Best Practices for Moderating Content Creation

Unique Rules of the Road

When building out a content creation realm in a server, it is important to keep in mind that your moderation team may encounter some new situations that don't apply to the rest of the server. Of course, content creators are subject to the same laws of the land in place for the entire community, but there may need to be some of these unique rules of the road to consider including:

Plagiarism. This is the practice of taking someone else’s work and claiming that it is your own. Plagiarizing another content creator should not be tolerated within any creative space. It should be highly discouraged and acted upon with moderator intervention if your community brings an accusation of plagiarism to your moderation team. As moderators, it is important to understand the difference between plagiarism and finding inspiration in someone else’s work. Tracing another creators’ artwork is the most common form of plagiarism, whereas being inspired by an original character to try out a new pose, color scheme, or scene featuring them is inspiration. While creators are often looking out for each other and willing to bring concerns about plagiarism to moderation teams, it is important to be able to look for it yourself by familiarizing yourself with your artists’ styles and reverse image searching images of concern to your team. Be sure to be able to explain to your community why plagiarizing is harmful when these situations arise.

Managing Constructive Criticism vs. Hate. Your content creation channels are going to be accessible to your entire server. This is so that the entire fandom can celebrate together, but also to drive interest from users to support your content creators. This means that the average user can come in and comment on content. There is a line between constructive criticism and hate. Watch out for it as moderators and be prepared to intervene should anything cross the line into attacks or hate-filled commentary that would give content creation an unwelcoming atmosphere. Oftentimes in creative communities it is an unspoken rule that you should not give constructive criticism unless it is specifically asked for. The average user may not realize this and could accidentally offend an artist if they’re not aware of this. As a moderator, it’s important to help artists understand constructive criticism when they ask for it while shielding them from trolls or baseless hate. Sharing content can be intimidating, so it is especially important to ensure that content creation channels remain positive and respectful environments. One way you can mitigate this issue is by making it clear in your rules that unless the artist specifically asks for constructive criticism, that feedback of that nature is not allowed.

Bumping. Art bumping may occur in an art channel where artists feel their content isn’t easily viewed by enough people. This is essentially the act of media getting bumped up in chat from other people sharing their media at the same time or from chatter about other works. An accusation of bumping usually comes up when a creator feels their art isn’t being noticed, or if they believe someone they do not have a good relationship with is intentionally bumping their work. In this case, it’s important to defuse the situation and not allow any forms of bullying by de-escalating the conflict. Maintaining an environment where users respect everyone's work is necessary for the peace of mind of creators and consumers alike. You can also consider building out a channel category instead of a single channel which would allow for a channel dedicated to posting art and a separate one for discussion. You may contemplate a rule of not posting art within a certain time frame of another creator posting, but be cautioned that this can lead to over-moderation by your community.

NSFW content. If your server allows Not Safe for Work content, it is important that you create a specific channel for it that can be marked as an NSFW channel separate from your regular content creation channels. In line with Discord’s policies, this will not allow users under the age of 18 to see this channel without agreeing to a prompt that says they are not a minor. It is also important to consider that the implementation of an NSFW channel disqualifies you from being a  Partnered or Verified Discord server. Make sure to keep the expectations around SFW and NSFW content creation in line with that of your entire server, and offer to answer any questions in DMs if a creator thinks a piece may toe the boundaries you enforce.

Advertising Commissions. If you have a blanket ban on advertisement in your community, you may not want to make an exception to the rule here. However, if you decide to allow advertising commissions in your server, you are allowing more commissions to flow to your creators. Do not allow other users to beg for free art or try to guilt creators with open commissions into providing free content to them. It may be the case that your moderation team will have to enforce boundaries if someone who commissions a creator within your community doesn’t pay them or revokes payment. Conversely, if a creator requires payment up front and then does not deliver work and doesn’t refund the commissioner, moderator intervention should occur to no longer allow them to accept commissions from other members.

To be clear, you are not responsible for their financial disputes or business transactions. Ultimately, creators should look into their specific payment provider website for policy information on fraud and filing disputes, both of which are out of your control. Your job as a moderation team is protecting creators from scammers who make themselves known within your community. You’ve created this space to cater to creators and need them to know that users who take advantage of them and creators who take advantage of users are not welcome here.

Low Quality/Low Effort Art. Something your moderation team should consider is whether or not you will be moderating low quality or low effort art. Lower quality art has the ability to potentially create a divide with more experienced artists or diminish the overall quality of your artistic channels. Expectedly, this is a very subjective and divisive topic. Moderating “low quality” or “low effort” art can run the risk of upsetting younger users or creators that are at the very beginning of learning how to create. When considering moderating low quality art, be sure to display empathy and compassion to avoid coming off as inconsiderate or rude. Be honest and realistic in your descriptions and requirements for these art spaces so that users may have a better idea as to what is and isn’t acceptable both content and quality wise. Other ways to healthily promote higher quality artists is via potential role systems, automatic pins, or weekly artist highlights, which will be discussed in further detail below.

Off Topic Art. As a team, think about whether you want your artist channels to be dedicated to the purpose of your server or if you want to also allow off topic content. Once this rule is decided, check that your moderation team is on the same page for enforcement and nudging should you decide not to allow off topic art.