Meta has always been powered by community participation, people showing up, sharing knowledge, asking good questions, and helping each other out.
To support that, we’ve introduced a small group of Volunteer Moderators to help keep Meta organized, welcoming, and easy to navigate.
What does that actually mean?
Volunteer Moderators help keep topics organized and discoverable, support productive conversations, and occasionally step in when something needs a light touch.
This is a stewardship role, not a policing one, and it doesn’t change anything about how you use Meta.
A few things worth noting:
Volunteer Moderators do not have staff-level permissions. They cannot access personal messages or any sensitive user data.
They are still regular community members. They will keep participating, sharing opinions, and contributing just like before. They simply have a few additional tools to help things run smoothly.
We are working on visual flair so Volunteer Moderators are easy to identify.
As the program evolves, we may expand it. We will share details when that time comes.
No, that group is private. I haven’t tried it yet, but I remember from other hidden groups that this is sometimes a little confusing as you can see it being part of the PM created because of your flag, but the link only returns “Oops! That page doesn’t exist or is private.”
In that case I won’t send a full list of members incase they don’t want their membership public but I’m sure a few other of them would be willing to say something
Well, the shields are visible on posts in most categories, and the list of users that were granted TL4 recently (Discourse Meta) is quite helpful as an indicator of whose posts you want to check for a shield.
Hey, just wanted to jump in here and speak for myself, not on behalf of Discourse as a whole.
The volunteer moderators program started with a very small group that we intentionally selected based on a mix of things, from long-standing participation to how people consistently show up in the community. The goal was to create a thoughtful, well-balanced group. That balance mattered to me, especially since some folks are more active behind the scenes or in specific areas, while others have been very visibly engaged here for a long time.
Volunteer moderation isn’t unusual. It’s something nearly every healthy community uses in some form. The volunteer mods are welcome to jump in and introduce themselves if they’d like.
This program is rolling out gradually, and as it evolves, you’ll start to see things like flair and clearer identification. It’s one small step as we continue to grow, iterate, and make Meta even better.
Using Discourse does involve a level of trust in how we build and evolve things, and I’m excited to share more of what we have coming soon.
