Glossary
Key Forumera terms and concepts explained.

Moderator

A moderator is a member who focuses on keeping conversations healthy and on-topic by handling reports and acting on content.

Last updated: 1/2/2026

Moderator

A moderator is a member responsible for the health and quality of conversations in a forum. Moderators do not run the technical side of the forum, but they do act on content and member behaviour.

What moderators do in Forumera

Typical moderator powers include:

  • Reviewing and resolving reports from members.
  • Hiding or restoring posts and threads.
  • Moving threads to more appropriate boards.
  • Locking threads that are complete or have derailed.
  • Escalating serious issues to admins for bans or policy decisions.

Moderators usually do not manage billing, domain settings or the full permission model – those remain admin responsibilities.

How moderation flows work

In a healthy forum, moderation is:

  • Visible enough that people trust it exists.
  • Predictable so similar situations are handled in similar ways.
  • Proportionate so actions match the impact of the problem.

Forumera supports this by providing:

  • A moderation queue that collects reported content.
  • Per‑thread actions such as hide, move, lock and pin.
  • Visibility states (public, members‑only, soft‑deleted) instead of only hard deletion.

Working with community guidelines

Moderators are most effective when there are clear, written community guidelines that describe:

  • What kind of behaviour is encouraged.
  • What is discouraged but tolerated.
  • What is not allowed and may lead to removal or bans.

Moderators can then reference those guidelines when explaining decisions, which reduces friction and accusations of arbitrariness.

Best practices for moderators

  • Assume good faith first. Start with clarifications and soft nudges before jumping to heavy sanctions.
  • Act quickly on clear spam and abuse. Removing obvious harm early protects everyone.
  • Be transparent when appropriate. Short public notes like “Thread locked: off topic” help others understand what happened.
  • Take care of yourselves. Moderation can be emotionally taxing; share the load across a team where possible.
  • Admin – manages forum structure, settings and roles.
  • Member – any person who belongs to the forum.
  • Report – a signal from a member that something may need moderator attention.