Dealing with a biased moderator could be a really tough thing to do. Moderators are supposed to be fair when it comes to dealing with members. However, if moderators are themselves so biased, this could make things really complicated. Spotting a biased moderator could be tough as well. So, how do you deal with a biased moderator?

Remove them. I’ve found it’s easy to rip the bandaid off sooner rather than later. The largest site I’ve ever owned almost shut down about 10k members in because I hired a Celebrity (For the genre) as a moderator. She was super cool, friendly, helpful, etc. but the moment she became a moderator she had bias for her friends, and followers. So she would let them slide with a lot of things, etc. I let it slide because, well, she was a celeb and brought a few thousand people there herself. Wellllllll at about 15k members she did something drastic (I forgot) and I ended up stripping her of moderator, but by then she had a web in the community and it ended up splitting the community and killed the site drastically for a few months. We ended up bouncing back, but it was never really the same, or as active.

So, from my personal experience I’d say strip them of Moderator, send a polite DM explaining why, and move on from there. Or if you’d like to do the 3 strike rule you can do that but personally, I’d just strip them. It’s better to lose a mod and potential active member now than a mod/potential active member, and anyone who’s grown attached to them during their staff position.

If a member of my team or one of my employees lets me down, they either fix it immediately or I remove them from the team entirely. You can’t get your work or project done with people who let you down or make your job more difficult—that’s just working against the current. So, either they do things right, or I kick them in the backside.

@Sherlock Bones It must have been really hard to deal with such kind of moderator. She was a celebrity and people always love to follow celebrities, no matter what. She must have gained a lot of followers and those followers must have registered on your forum. This may cause a large influx of members on your forum. The sad thing is that she was a bit biased that damaged your forum. However, I still do not think that it was worth removing her.

I’d let them know that you want them to moderate in your style, or they can’t continue to be moderators.

You pay the bills, not them. You’re in charge.

I reckon that a moderator is supposed to be unbiased. I would form a community of moderators where only forum moderators have access to that area. In case if I ever notice that the forum moderator is being biased, I may raise this issue in the section. If I own the forum, then it is my duty to ensure that each and every moderator is being fair with the members.

On Oct 22, 2026, Cool-writer said:

I reckon that a moderator is supposed to be unbiased. I would form a community of moderators where only forum moderators have access to that area. In case if I ever notice that the forum moderator is being biased, I may raise this issue in the section. If I own the forum, then it is my duty to ensure that each and every moderator is being fair with the members.

I completely agree with you on this; you need impartial moderators. Biased ones will only cause you trouble because they will show favoritism toward a select few—you don’t need zealots, but rather fair-minded people to handle the moderation.