We’ve all seen what a toxic chats look like and know that things can easily get out of hand. On the contrary, sometimes a chat is not toxic but perhaps someone is looking for an answer to something you’ve answered a lot or they just want more ways to engage with your stream. These problems and many others are all solved through moderation and chat bots.
As you begin to gain some consistent viewership, you may notice viewers that really stick out and dig your content. These people are most likely some of your most engaged viewers and make great candidates as moderators in your channel.
Moderators are your front line and can usually handle a situation quicker than you since you’ll most likely be focused on your game or activity. Choose them wisely too since they have the ability to timeout or even ban someone from your channel completely. Aside from engaging with your content often, make sure the person you nominate to moderate your channel is level-headed as well. You don’t want a trigger-happy moderator just banning viewers left and right if it’s not fully justified.
Once you’ve picked your moderator(s), you then need to give them a set of guidelines to follow. What’s okay? What’s not okay? The more you can lay out and define, the easier their job will be and expectations can be met with ease.
At the end of the day, moderators are usually just volunteers too so it’s really important you show them the respect and support they deserve. Try to think of ways you can reward your moderators for helping you out whether it’s a special room in your Discord channel or something else entirely, it’s definitely something to keep in mind.
The following recommendations are just strictly based on if they offer moderation tools. There are ton of other bots out there but not all offer moderation.
Nightbot [Free]: This is probably one of the most common bots out there but also one of the most useful. It currently works with both Twitch and YouTube and offers spam filters, commands, and fully searchable chat logs.
Ankhbot [Free]: Looking for a desktop based app rather than something in your browser? Ankhbot offers a very similar feature set to Nightbot but does everything locally.
Deepbot [$10 one time or $5 per month]: If you’re really serious about streaming and want an all-in-one solution then Deepbot is probably one of the best solutions around. It offers great moderation tools found in the recommendations I’ve listed above plus integrations with Discord and GameWisp, an auto hosting manager, and much more.
Alright, well now you should have the basics down on what you need to do to properly care for your chat. Our last piece of advice would just to use all of these solutions as necessary. Some people get hung up on this type of stuff and forget about the real matter at hand: the content of your stream. Create a compelling stream and then worry about these sorts of matters after. Supply and demand, right?
