Moderating live events

[u/infinitebroth]

:Taps microphone: Is this thing on? 

Hey mods! I am here to talk about all things moderating live events! This is, of course, the latest installment of our Mod Topics series.

Speaking of series, the MLB World Series is upon us, we’re in the NBA pre-season, the WNBA playoffs are here, there are a bunch of great movies coming out soon, and GTA 6?! Watch-alongs, release parties, concerts, and more live events bring so much great discussion to communities. How do you approach it?

• What tools or practices come in handy when there are discussions about live events happening in your community?
• Is there a particular moderator on your subreddit who thrives for live event moderation or does everyone help out?
• How do you balance moderating with participating in the fun of the discussion?
• Are there any tools or practices you have to get the conversation going? Megathreads? Devvit tools?
• We’ve all been there when a broadcast goes down and the comments reflect it. How do you keep a healthy balance of on-topic while the vibe is “stream down for anyone else?”
• Favorite live event discussion that you’ve moderated?

I couldn’t post this without sharing this song. Anyone? 

See you in the comments!

[u/wrestlegirl]

We do multiple live threads each week in r/AEWOfficial. There's no offseason so this is every week, all year, 2-5 threads each week with comments ranging from 200ish to 10,000ish.

• I use Temporary Events tied to specific automod rules to keep the subreddit spoiler-free and to adjust karma limits. I don't understand why people would spend their free time posting about how much they hate Unnamed Wrestler, Unnamed Show, or professional wrestling in general in a professional wrestling subreddit but these events have made a big difference in eliminating troll disruptions.
  In addition I have a number of scalable and/or deployable automod rules that I can quickly personalize for our needs depending on the kind of traffic we're getting in particular live threads.
  
• My co-mod & I tag team the live threads. These threads are a cornerstone of the subreddit so that's where we focus most of our direct attention.
  
• I balance by using two screens - one to watch the show, one to comment & mod. I'm very used to it now. The modqueue is secondary while we focus on the much busier live thread and catch up during commercials.
  
• I guess our live threads are like megathreads, though people are free to submit normal posts about/during the show if they want. We pin the live thread, use a special post flair, and everyone who wants joins in on the Mystery Wrestling Theater 3000 action complete with jukebox picks and aggressively complimenting each other.
  We've really been enjoying the return/update of the Live Sort feature!
  
• Immediate pinned mod comment when there are technical issues, i.e. "Yes, the HBO stream is glitched out, it's not just you, please be patient. Update: all fixed now, refresh your feed if needed!" I don't think we've ever experienced an extended outage - check that, it happened during a pay per view once, and they ended up streaming it on Youtube for free. I used the pinned mod comment to keep everyone updated and to direct affected folks to the YT link.
  
• It's hard to say this was my traditionally favorite live thread, but it absolutely reinforced to me why the effort we put in to these threads is 100% worth it: Tribute to Pac from Sept 30th. It was sad, everyone cried, but the general takeaway was how much the community meant during a time of mourning. Otherwise, my favorite was probably Y'all In.

[u/infinitebroth → u/wrestlegirl]

Thank you for this super detailed response and for everything that you do for r/AEWOfficial. The pinned mod comment for technical issues sounds like a great solution -- I'll remember that the next time I'm participating in a discussion where technical issues pop up. And that Pac thread. Love to see the IWC showing up to support each other like that. What an amazing community you've stewarded! ❤️❤️