Beginner's Guide: Moderators and Administrators

Reserved for lock, if it ever becomes necessary.

Reposted with CandyCastle’s permission, due to the recent changes in moderation (room moderators and the removal of curators).

The purpose of this thread is to explain what Moderators and Administrators are, who they are and what they do. To dispell some of the confusion and mysticism associated with the titles.

Moderators

There are two types of moderators on the site:

Forum Moderator – Forum moderators are assigned to a specific forum (in most cases) and it’s their responsibility to ensure that the forum is kept clean, free from spam and operates nicely. A forum moderator, in their designated forum, is able to remove & hide posts and lock & move threads.

Note: A forum moderator may be able to remove and hide posts as well as lock a thread in a forum they’re not assigned to, but the F only appears in the forum(s) they’re assigned to when they post.

For a list of all forum moderators on Kongregate, look here.

Chat Moderator – There are two types of chat moderators on Kongregate:

• Room Moderators – They only have their moderating powers in the specific room (including game rooms) that they are assigned to. You can see the rooms they are assigned to on their profile.
• Global Moderators – They have their moderating powers in all rooms on the site.

Note: No more global moderators are going to be appointed. The new chat moderator system is being grandfathered in, meaning all previously global moderators will stay, until they are de-modded or choose to become a room moderator. Eventually all chat moderators will be room moderators.

A chat moderator is a user that’s been nominated by an existing moderator and chosen by the administrators. They’re responsible for maintaining the orderliness of the chat and to address any spamming, trolling, harassment, etc. A chat moderator is able to silence and ban a user. They can silence a user for 15 minutes, 1 hour or 1 day and can ban a user for a week.

Note: Chat moderators can not permanently ban a user, only administrators are able to do that. As well, actions taken by a moderator are incremental. Only in certain situations will a moderator immediately ban a user; in most circumstances, a user will receive multiple warnings from a moderator before action is taken.

Room Owner – A room owner is the same as a chat moderator, has the same powers and responsibilities, plus more. They “own” the chat, as assigned and decided by the administrators. They are able to edit the Room Description and can request that a room’s name be changed. The room owner is more aware of the chat room’s health and is generally the leading figure in the room’s unique culture. The room owner’s opinion carries significant weight in the decision to promote a user to a room moderator in the room that they own.

Note: Room owners cannot create rooms, only administrators can. Users are able to create private rooms with K+.

For a list of all current chat moderators, look here and all global chat moderators here.

There’s an outdated list of all multilingual ModFriend accounts here.

Administrators – Administrators are employees of Kongregate. Some administrators frequent chat and some even own rooms, but are infamous for being inactive in chat, due to their jobs working on the site. There are multiple departments that administrators work in, but user-facing administrators are: the community administrators (trickyrodent, Zshadow and IAmTheCandyman) and the achievement (badge) administrators (greg and rawismojo). The two Quality Assurance administrators are joe1017 and Bob10110.

If you are interested in seeking a job with Kongregate, you can look here for the current listings.

Note: At this time, all Kongregate employees are US-based and over the age of 18.

For a list of all staff members and administrators, look here.

Nice guide. Everything you need to know about them mods & admins, in a nutshell.

:/.I’M NOT a mod or admin yet

Can you maybe put something for the mods that silencing is almost always the first action taken, so many users ask me to ban for spamming.

Originally posted by uuu2:

Can you maybe put something for the mods that silencing is almost always the first action taken, so many users ask me to ban for spamming.

Added and clarified, hope that helps. Thank-you for the suggestion.

That makes it sound like mods silence all the time, uuu. Maybe something more like banning is a last resort and/or for the extreme cases.

Anyhoo, I wish I had something like this to look at when I arrived on Kong. Instead, I think I basically got a “how to” whisper from Ducky because I didn’t understand reports and the concept of mods. Which is… odd considering.

Originally posted by SicMirx:

That makes it sound like mods silence all the time, uuu. Maybe something more like banning is a last resort and/or for the extreme cases.

Yeah wasn’t too sure on how to word it, I think adv0 nailed it tough.

Agreed. I was just playing with the “first action taken” bit. Hehe.

User swears. SILENCE!

User posts four times for a single sentence. SILENCE!

User calls another user a bad name. SILENCE!

User kicks himself in balls (physically or metaphorically). SIL… never mind.

Originally posted by SicMirx:

Agreed. I was just playing with the “first action taken” bit. Hehe.

User swears. SILENCE!

User posts four times for a single sentence. SILENCE!

User calls another user a bad name. SILENCE!

User kicks himself in balls (physically or metaphorically). SIL… never mind.

Very nice formatting! (don’t get me wrong, I love you too, largetextwallsthathurtmyeyes)

Very intriguing and informative guide, thank you adv0!

User kicks himself in balls (physically or metaphorically). SIL… never mind.

That’s not really a chat action…
But anyway, thanks for a good laugh

Fixed the icons, they got fooled up a bit. Also, made slight clarification for forum moderators. As well, made all notes in italics. If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know.

Originally posted by adv0catus:

Fixed the icons, they got fooled up a bit. Also, made slight clarification for forum moderators. As well, made all notes in italics. If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know.

I suggest adding “Every time you see V, compliment him on his handlebar mustache.”

Originally posted by adv0catus:

If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know.

Maybe something about the system moving from global moderators to room moderators, since I don’t see that anywhere, and it seems like something that might be worth putting down.

Originally posted by 123aaa789:

Originally posted by adv0catus:

If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know.

Maybe something about the system moving from global moderators to room moderators, since I don’t see that anywhere, and it seems like something that might be worth putting down.

Added. Thanks for the suggestion.

Do they get paid to be one?

Originally posted by DemonOfMist:

Do they get paid to be one?

They get free K+.

Originally posted by IceWeaselX:

Originally posted by DemonOfMist:

Do they get paid to be one?

They get free K+.

Which is pretty great! That way we can tell people about the features if they have questions. (and just enjoy them ourselves)

What kind of features? could you elaborate plz.

Originally posted by DemonOfMist:

What kind of features? could you elaborate plz.

http://www.kongregate.com/plus

Does anyone have any more suggestions on how this can be improved? :)

Not really. This is pretty spot-on. I would just like to suggest adding a link to Vorpal_Steak’s mod/admin interviews.

You should probably update the list of Community Administrators as well to include SugarMonkey.