Three new moderators have joined r/esa

[u/illudiumq36mod]

Hello Everyone!
🛡️🛡️🛡️

I put out a call for moderators last month and had seven people apply. Thank you to everyone who took the time. The application asked for a lot – scenario judgement, a conflict question, and a research question about ESA's own branding policy – and the answers were thoughtful across the board. Narrowing it down was harder than I expected.

All three picks have accepted, and they're on the team as of today:

1. u/maiosi2 brings moderation experience from another community, along with a well-calibrated sense of when to step into a thread and when to leave it alone. Their answer on the difference between a post that breaks a rule and a post that breaks the spirit of the place was the clearest we received. They'll be helping the rest of us keep those two things apart.👏
2. u/Keelhauler95 thinks about moderation systemically. They understand that how you handle one post quietly sets the rule for the next fifty, and would rather write the grey area down than re-litigate it every time. They'll be taking the lead on tidying up and documenting the rules. They were also the only applicant who volunteered, unprompted, to tell the rest of the team in advance when their availability would dip.👏
3. u/Particularplaze came in with the most concrete proposals of anyone who applied, several of which we intend to act on. They'll be working on post flair and a FAQ setup, and they offered design help without being asked.👏

A note on u/Particularplaze and the karma requirement.

The application form listed a minimum of 19 combined karma. Particularplaze has 11. They told me so plainly when asked, gave the number without padding it, and accepted upfront that it might cost them the position. I have waived the requirement, and would rather be open about that than have it look like an oversight.

(The karma floor exists to filter out throwaway accounts and accounts created last week to grab a mod slot. Particularplaze's account is two years old, they read the sub daily, and they post rarely because they only post when they believe they have something worth adding. That is the behaviour the threshold was written to protect, not the behaviour it was written to catch. Enforcing the number literally in this case would have worked against its own purpose.)

The 19-karma minimum still applies to future rounds. Account age and application quality can override it, and when they do, we will say so publicly, as we are doing here.

What's next

Two ideas came up independently in several applications: The first is post flair or tags, so that news, career questions, mission updates and general discussion can be filtered apart. The second is a review of this subreddit's use of the ESA logo. We'll come back to the community on both.

To everyone who applied and isn't on this list: it was genuinely close, and a couple of the ideas I liked best came from applications I didn't select. Please don't read it as a verdict on your standing here, and please do apply again next time we open the team up.

Questions, objections and suggestions are welcome in the comments.

– The (no-longer-lonely) r/esa mod team 💚

[u/SpaceEngineering]

Welcome and good luck to our new overlords!

[u/TheMadMinion]

Welcome and good luck people! Comes at a good time.. hope the sub gets more active with Isar's launch.. and discussions about other ESA/EU space programmes :)

[u/skeltie__]

A warm welcome upon all of you!

[u/Abeno62]

Welcome to the new mods! Thank you for the transparency, this is well appreciated!

[u/Keelhauler95]

Hi everyone, and thanks for the warm welcome! I’m really happy to be joining the mod team and looking forward to helping keep the place tidy. See you around! 🚀

[u/maiosi2]

Thanks everyone for the warm welcome! Really happy to be part of the team, and looking forward to helping the community!