Today is Community Moderator Appreciation Day, a well-deserved moment of recognition for people who make the web more humane, more thoughtful, more helpful and more useful.

This is a bottomless topic for me, but perhaps the best way to observe it is to share what’s been learned and distilled about creating an environment where good moderators can succeed. Here’s Matt Haughey at last year’s Gel Conference telling the story himself:

This is part of why I’m so excited to be speaking at Gel this year: There’s a lot of things we’ve learned over the years that we haven’t taken the time to share. And Gel itself is an event that’s well-moderated, as you might expect.

So, thanks today to all the folks I know who moderate all of the sites where I spend my time online. Making a valuable, strong, positive community is one of the greatest things you can do to contribute to the world.