ECPAT x Discord: Building Communities Where Everyone Belongs

This guide is for volunteer community moderators who are interested in making their communities welcoming for everyone. It helps explain how gender can influence the type of gaming experience a community member has, and what you can do to help create a more inclusive environment for everyone. Illustrations by Karen Vinaley.

Discord is responsible for enforcing our Terms of Service and Community Guidelines, though many Discord users go above and beyond, serving as volunteer community moderators to implement and enforce additional guidelines or rules specific to their servers. For example, the owner of a server devoted to dogs can establish rules limiting posts about cats, which volunteer community moderators can enforce.

TLDR: 

As volunteer community moderators, you build on Discord’s Community Guidelines by establishing and upholding your own server rules. 

You can also play an important role in shaping the culture of your community by encouraging good behavior in the server and creating opportunities for support and engagement. It’s a role that requires a good eye —not just for spotting behaviors that might need action, but also for recognizing opportunities that might showcase what a supportive environment can look like.

Here is where understanding gender dynamics can help you thrive in your role.

As with offline interactions, people’s experience in online gaming spaces can be influenced by their gender, as they may encounter gender stereotypes, assumptions, and expectations due to ideas that society associates with being male or female. These might include expectations around how someone dresses or behaves.

The more rigid the expectations are, the more they can fuel misbehavior towards another person based on their perceived gender identity or expression. This can lead to teasing, exclusion, or harassment, and can make it harder for someone to ask for and receive help.

These dynamics show up in a lot of spaces, gaming ones included, and can be hard for people to navigate, especially if they’re figuring out their identity and looking for meaningful connections and a sense of community.

Volunteer community moderators aren’t expected to be experts in gender issues, but there are small things you can do in practice through community engagement strategies, support channels, and server rules to help create a more inclusive and supportive community. Let’s look at what those might be:

When considering community engagement strategies:

• Are there opportunities for all members to participate, while accounting for varying skill levels, accessibility, and comfort with public speaking or in large social spaces?
• Are the activities or content used to promote them possibly excluding certain members or groups?
• Are there certain activities that seem to attract certain groups?
• If appropriate, are there opportunities to bring the community together more, without causing friction or discomfort to people?
  

When you look at support channels:

• Are they approachable and easy to use?
• Do they provide friendly explanations of their purpose and use case?
• Do they use language that doesn’t shame, stereotype, or invalidate someone’s experience?
• Do they allow members to provide more context to an incident if needed?
• Do members get a response or feedback within a reasonable time? Is the response fair and free from biases? 
• Are there opportunities to check-in more casually with members, such as through mood polls, Q&A sessions, etc.? Should there be? 
• Are there other ways for members to express that they need support, apart from submitting a formal ticket or DM-ing a concern?
• Are members aware of how to escalate things to Discord’s Trust & Safety team via in-app reporting?
  

When you look at server rules:

• Do they explicitly say what language and behaviors towards others are not allowed?
• Do they include which ones are encouraged instead?
• Are the rules communicated upon joining the server?
• Are there other fun ways to remind members about the server rules, like mini games and automated messages?
• Are there opportunities for members to suggest rules or shared commitments to use gender-sensitive language and behavior in the server and beyond?
  

The call for more gender-sensitive approaches isn’t about suggesting special treatment or performative actions for certain genders. It’s an invitation to challenge norms that create barriers and limit people from participating and receiving support when needed. In many cases, it’s about making small adjustments to existing practices and being more mindful of how gender can shape everyday interactions.

There isn’t a single approach that works for every online community, but we hope that this guide offers a practical starting point. Gender sensitivity isn’t about treating people differently; it's about making inclusion an intentional part of your community.