safety team so they can view it even after the message is deleted. The next section will further detail how to properly utilize the Delete and Report function.

Guidance

• Instead of happily and hastily swinging the ban hammer, taking the intermediate step of deleting one of their messages in the way that reports it to Discord's Trust and Safety team is a better path. Which can then be followed up with a ban and making a report here.

Your Responsibilities as a Moderator

111: Your Responsibilities as a Moderator

Here is a range of types of behaviors we are expected to see, when it comes to automations. We seem to mostly see Bot Advertisments/Solicitations at the moment, but should be aware of other kinds.

• Bot Advertisements/Solicitations - If a bot is being used to advertise/solicit, you should report the bot. This is most commonly done in DMs.
• User Advertisements/Solicitations - Users can be reported for advertising and soliciting in DMs as well. However, if a user is advertising in a server, they should be dealt with on a server level, provided they are not advertising something that breaks another community guideline.
• Discord Nitro Scams - Any scams being spread about getting free Discord Nitro or server boosts should be reported if they contain a potentially malicious link, or if being spread by a bot. If you see any messages that claim to give users Discord Nitro or server boosts through other means, such as putting a command in the console, you may handle those cases on a server level. It is recommended, however, that you remove these messages swiftly, as it is likely a ploy to get users to reveal their account token, which can give other users access to their account.
• Chain Mail - You may encounter messages that are created to scare users and spread rapidly. Common phrases in these messages are "Look out for Discord user ____" or anything claiming a user or bot might DDoS you or steal your IP. These messages will usually say they were written by Discord as a scare tactic. This is not true. Any important messages from Discord will be posted on their social media, or in a system message and nowhere else. System messages are identifiable by the system tag () seen next to the user that sends them. Any chain mail sent is not reportable, but should be dealt with on a server level. It is recommended that you delete these messages and inform users that they are fake.

Permissions on Discord

201: Permissions on Discord

Guidance

• All Dendrologists and Dendron Team members should enable Developer Mode to make their lives easier
• Potentially evaluate member pruning (very optional, but would provide more accurate Discord server membership activity)
• A note about Moderation bot options, from 321: Auto Moderation in Discord.

Bot-controlled Auto Moderation

If you want to keep your chats clean and clear of certain words, phrases, spam, mentions and everything else that can be misused by malicious users you’re going to need a little help from a robotic friend or two. Examples of bots that are freely available are referenced below. If you decide to use several bots, you may need to juggle several moderation systems.

When choosing a bot for auto moderation, you should also consider their capabilities for manual moderation (things like managing mutes, warns etc.). Find a bot with an infraction/punishment system you and the rest of your moderator team find to be the most appropriate. All of the bots listed in this article have a manual moderation system.

The main and most pivotal forms of auto moderation are:

• Anti-Spam
• Text Filters
• Anti-Raid
• User Filters

Each of these subsets of auto moderation will be detailed below along with recommended configurations depending on your community.

Bots seen in this guide:

• Mee6 - https://mee6.xyz/
• Dyno - https://dyno.gg/
• Giselle - https://docs.gisellebot.com/bot-invite.html
• AutoModerator - https://automoderator.app/
• Fire - https://getfire.bot/
• Bulbbot - https://bulbbot.rocks/
• Gearbot - https://gearbot.rocks/

Best Practices for Reporting Tools

206: Best Practices for Reporting Tools

Guidance

• We could provide a path for reporting behavior. This will be helpful for when mods like us miss something, and a user doesn't get banned nor does their message disappear. A bot would be preferred, as tagging @Dendrologist, for example, will alert the person who is being reported in that moment and they may delete their message before we can take action ourselves. Depends on how we'd like to enforce this.

Moderator Recruitment

• 210: Moderator Recruitment

Guidance

• Perhaps look into onboarding more of our trusted community members into the land of moderator powers?

Misc

• Speaking of bots: I believe a bot can be used to enforce blocking any posting of Discord invite links in channels. Discord invite links seem to be the most common spam that I've seen from spam accounts jumping it and posting to all channels so far. If wanting to share invite links to our own Discord, we can always use https://link.dendron.so/discord for example, or maybe use some sort of allow list