This page provides a quick overview of the requirements and responsibilities of a Chat Moderator for online Satanic religious services. If you have been asked to be a Chat Moderator, please reach out to the Religious Services team for technical information, such as how to log into The Satanic Temple TV with moderator access and how to kick and ban people from the chat.
Before service begins
1 Join the chat one hour before the service.
2 Let the minister know you are there.
3 Introduce yourself as the moderator in the chat.
4 Keep pleasant conversation going.
During the service
1 Paste the donate link (see below) when the minister mentions it in the opening.
2 Keep an eye on the chat and make sure nobody is being distracting or disruptive.
3 Have a way to relay comments from the chat to the minister if it is needed, or if the minister decides to ask for audience responses.
4 Have links to the after-service activities ready to post in the chat when the minister is going through the list of activities at the end.
Donate Link: https://tst.link/donate-to-services
What does “distracting and disruptive” mean?
There are activities you may consider acceptable (or be willing to look past) at a social event or before the service starts, but that create distraction during a service, e.g.
- picking fights
- excessive small-talk
- attention-seeking
- promoting websites or events, or posting links (only chat moderators are allowed to do this)
- goading people into talking about off-topic news or current events.
Some activities are never acceptable, even if you think of them as relatively “minor”:
- verbal bullying
- personal insults
- criticizing someone’s appearance.
Please do not put the burden of responding to this behavior on the other audience members during a religious service. Instead, give a single warning and then remove the person if the behavior continues.
Tips for moderating services
✓ Warn first. People should be notified that their behavior is disruptive and given a chance to change. Everyone can have a bad day and not be their “best self” all of the time. Sometimes a warning is what people need to hear.
✓ Kick Early. If someone persists in being disruptive after the warning, the best thing for the community is to simply remove them. They will be able to join future services, if they want to demonstrate their ability to behave better.
✓ Ban When Necessary. When someone is persistently disruptive despite warnings across multiple services, it may become necessary to ban them for the well-being and safety of our community.
✓ Use Evidence Only. It is not appropriate to remove someone merely because they give you an “icky feeling” or you heard something about them that makes you believe they are likely to be disruptive in the future. We are not “precrime police”: base your actions on behavior you actually see.
NOTE: If a member of The Satanic Temple behaves in a way that violates the Code of Conduct, (1) notify the Religious Services Team so they can extract log files of the chat, and (2) file an incident report with Suryan Council. Even if you don’t think the violation was “that serious”–that is a determination for Suryan Council to make, not you.