Discord Moderator Application Template: Questions That Actually Filter

Most moderator application templates online are written by form builders, for any kind of form. They ask "rate your moderation skills from 1 to 10" and "why should we pick you", and every applicant answers both the same way. This one is written for Discord, and for the person who has to read fifty of them.

What makes a moderator application question useful?

A question is useful when two applicants who would moderate differently give different answers to it. That rules out most of the classics.

The template: copy, then make it yours

Grouped in the order applicants should meet them. Easy questions first, scenarios once they are warmed up.

About you

1. What should we call you, and what is your time zone?
2. How old are you? (Only if your server has an age minimum for staff.)

Experience and availability

1. Have you moderated or helped run a community before? Where, and what did you do there?
2. How many hours a week can you be active, and at what times?
3. Why do you want to moderate this server in particular?

Scenarios

1. Two regulars start arguing in general chat and it gets personal. Nobody has broken a rule yet. What do you do?
2. A friend of yours breaks a rule. Another member points it out in public. How do you handle it?
3. It is late, no admin is online, and a raid starts. Walk us through your first two minutes.
4. A member DMs you saying another moderator treated them unfairly. What do you do?

Last word

1. Is there anything else we should know about you?

Ten questions. If your server is small, cut 5 and 9. If you run a game community, swap one scenario for something specific to your game.

What does a good answer to each scenario contain?

Decide this before you open the first application, or the bar drifts as you read. Something like:

In Mico, this is exactly what the expected answer field on a question is for. You write those notes once, applicants never see them, and the AI scores each answer against them instead of against a generic idea of "good". If you write a hard requirement there, such as "must mention telling an admin", and the answer clearly misses it, the score is held down no matter how polished the writing is.

How the score works, and how far to trust it, is in AI application review on Discord.

Should you ask for the user ID, name and age?

User ID: no, if the application runs through a bot. Form-builder templates ask for it because a web form has no idea who is typing. In Mico, every application is tied to the applicant's Discord account, so you already know who it is.

Name and time zone: yes. Time zone matters more than people think. Five moderators in the same evening hours leave your server alone every night.

Age: only if you actually have an age rule for staff. If you ask, decide in advance what you do with an answer you cannot verify.

In Mico, mark questions like these as identifiers. They are kept with the application and shown to reviewers, but they are not scored. "Europe/Berlin" is not a good or bad answer.

Which questions should you leave out?

• Self-ratings. "How active are you, 1 to 10?" Everyone picks 8.
• Yes or no questions about the rules. Ask which rule they would enforce most and why.
• "Why should we choose you?" You get a cover letter. The scenarios already answer it.
• Anything you would not act on. If you do not care about other servers they moderate, do not ask.
• Trick questions. They select for people who have seen the trick before.

How long should the application be?

Long enough that someone has to think, short enough that your best candidates finish it. In practice:

• Around eight to ten questions. More than that, and the answers get shorter as the form goes on.
• A minimum length on scenarios. In Mico you can set a minimum and maximum number of characters per answer, so "I would ban them" is not accepted as a full answer. How long an answer can be depends on the plan, see pricing.
• Optional for the last question. "Anything else" should never be required.

People with closed DMs can fill in the same application on the website. There is room for long answers either way, so do not shorten scenarios to fit a pop-up.

How do you put this template into Mico?

Three ways, depending on how much you want to type:

1. Run /setup on a new server. It posts a starter staff panel with four basic questions, which you then replace with the ones above. The step-by-step staff application setup covers it.
2. Open /panel and add the questions one by one: text, required or optional, minimum and maximum length, a placeholder, the expected answer, and whether it is an identifier.
3. Import a panel that another server shared in the community library, and edit it.

Running a roleplay server rather than a chat community? The scenario idea carries over, but the questions are different. See whitelist applications for FiveM, GTA RP and Minecraft.

Where this template falls short

Want the other side of this? Send applicants to how to write a Discord staff application before they apply. Better answers make your job easier too.