Define member types before you need them
A 100-member community needs no member types. A 5,000-member community without them is chaos. Member types are formal categories: founder, mentor, member, alum. Each type has rights, responsibilities, and visibility. Members behave differently when they know which category they are in.
Distribute moderation early
Founders burn out trying to moderate every thread. Distribute moderation to trusted members before you need it. A 1,000-member community needs 5-10 community managers. Each one watches a slice. Recognize them publicly, give them roles, rotate them out before they burn out.
- Tier 1: Volunteer moderators (5-10 members, watch the feed)
- Tier 2: Community managers (1-2 paid, escalation point)
- Tier 3: Founder (rare disputes, policy decisions)
Write a code of conduct
Three pages, plain English, enforced. Cover: what kind of conduct is unacceptable, how reports work, what consequences exist, who decides. The code lives in the about page and is linked from every onboarding email. Members who break it get warned, muted, or banned. Document every enforcement decision in a private moderator log.
Ship the report-block-mute system on day one
Every public space needs a "report" button on every post. Members need to be able to block other members without involving moderators. Mute is for accounts that are annoying but not breaking the code. Without these three actions baked into the UI, every conflict escalates to the founder. BuddyPress Moderation Pro adds all three at the post and member level.
Handle conflict by reducing options
When two members fight in public, the conflict spreads. Move the conversation to DMs. Give both parties an off-ramp. Most conflicts resolve in 15 minutes of private dialogue. The community sees that the disagreement disappeared from public view. Repeat offenders escalate to mute or ban.
Track moderation as a metric
Reports per 1,000 members per week is the metric to watch. A healthy community is under 2. A community above 10 has a culture problem the moderation system cannot fix alone. The dashboard for this lives in BuddyPress Moderation Pro plus a simple Slack alert when reports cross a daily threshold.
- Reports per 1,000 members per week (target: under 2)
- Median time to first moderator action (target: under 30 min)
- Repeat offender rate (target: under 10% of reported members reappear in 30 days)
- Moderator turnover (target: each moderator rotates out within 6 months)
Plan member type transitions
Members do not stay the same forever. New members become regulars. Regulars become mentors. Mentors become alumni. Build the transitions explicitly. New-to-regular is 30 days of active posting. Regular-to-mentor is an invite from existing mentors. Mentor-to-alumni is a celebrated graduation. Without transitions, the community feels stuck.
Capability matrix per role
Every role needs a written capability matrix: which spaces they can post in, which actions they can take on others, which moderation tools they get, what their badge looks like. Putting this on paper before assigning roles prevents 90% of "why can they do X" questions. WordPress capabilities plus the Members plugin handle the technical side; BuddyPress member types provide the front-of-house labels.