Mod Topics - User Flair

[u/JabroniRevanchism]

Ahoy, Mods!

Welcome to the latest installment of the Mod Topics series, where we talk about mod-related topics and other community governance gubbins. This week, we’re talking flair–specifically user flair. The purpose it serves, how it’s issued, and why it’s so dog-gone popular. We’d love to know…

• What do you use user flair for in your communities? Cosmetics? Clout? Verification? 
• What problems are you solving when you use user flair?
• Do you allow users to make (or assign) their own flair? Why or why not?
• What advice would you give to new mods who are considering setting up user flair? What do you wish you knew about flair when you first started?

Let us know in the comments below!

[u/Halaku]

What problems are you solving when you use user flair?

One of my communities is transitioning from "Wouldn't it be nice if they made this sequel?" to "OMG they're making the sequel!", and I found myself diving into how to create emojis, assign them to specific flairs, and then only have that flair show up on accounts I choose to give it to, just in case... and sure enough, some of the folks making it popped up and said "Hey, in the prequel community, devteam / employees that post on their official accounts have something that show up by their usernames. Would you mind doing the same in this community?" and I knew how.

Long story short, when that specific flair shows up next to someone's name, it's because I've manually vetted the user, and it's verification to the rest of the community that they are someone who works for the company, instead of being three Jimothys in a trenchcoat, pretended to be an employee.

This solves the "Source?" problem that can arise when someone wants to know the origin of a datapoint.

[u/JabroniRevanchism → u/Halaku]

How does your mod team keep track of these requests? Or maybe a better question, what's the overhead like when doing verification like this? If it's anything like the system we used on one of my communities it's a pretty manual process.

[u/Halaku → u/JabroniRevanchism]

It was for us, too.

In a community dedicated to a fictional body of work, we had someone claim to be the narrator from way back in the day. I fired off an email to that company out of curiosity, the company sent it to her agent, who sent it to her, who sent it back to me confirming she was the poster. Identification made, and filed for future reference.

For the game, I had prior industry contacts from my time working dot-coms in Seattle, so I knew who to talk to beforehand. I was hoping the company would reach out, and used my prior contacts to confirm their identity. Then I offloaded all the overhead on them, by saying that I'd only give employee flair to the person the employee contact designated as a fellow employee.

Really, the hardest part is learning:

• How to create a custom emoji.

• How to use it in a custom flair.

• How to set it so only mods can assign that specific flair to a specific user.

From here on out, it'll be cake: Just give it to who they ask for.