Community roles and operating routines

A community needs someone accountable for the member experience, people authorised to handle reports, and a routine that works when the usual owner is away. Assign decisions and handoffs first. Then set a review rhythm the team can sustain.

Assign ownership

Name a person responsible for day-to-day operation and a deputy who can take over. The owner coordinates staff responses, notices recurring problems and brings decisions to the right team. The deputy needs the authority and information to act, not just access to an inbox.

Moderators review reports and manage discussions within agreed limits. A product specialist may answer a technical question without owning the community. A support team may take an account-specific case privately.

Write down who owns each handoff and who decides when responsibilities overlap.

One person may hold several roles in a small team. The decisions attached to each role still need to be clear.

Before assigning work involving platform settings, check that the person has the required access; some settings require Administrator access.

Moderation Responsibilities by Role

Work from open items

At the start of a staffed period, check new questions, reports, items awaiting approval and commitments carried over. Prioritise by consequence. A possible disclosure of private information needs a different route from a routine question awaiting a specialist.

Give each open item an owner, next action and review time. Asking for more information can be progress without resolving the question.

Close an item when the member has a usable next step, responsibility has clearly moved to another team, or the team has recorded why no further community action is appropriate.

Use platform queues as one input when reviewing open work. Keep a working record of unanswered questions and support handoffs that need follow-up.

For discussion-structure tasks, see the platform-maintenance routine below.

Review decisions across shifts

A handover should state what happened, what members have been told, the next authorised action and its owner.

In a regular team review, look at repeated questions, disputed decisions, delays and work that depends on one person. Choose a frequency that fits the volume of work, and review sooner when unresolved cases or risk rises.

Record material changes to rules or response commitments with an owner and effective date. The next moderator should be able to find the current position without inferring it from old messages.

Coverage needs its own decision. State when members can post and when a person is available to review reports. If those times differ, explain the response expectation. For an Australian roster, recheck shifts around daylight saving and confirm local clock changes for the locations covered.

Shift Handover and Review Schedule

Include platform maintenance

Discourse's content-management work can include correcting a topic's title or category, moving off-topic posts into a new or existing topic, and moving useful posts from a duplicate topic into the existing discussion. Moving every post out of a topic closes it automatically, so check the intended outcome before completing that task.

Include flag handling, the Review Queue and content-approval settings in the team's platform responsibilities. Match permissions to duties: assign configuration work to someone with Administrator access where the setting requires it, rather than assuming every moderator can configure it.

Discourse's built-in admin dashboard reports are available to staff. They include data from all users and staff activity, such as visits to admin pages, while excluding the system user. When reviewing these reports for operational planning, remember that staff activity contributes to the totals; they are not a count of member work alone.

Platform Maintenance and Moderation Metrics

Check capacity

Count routine reviews, complex cases, member replies, specialist handoffs and administration. Time a sample of each kind of work instead of assuming every post takes the same effort. Consider leave, a launch and a surge in reports.

Use available platform reports and moderation insights as inputs to a staffing decision, not as measures of all work or a universal staffing ratio. Read cases behind the counts and allow for interruptions and judgement.

If the routine depends on one person watching every channel, adjust the response promise, coverage or backup before inviting more members.

Pros and Cons of Relying on One Person for All Coverage