Below is a guide I wrote for new employees at Stack Overflow to help them avoid having a bad time moderating the sites. This is an early draft so it might not reflect what Stack Overflow uses internally now. The principles, however, remain relevant for each new organization I have been a part of.

How to use your new superpowers.

When community managers, developers, and other employees need “administrative access” to one of our sites, we give them similar privileges as moderators chosen from within the community. The diamond ♦ that appears next to your activity can sometimes generate a bit of apprehension about your role in the site. Whether you are speaking in an official capacity or are simply participating as “just another user”, it is helps to remember that your words and activities carry a little more weight… and will likely be more scrutinized than the average user’s. The tips below are designed to avoid the appearance of omnipotence and those sticky situations where a conflict of interest is perceived.

  • Remember that users will assume what you say is “Official Policy”

    We all have opinions to share and “default public” generally means we should be part of the conversation. But users will treat what you say as canon. So, when you are delving into controversial issues that either have not been decided, or where your view may diverge from any actual official guidance: Try to make it clear that you are simply sharing an opinion that is not the “official” word on the topic. You don’t need to plaster a disclaimer on your posts, but make sure that you are not (unintentionally) ending the conversation with the final verdict of policy where there is none. You will be quoted as policy. Often.

  • Get Backup, and never moderate your own activity.

    Or anyone coming anywhere near it. A good rule of thumb: When users disagree with you, avoid doing anything a regular user cannot do. Avoid closing their posts. Don’t flag (delete) comments that do not agree with you. If you genuinely feel moderator intervention is needed, call on someone else to look into the situation. Generally speaking, take it to the the community team chat room. We’re happy to mediate sticky situations. Assuming the person agrees with you, they’ll solve the problem without the appearance of “censorship” or “abuse of power”. Once someone starts shouting those words, everything else gets harder.

  • When you’re not making progress with someone, you’re probably making things to argue with.

    If you find you’ve had two back-and-forths in the comments with no movement toward the middle, you can probably give up on convincing this particular person. Which means that more comments probably just make the whole interaction (about their presumably wrong-minded point) more visible to others. Leave `em with the last word, and move on.

  • Don’t take it personally.

    Joel says in his Seven steps to remarkable customer service— “There is only one way to survive angry customers emotionally: you have to realize that they’re not angry at you; they’re angry at your business, and you just happen to be a convenient representative of that business.” Most of the time, users are not yelling at you; they’re lashing out about the situation. Don’t yell back. You will also be yelling at the people listening in over their shoulders.

  • Agree with anything you possibly can, and don’t be afraid to apologize.

    Whenever possible, lead with something the other person can agree with:

    You raise a great point about the need to deal with all these giant hamsters - they make me crazy. But I’m not sure that your ‘Napalm Catapult’ plan is the best approach because…

    Someone else feeling bad is usually a good enough reason to say “I’m sorry,” even if you haven’t done anything wrong.

    Sincere apologies - it truly wasn’t my intent to imply that. I should have been clearer that I agreed with your approach, but thought that the implementation would cause other problems….

    And, of course if you did slip up, apologizing is just the right thing to do. It bears repeating: Failing to apologize when you are in the wrong causes much more damage than taking blame when you did nothing wrong!

Key powers employee moderators have:

  • Close, delete, and reopen votes are unilateral and instant (you need to be really comfortable playing Judge Dredd here).
  • Flagging a comment deletes it.
  • You have the power to edit any comment at any time.
  • Deleted comments can be shown and undeleted.
  • All user profiles are editable.
  • Reviews, tag synonyms, and tag wiki edits are unilateral.
  • Every site becomes a possible migration target.
  • You can create private chat rooms and see deleted chat items.
  • All privileges are granted without the need to earn them.