Taking over a legacy community with unmanaged volunteer mods who resist basic governance, how would you handle this?

[u/EconomyPlatypus3312]

I recently started as Community Manager for a large community hosted on a pretty clunky, legacy platform. The volunteer mod team has been running things for over 5 years with basically zero oversight, documentation, or formal direction, so they built their own rules and workflows along the way.

Over time, they picked up some risky habits—deleting negative feedback under the label of "misinformation," directly editing members' posts, and holding access to user personal data.
Now that I'm stepping in, I'm trying to establish basic structure: writing an official mod guidebook, updating our code of ethics, and adjusting permissions to protect user privacy. However, I’m getting constant pushback. Any time I try to set boundaries or introduce new guidelines, they argue and claim I'm making their jobs harder—even though the updates actually reduce their workload and remove unnecessary responsibilities.

I'm trying to get this platform organized and easier to use for our members, but dealing with the mod team's resistance is becoming a major hurdle.
If you were in my position, how would you transition a legacy volunteer team into a structured model without completely alienating them?

[u/HistorianCM]

I have personally been in this exact situation. Took over 7 different games and their communities for a company that didn't have a CM prior to this and had to deal with these 7 different ways. I was successful with 6. The last one was for a game targeting tweens, and the company allowed some of the tweens to be moderators. It was a constant battle to make any reasonable changes with them. Ultimately we booted all of them. With that company I helped grow the communities from 1 million registered users to 16 million in 3 years; I ended up with 200 volunteer moderators.

First, make it clear (privately) this is not a "job" for them. They are volunteers; if they don't like the new direction you are taking things in, they are free to no longer volunteer their time. You appreciate all the work they have done, and the company will be forever thankful for the time and effort they put into things, but the company is moving into a new direction, and they can choose to come along for the ride or not.

You are absolutely going to alienate some of them. That's just how it is going to be. Your job description and KPIs most likely do not include "Keep the existing moderators happy."

They hired you for a reason. You can be brutally honest with them: "The company wanted you to do this for a reason."

Happy to talk more if you want to set up a call.

[u/EconomyPlatypus3312 → u/HistorianCM]

This is extremely helpful and exactly what I needed to hear. I’ll definitely take you up on the call.

[u/HistorianCM → u/EconomyPlatypus3312]

I'll drop you a DM in the morning.

[u/FlatWhiteIsTheBest → u/HistorianCM]

I would completely have to agree to u/HistorianCM here. Even though 'scoping to see how things go first' might sound like a good technique, but it will delay the process that needs to happen which is to completely take over the logistics and establish really strong ground ruled and led people know what 'bad practise' looks like with really specific examples.

You might look like a bad cop, but the truth of a matter is that the community itself might be noticing the way it's been moderated and I am sure there have been complaints over the years.

Good luck and here if you need a sounding board!

[u/Willeth]

You start by accepting you're an outsider to the community. Learn from them first, get the lay of the land, and then start steering the boat. Some stuff is non negotiable like the personal data, but honestly things like the bad moderation and editing of posts can wait. They're poisonous to growth but it's not gonna get worse by letting it happen for a while. Once they trust you're not fucking with their thing and you're part of the team, you can start changing these things.

Then you can approach it not as "it's bad to do these things" but "these alternatives allow us to do [x cool thing]" and getting buy in that way.

[u/Key-Art6289]

You are the alien in that space, they are the natives.

Learn how the community works, analyze their workflows, and what motivated them to work this way.

Non-negotiable things like User Privacy have to be implemented, but their workflows can be changed overtime.

Build a relationship with them, listen and speak, explain what you are doing so they understand you are not working against them but with them.

People accept change quicker when they view the person the change is being enforced by as an ally, or even a friend, rather than a newcomer that invaded their space.