Cats views on the critical deficiencies of moderation terminology
Talking about moderation in an actually useful way is shockingly hard with current language that the mainstream uses. This makes talking about how to do this job right a lot harder. So, this post is dedicated to Cat talking about how to talk about this topic in an actually useful manner as far as Cat is concerned.
What words don’t work
The traditional language of admins and mods is practically useless as far as I am concerned because it loses the fact that IT is not HR if we speak in corporate language nor is IT legal.
What I mean by this is that Systems Administrators are not policy makers when it comes to how creatures interact with each other. Thats the job of someone whose job it is to manage creatures not computers. But common internet language has this shit confused. Admins being above moderators when in reality sometimes moderators outrank admins. And being an admin is not automatically implying that you manage creature interaction you might be a pure sys admin.
The different roles as far as Cat sees it
In Cats model there are these roles that are very loosely defined and well you can wear multiple of these hats. Or wear multiple of these outfits depending on how you see it.
The Janitor
Janitors are your front-line moderation from my perspective and they are your heavy hitters. When you’re under a CSAM wave it’s the janitorial squad that gets called in. They take out the trash and don’t have to be good people while doing it. Janitorial moderation is essential but also something where you don’t have to be great at managing creatures you just have to be able to survive this crap.
Janitorial moderators are a lot like soldiers in that they are expected to pay a heavy price for their service. Both groups expect that their service can be very determinental to their lifes. Soldiers die on the battle field or later from the scars. Too many Janitorial moderators have paid this same price so we should all remember their sacrifices in keeping the modern world safe.
A great example of this is actually CME. CME is janitorial moderation as a community service essentially. The project doesn’t solve your disputes or your Cat went on a rant problem. It solves this threat actor decided your room needs to be on the list of targets for the latest campaign problem. And this is actually good. A healthy matrix community can need up to a 100:1 or more ratio of Janitorial moderators to the next Category the Custodian Moderator.
The Senior Janitors
The senior janitor is a subset of the Janitor role where you have even more power. While regular Janitors have the authority take out the trash one at a time the Senior Janitors are allowed to authorise more radical moves like ACL bans or wildcard bans depending on community policies. This is a very different mindset than regular janitorial work as your now having to make real calls with extreme consequences that are not limited to individuals.
This type of power is usually only held by Senior Custodial moderators when they drop into the Janitor role due to how much trust is required to allow you to wield these tools.
The primary exception to this is that CME and CAT are 2 popular policy lists that are trusted with these powers in a janitorial context. When CME or CAT issues an ACL we cut off whole servers from large chunks of the federation. That is not a call any of us who take on the Senior Janitor role does lightly. Heavy is the head that wears the crown is a statement that should be true for anyone who has this type of power. Because we even more than regular Janitors have the power to cause extreme harm if we make mistakes.
The Custodian / Curators
Custodian Moderators differ a lot from your janitorial moderators in that this isn’t your riot cops these are actually people who are supposed to have a great relationship with your community. As in if your custodians fall out with your community that’s usually a major problem. This is because of their role.
The Custodians role is to help facilitate the community moving in the right direction and staying healthy. They do take out the trash just like janitors it’s just they are doing so with a much more surgical precision. The custodial moderators are supposed to do everything reasonable before they start to reach for the big guns like bans. This is the core difference between Janitors and Custodians. Custodians are community managers who can ban you. Janitors are spam defence.
The Administrative Caretaker
And now we get to the Administrative Caretaker. Now this role is primarily differentiated in that its Administrative. This distinction matters because of as I mention earlier Admins are not moderators automatically.
When Cat does administrative consulting for the matrix ecosystem like I have done for Fedora and Ubuntu and many others I don’t tell those I help how to moderate usually. I tell them what their options are and how to get to their goals because I’m a Sys admin and Trust and Safety solutions architect more than I am your moderator.
And this is also very clear with some homeservers for example matrix.org you contact their security team if you have a security issue. If you have a homeserver issue it’s the support team and T&S is the T&S team.
They are separate because they are separate concerns and separate roles. I am a great Sys Admin and T&S solutions but I am not strong at the creature management of custodial moderation. Theres a reason I serve as a Janitor for more communities than I serve as a custodian. Not only because as a CME member that’s automatic but because I am better suited for being an Administrative Caretaker and Janitor than a Custodian.