How Moderation Improves Community Engagement in Discord

“We approach Discord projects from a Safety by Design mindset,” says Gallagher. 

A proactive approach that puts player safety at the heart of social platform development, Safety by Design seeks to minimise online threats by detecting and eliminating them before they occur. He explains how his team brings this Safety by Design approach to their conversations with clients. 

“When building new servers for clients, my team always recommends implementing a levelling system that rewards users with XP [experience points] for posting messages,” he says. “As users progress through levels named after characters or worlds from the game, their engagement and motivation increase significantly.”

This levelling system has impressive engagement benefits — unsurprisingly, players love the gamification aspect —but as a Safety by Design feature, it also serves a vital moderation function. At lower levels, certain types of potentially harmful content, such as external links or videos, are restricted to prevent disruptions. As users level up without posting disruptive content, more sharing options, like images, custom stickers, and emojis, become available to them. By implementing these guardrails at the beginning of the experience and providing a gamified system, the need for moderation is effectively lowered.

As Gallagher points out, “Some of the most severe cases of trolling and disruptive behaviour often come from users who have just joined the server. By gradually exposing users to more privileges as they prove themselves through positive engagement, the risk of harmful behavior is mitigated. Gallagher also stresses the importance of creating a professional, well-organised server, and maintaining it over time. He compares it to the "broken windows" theory, which suggests that visible signs of disorder can lead to an increased likelihood of disruptive behavior and crime in a community. 

Organisations that want to foster community engagement and growth on Discord should start by creating a server with built-in Safety by Design features and maintaining a clean, professional look.

But what’s the next step? 

According to James Gallagher and Jessica Blazquez, Community Manager Lead at Keywords Studios, community managers and content moderators are the second piece of the Discord engagement puzzle. 

Unlike other communication platforms, where community management and moderation tasks are often kept separate (with moderators typically remaining “silent” instead of interacting with the community), on Discord both roles play a large part in fostering community engagement.

“Community management on Discord is a huge part of making sure the community is thriving and friendly,” says Blazquez. Community managers are responsible for organising and shepherding a variety of engagement-boosting activities, such as developer AMAs, giveaways, and fan contests. 

But moderators also play a key role in keeping the community engaged through positive reinforcement and active dialogue with users. “In a healthy community, moderators are some of the most active members,” Blazquez points out. 

“Typically, community managers will help run the stage event itself, while moderators watch over the chat during the event,” explains Blazquez. 

Audience members can request to speak during stage events, another reason that these events are powerful community engagement tools. While community managers ensure that events run on time and that speakers stick to the agenda, moderators can focus on moving audience members between the speaker group and the audience group – ensuring that everyone has an opportunity to engage during stage events. 

“One of the biggest drivers of toxicity is boredom,” explains Gallagher. “By working together to keep events engaging and safe, community managers and moderators can create a vibrant, welcoming atmosphere that keeps users coming back for more.”

While events play a key role in encouraging community engagement, Blazquez and Gallagher both highlight the impact of passionate fans as one of the top drivers of engagement in a Discord server. Community managers and moderators both contribute to the success of fan engagement by providing a safe environment where users feel comfortable expressing themselves without fear of abuse or harassment. By encouraging high-level players to share their expertise and advice — character builds, weapons, and gameplay strategies — with other fans, community managers and moderators can help boost community engagement.

Active, thriving communities are the goal of Discord — but with that level of engagement comes other challenges. As a result, community managers and moderators may find it difficult to keep up with the volume of messages shared every day on the platform.

What’s the solution? 

According to our experts, automation is key. 

Moderator bots offer valuable automation and assist moderators in managing their considerable workload efficiently.  “Moderators will burn out without bots,” says Blazquez, “Especially in large communities with thousands of active users and multiple channels.” 

Discord released AutoMod in 2022, allowing community managers and moderators to set up keyword and spam filters that automatically trigger moderation actions such as blocking messages that contain specific keywords and logging flagged messages for review. 

In addition to AutoMod, there are multiple third-party tools that community managers and moderators can install on their servers to streamline their moderation workflow. These bots can handle various tasks, including keyboard shortcuts that take action on bad actors, automatically creating moderation logs, and even giving users on the server access to more efficient and less clunky reporting tools.   

The future of Discord community management and moderation lies in the combination of AI and human intelligence, sometimes referred to as “AI + HI”. Gallagher explains the power of AI + HI in addressing scalability challenges presented by large communities.   

“If you have a very active community, it never stops,” he says. "If you want to protect your users and your brand on Discord, you need eyes on it 24/7. That’s impossible without leveraging a blend of AI and human moderation.”

While AI is not currently used with Discord's built-in AutoMod, AI-powered moderation tools such as Community Sift are being tested more and more. AI + HI moderation offers a solution for efficiently handling moderation tasks, allowing community managers and moderators to focus on more complex and meaningful interactions with the community while ensuring a safe and engaging environment.