Picking the right template for your community

Templates are pre-tuned bundles of moderation thresholds and per-category actions. They exist because the right level of strictness for a study group is wildly different from the right level for an NSFW art server, and almost nobody wants to tune six categories by hand on day one.

What a template sets#

A template seeds the six moderation categories on your server. For each category it sets three things:

• Whether the category is enabled (Civora checks it) or disabled.
• A severity threshold on a 1–5 scale (1 = very lenient, 5 = very strict).
• The action Civora takes when a message crosses the threshold: Ignore, Flag for review, Delete message, Delete + Timeout, or Delete + Ban.

The six categories are Toxicity, Harassment, Spam, NSFW, Hate speech, and Self-harm.

The five templates#

Gaming

For gaming communities. Tolerates banter, strict on harassment. Hate speech threshold is low (2) with a ban action; harassment uses a timeout. A reasonable default for general game-focused servers.

Paid community

Balanced defaults for paid Discord servers and creator communities. Stricter on harassment than Gaming (lower threshold, longer timeout), spam tolerance is higher because paid communities self-promote more. Hate speech threshold is the most strict possible (1) with a ban.

Brand

Safe-for-work brand servers. Strict across the board: low toxicity threshold, NSFW set to the strictest setting, hate speech threshold at 1 with a ban, harassment with a one-hour timeout.

Study

Educational servers. Focused, low-noise, age-appropriate. NSFW threshold at its strictest, harassment on a 15-minute timeout, otherwise moderate defaults.

NSFW allowed

For 18+ servers where adult content is permitted. The NSFW filter is disabled by default in this template (the only template where this is true). All other categories — including hate speech — still apply normally.

How to switch templates#

1. Open the server from the Servers page in the dashboard.
2. Switch to the Moderation tab.
3. Pick a new template from the template selector. A confirmation dialog opens before any change is applied.
4. Confirm. The new template applies immediately to messages going forward; existing messages are not re-evaluated.

When to customize instead of switch#

Templates are starting points. If your community is mostly like one template but you want one specific behavior different, customize that one category instead of switching. The Moderation tab lets you change the severity threshold and action of any single category on top of the template.

A general heuristic:

• Switching template = "I picked the wrong starting point."
• Customizing a category = "Most of this is right, but I want one specific behavior different."

What's next#

• Severity tuning — per-category fine control after you've picked a template.
• Excluded channels and roles — keep Civora out of meme channels, mod-only channels, and similar.