• I'm flattered, but I'm going to decline.

    During my long time running that community, I built up a certain number of detractors and critics from applying the rules, and it'd be an unnecessary distraction as you build a new MLS community.

    Feel free to send me a DM for any advice you might need, though - happy to give advice!

  • I may have left the mod team over there in December, but that's very kind of you to say!

    /r/MLS grew much more rapidly than any of us anticipated, and we used a strong moderation approach over the years (which left newcomers a bit frustrated). I still think it was for the better, but when the community is still very small, it may not be as necessary.

    I think the things to figure out early are:

    1. What sort of things do you want to be your regular content? News articles are a given - would match threads work on Imzy? What about something like Free Kick Friday, where newcomers can get help? General discussion threads? Highlights?
    2. What sort of things do you want to keep out? /r/MLS took a pretty early stance against memes, and low quality posts ("Here's a picture from my seat!") shook out quickly as well. We also generated a "dead horse" list of topics that the community had argued over too many times and we were going to consider off limits.
    3. What's the right level of banter? It's hard to build a friendly community around a subject that so naturally involves rivalries and talking smack to each other. So figuring out what would be over the line is not a bad thing to declare early.

    But once again - it's still early days. Don't stress out about it before you need to!