Disciplines · Training

Training — Moderators

against the moderation rota.

9sections4 minread
Markdown source
On this page

Moderators staff the queue_moderation lane: triage user-generated content, message-center abuse, persona disputes, and reactive flags against published content. Distinct from reviewers (who certify content for publication) and from support (who handle individual customer tickets).

Audience and prerequisites#

  • Audience: trust-and-safety moderation staff and contracted partners staffed against the moderation rota.
  • Prerequisites: T&S onboarding (V1-TS-onboarding), policy-foundations module, well-being check-in protocol, RBAC and identity-verification current.
  • Refresh cadence: full re-cert every 6 months because policy evolves; monthly micro-drill of the active policy delta.

Learning objectives#

By certification, a moderator can independently:

  1. Apply the canonical content-policy classes against an unfamiliar item and record the decision with audit-grade evidence.
  2. Recognize and route crisis-tagged items into the senior-reviewer lane within the documented SLA.
  3. Use the moderation tooling: queue navigation, bulk actions inside the per-class allowlist, evidence-attachment, decision logging, appeal gating.
  4. Recognize manipulation patterns: prompt injection, brigading, scraping, evasion via persona-impersonation, watermark removal/reapplication.
  5. Coordinate with reviewers when a flagged item touches certified evidence or persona-bound content.
  6. Apply well-being protocols when content load exceeds personal thresholds; rotate before disposition quality degrades.

Curriculum modules#

# Module Duration Format Assessment
1 Policy foundations and canonical classes 180 min seminar + class-by-class card decks 30-item policy classification (≥ 28/30)
2 Moderation tool walkthrough 60 min hands-on against staging queue tool-fluency observation
3 Evidence handling and audit-grade decisions 90 min guided decisions + peer review rubric pass on 10 decisions with audit packet
4 Crisis routing (joint with support, reviewers) 120 min scenario rehearsal + senior shadow 4 crisis cases routed within SLA
5 Manipulation patterns and adversarial content 120 min curated adversarial set + red-team drill adversarial-classification test (≥ 85% precision/recall)
6 Persona-impersonation and identity disputes (joint w/ T&S) 90 min scenario rehearsal 3-case persona-dispute decision pass
7 Appeals coordination and rollback awareness 60 min walkthrough of appeals lane 2-case appeals-coordination drill
8 Well-being protocol 60 min guided + clinician-led discussion self-report adherence + supervisor sign-off

Decision rubric#

Every moderation decision is graded on:

  • Policy fit: the chosen class is the correct, narrowest applicable class.
  • Evidence: the decision packet contains the items needed for an appeals review (the item, the surrounding context, the policy line applied, prior decisions on the same actor, the operator's reasoning).
  • Action proportionality: the action (warn, remove, hide, suspend) is proportional to the harm and the actor's history.
  • Customer-visible response: the templated notice fired carries the correct reason code and appeals link.

Scenario rehearsal#

  1. Crisis content with grounded source: a user posts a self-harm request alongside a quoted Veritas claim. Moderator routes to crisis lane, suspends the item, escalates to senior reviewer for the grounded element, and ensures the message-center crisis-routing path runs.
  2. Persona impersonation: a third party claims a Lilith-controlled persona is misrepresenting them. Moderator captures the dispute, suspends customer-visible publication on the contested persona surface, routes to the persona-dispute lane.
  3. Coordinated brigade against a Veritas claim: detect coordinated reports, separate good-faith reports from brigade noise, escalate abuse to security with the cohort packet.
  4. Watermark-evasion suspicion: a redistributed asset surfaces with the Oshun watermark stripped or reapplied. Moderator routes to the watermark-verification lane, freezes promotion if the source is still live.
  5. Bulk action under policy allowlist: hold a 200-item bulk decision on a clear policy class; verify per-item evidence; perform the bulk action with the documented authorization step.

Certification criteria#

  • All 8 modules complete with passing assessment.
  • All 5 scenarios passed; failures require remediation, 30-day re-test, and shadow shifts with a senior moderator before re-certification.
  • 40 hours of shadow shifts with a certified moderator.
  • 20 hours of live-supervised disposition with rubric pass.
  • T&S lead and well-being supervisor sign-off.

Tabletop drills (post-certification)#

  • Monthly: active policy-delta micro-drill (new classes, new edge cases).
  • Quarterly: moderation-surge drill alongside the support team.
  • Semiannually: coordinated abuse-wave drill alongside security.

Well-being protocol#

  • Mandatory rotation off content load every 90 minutes for high-exposure classes (graphic, abuse, minors).
  • Confidential clinician access on-call during all moderation shifts.
  • Self-report tooling for elevated load; supervisors enforce rotation even when self-report is silent.
  • Quarterly well-being review; mandatory time-off compliance audited by T&S lead.

Owner#

The T&S lead owns this training program. Privacy lead, security lead, and a contracted well-being clinician review the well-being and adversarial-content modules. Updates are version-controlled and distributed via the policy-delta micro-drill.