Curator Trials [Guide]

Hey Leaders!

I am a leader in the Pretty Little Liars community. The original one with 94,000 . We’ve recently opened up curator applications because we lost some staff. The last couple of times we’ve hired new staff we did this trial. I found it very beneficial when I’m trying to determine who’s a good fit on my team. I hope this helps!

Why should you do a trial?

Any trial has many benefits to it. I feel that it makes it easier for you to choose new curators because a trial can help you as a leader to figure out who is a good fit to your team. It can help you to determine who knows what they are doing as a curator. It will make it easy for you to determine who has experience and who lied on their application. It Is important to know what your new possible curators can actually do, what they know, their understanding of the community, etc. before they are actually hired. This is because when you hire your staff you want to be confident that they are capable of running the community and having your back when you are not able to be online.

How does a trial work?

First you should think about what you want in curators and how your team handles different situations. I feel like this may be the same for some communities but other communities have different policies and style of leadership so their responses may differ a little bit. Which is why you should first think about your own leadership.

A trial should typically last for 2 weeks so that you can get a feel for how your possible curators handle different situations and complete specific mod tasks. Since it’s a 14 day trial you should have the complete 13 different tasks or scenarios. These should be completed in rotations each day meaning the member will have one day to complete a task or respond to a scenario.

On the 14th day the on trial will engage in a group discussion on how to handle a situation. It is important to see how your possible curator responds and reacts in group discussions and as a team which is why it’s important for each member on trial to have a discussion about how to respond to a moderation situation. This is good practice to know where your new curator will stand with teamwork.

How do you choose to participate in the trial?

Trial should be chosen through regular curator applications. For my curator applications I created a form through google forms and then I went through applications and chose my top 10 to complete the trial. There should not be more then 13 completing this trial bc then there would be some completing the same task which can lead to cheating. But you can modify and create your own trial however you want.

Trial Rotations

It is important to break up your trial rotations into mod tasks and different scenarios or situations that your new curator can come across on the job. I think that these tasks should always be in any trial you have in a community because they really help you to determine what a curators ability is and what they already have an understanding of. I also think that the scenarios are very important to the trial, but you can change or modify the ones I included to better fit scenarios that you come across in your own community.

T A S K S:

Task 1: Featured feed- choose 3 posts and explain why they are featured worthy (old or new posts)

Task 2: Off topic posts- choose 3 posts and explain why they are off topic (possibly there are old posts that we have missed and have not disabled in the past)

Task 3: Spam posts- choose 3 posts considered spam or something close to spam and explain why it’s spam (old or new)

Task 4: Chats- choose 3 chats or messages that violate guidelines and explain why it violates guidelines (old or new)

Task 5: Choose a rule in the guidelines and in your own words explain it in detail in order to show your understanding of the rule.

Task 6: Create a quality blog tutorial. Post it in blog format or send in your draft.

S C E N A R I O S:

Scenario 1: Create moderation messages you would send for off topic, spam, bullying and inappropriate content. 4 messages total.

Scenario 2: Member A is bullying member B. A keeps calling them names and curses at them in the chat and does not want them in the chat. B messaged you about this situation. You are the only mod online at the moment. How do you respond? What do you do?

Scenario 3: Member A claims that another member (B) keeps asking them for personal information and pictures. Even after saying no, and asking to leave them alone, member B keeps continuing this behavior. They come to you for help. What do you do? You are the only mod online at the moment.

Scenario 4: You notice one of the has a suicidal/depressed message in their bio and that their posts and name suggest some mental health problems as well. How will you react to this? What do you do? You are the only mod online at the moment.

Scenario 5: A group of keep mentioning past drama and arguing with each other in public chats. You are the only Mod online at the moment. How would you react to/handle this situation? What would you say?

Scenario 6: You explain why you disabled a member's post and they keep spamming you to re-enable their post and/or change the Guidelines. When you message a public chat, they continue to argue with you. How do you respond/ handle the situation?

Scenario 7: A friend of yours regularly asks you to feature their post and pay for their orders from A's Doll Shop. How do you respond?

Group Discussion

For the last day of the trial it is important to see how your new curator can work as a team to come up with a solution. Which is why you should create an in depth scenario or explain an actual problem that the team has dealt with in the past. Give them the details that we as leaders usually deal with. The point is to know your possible curators response but we also want them to discuss it as a team to come up with a final solution that everyone in the trial agrees on and think is right.

E X A M P L E    S I T U A T I O N:

A is making many uncomfortable. They are not speaking proper English and are spamming constantly. It’s hard to understand them. They are not being polite to the mod team as well as . The is acting upset and acts like they might hurt themselves. Chat screenshots will be given. How do you respond? Discuss as a team.

I hope that helped! If you need more clarification don’t be afraid to ask. I’d love to here about how you guys run your trials. Let me know in the comments below!