5 Tips to Stop Your Community Becoming Toxic

Hey everyone,

It has been a while since we wrote a guide on the Discord Path and we are hoping to bring back more frequent guides for all of you to help your communities succeed. This week I want to give you the top 5 tips on making your community as non-toxic as possible as a toxic community is one of the easiest ways to kill one-off.

Toxicity has a lot of negative side effects such as poor moderation, unmotivated staff, poor review from members and consistent tension between people to just name a few. Without further ado here are 5 tips you can use to stop your community becoming toxic.

1. Have Proper Moderation Policies

Having a proper moderation policy holds everyone accountable for their actions. A proper moderation policy is a document that has all of your communities rules as well as associated consequences for breaking those rules which helps to hold everyone accountable for their actions including your moderators.

When creating a moderation policy it is best to do it as a team so you can get everyone’s opinion on what is a good fit for it. You should make an effort to review it every so often as well as communities are so dynamic meaning they change so frequently and the people who your community targets may also change so keeping it up to date is important.

2. Have a Fair and Unbiased Staff Team

One of the main reasons a server will be called toxic is the way the staff team conduct themselves within the community. A staff team is your communities main image. If people see your staff doing the wrong thing, that reflects back on you and your community so it is imperative you have a fair and unbiased staff team in your community.

In the Legal System, we have this concept called the principles of justice. The two that apply here are called fairness and equality. You need to be fair but firm and so do your staff. You as a community owner need to hold them accountable for their actions. If your staff are inconsistent with how they moderate than it may cause tension between the community and staff members.

3. Stopping Fights Before they Start

As you build your community you will start to notice, “problem members”. These are members who are active within your community but consistently cause problems with other staff members and are toxic in general. Dealing with these members early is the best way to stop a community from becoming toxic as if you get too many of these members it is easy for your moderation team to become overwhelmed.

4. Listen to your Community Members

Your community members are very important and it is important to try to understand their view on your community and how they feel about it. They are the ones who will judge if a community is toxic or not so it is crucial that you regularly gain feedback from them. This could be in the form of a quiz, survey or even a poll.

5. Don’t Let the Haters Hate

As a community owner, you need to be strong. In order to keep your community as toxic free as possible, you need to take a stand against toxicity. Knowing the members that cause issues, listening to your community members, holding your staff accountable etc. You need to work with your team in order to make sure that you are all on the same page and can get along with each other.

I hope these tips help you if you want to keep your community toxicity free or are trying to fix a pre-existing issue.

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