Moderation Team: Behind the Scenes

Today, we're exploring our Moderation team, aka Saviours of the Modern World, and taking a look behind the scenes. 

Who are those heroes who selflessly devote their time and effort from answering questions to making sure everything is being run smoothly in our communities?

We wanted to take the time to introduce them more thoroughly and talk about what they do behind the curtains: everything from how they’re selected to how they operate. All the questions you always wanted to ask them will be answered in this article.

Now onto the show!

First things first, if you haven’t visited our social media channels yet, please do so. We have an active Forum, a Discord server, a Subreddit, and we even have a biweekly Shadow News Twitch stream. You got it: the Shadow community is quite populated and quite extensive, active on all platforms. Thankfully, to take care of #TeamShadow, we have our moderators to help us out!

With cloud gaming and cloud computing being so new to this digital era, many Shadowers often reach out to ask questions on how a certain software runs well, if VR is possible, or even if Red Dead Redemption 2 is playable on Shadow (the answer is: yes!). 

With so many people seeking answers, volunteers emerged from the woodwork to help. With every answer they gave, they leveled up with Shadow knowledge to the point where they became our superstars. One thing led to another and these superstars became our moderators, who focused on keeping our community safe and well supplied with answers.  

Our communities kept growing to the point where we needed multiple teams of moderators to help support and foster its growth. This included expanding our timezone and social channel coverage.

Due to the many communities we have through Reddit, Discord, Twitch, and our Forum, we have moderators from all over the world: US, UK, France, and Germany, to name a few. Each moderator contributes specific skills, whether it's helping users resolve general technical issues to moderation (ie. making sure each user is following our rules), informing the community about our latest developments, or even sharing special cooking content.

We said volunteers, we said superstars, but we can give you more specifics on the roles and qualities we expect. 

First of all, moderators are trustworthy members who are also part of the Shadow community. They help ensure the safety and success of the community by monitoring members’ behavior, content, and taking care of reported content. They also have a deep understanding of Shadow, Shadow's community rules, and communication policies.

They are chosen based on activity, knowledge, and disposition. And also because they are among the coolest kids on the block: they are friendly, understanding, and conscientious. Technically, they are knowledgeable about Shadow and understand our values.

Our moderators hold a few responsibilities on our channels. 

Primarily, they maintain and enforce rules and etiquette of that channel and ensure that our community is healthy and active. They also help report on the status of the server and community, giving CMs and Shadow staff insight into issues Shadow members may be experiencing. 

Last but not least, they help engage with our community, providing community help and support if necessary and will happily jump into the fray, conversing with other Shadowers about the latest game developments.  #GamersFTW 

For moderators new and old, enforcing the rules is a key part of the job that you need to have a good grasp on. Depending on the server, there are different scenarios you may face on a daily basis. Each situation is never the same so it may be difficult to determine the best course of action.

Below are some questions they ask themselves:

Then, depending on the situation, they work with other moderators to determine the best course of action or resolve the conflict on their own. Either way, the moderator team is informed of the situation and its response. Their purpose is always to keep our channels as friendly and informative as possible. They are our eyes and ears, in a way, some could say they are… our Shadows. Wink, wink. 

Ok, but what do our moderators actually think about all of this? What motivated them to join us? What games do they play, what application do they use the most? We wanted to have a bit more of an insider point of view. So we asked them. And as always, they delivered!

And most important of all, here are some of the reasons why they joined our moderation team:

“I joined Shadow back in 2017? And fell in love with it ever since. It's an amazing platform and offers the flexibility to play the games I love almost anywhere I wish. I helped the community when I could and as time went on I figured once Shadow offered me the position I couldn't say no. Since then, I’ve been with Shadow and haven't looked back.”

-Razorline#1024

“In the beginning, I especially wanted to be able to help more easily and efficiently. I had no pretensions to get in, I was offered this [position] one evening while I was coming back from basketball training and I had no reason to refuse. It's a great experience even if it's not always easy but it has the advantage of having improved my spelling and knowing how to calm myself and others #DuCalme”

-Van Hohenheim#3966

“Since my arrival in the community, I felt good in it and it has made me want to get involved. I helped other users as much as I could . Then, I joined the Insiders on to help the developers and then I met the Staff Shadow at events in Paris, they were amazing ! It was a great pleasure, and I always wanted to do more. Elfamoso opened the moderation registration because more and more users were joining the Discord, and they needed people they could trust to help them (TL:DR, I was asked to join moderation almost 1 year after my request)”

-RAZhkoh#9361

“Because I was asked 🤣 I loved the German Discord community from the beginning and I was one of the first greeters and Shadow Gurus. After a few months of helping Shadow users and being an active part of the community I was asked if I want to be a moderator for this community and I directly said yes. At this time Shadow wasn't officially released in Germany and there were only early bird users in this community and because of users who were very sad because they were a bit too late and had to wait for the official release at the end of 2018. And we were a small and very lovely community with different kinds of users. Now the German Shadow Discord Community is much bigger and we moderators have much more to moderate as at the early bird time but it still makes a lot of fun to be part of this great community and the best Community Manager we could ever have - Malte. (sorry but he's the perfect German CM hehe)”

-Gentle#5042

As you can see, we usually notice those who stand out by helping others, and offer them a position on our moderation team. But there are also recruitment sessions. So if you ever feel like this is your life goal, please feel free to apply whenever we open up our moderation applications - we’ll keep you tuned in our social media channels’ announcements sections. They say the more the merrier, and we couldn’t agree more!

We hope that all of this information gives you a better understanding of what our amazing moderation teams do. 

Last but not least: For all the tasks you do on a daily basis, for your timeless help, for your commitment, for everything, and from the bottom of our hearts: THANK YOU!