When a moderator leaves what's the best action?

[adriana4u]

Hello everyone,

We had one of our moderators/admin leaving the company because they're going to study. We removed them from the team component but we're wondering if we should make a post explaining that this moderator won't be around anymore? If we should remove their account? 

I don't know if anyone has had this situation before, but our moderator always did communications so if we do delete we might also lose some comments/posts. 

Thank you so much ahead.

[Claudius]

I would restrict account deletion only to malicious users like spammers or to respond to GDPR data removal requests. For any other departing users I'd recommend thinking about dedicated roles. For staff leaving the organisation this role should remove all posting, PM permissions to prevent any further comms on behalf of the company. Rank names that are common are "Former Staff", "XXX Alumni", "Retired" or similar. Preserving the users, but changing their rank names helps adding the context that others should not expect further replies.

Now regarding the comms: Ideally, your departing moderator should announce their departure. Maybe even using the opportunity to introduce replacement or other moderators to continue the conversation with. This supports the idea of moderators being part of the community.

[JasonHill]

@adriana4u, 

I would encourage the same approach as @Claudius. We have a rank called Retired Team Member for this purpose. We also ban the account and encourage the former team member to create a new personal account if they want to continue to participate in the community.

Jason