Curseforge is a UGC platform hosting millions of mods of 20+ games,
entirely powered by the mod developers.
Every project uploaded to CurseForge goes through review by our Moderators
before it goes live, checking for safety and quality.
increase in critical-content visibility
reduction in moderation-related
tickets & ART
problem statement
In the Curseforge Authors Console, the product team focus on product improvements, while the moderation team handles all of the users’ project submissions and issues.
This results in a gap between the moderation process and how we present it throughout the console, which was brought up as a mere “copytext issue” requiring a simple text refresh.
research findings
From recent user interviews, it surfaced that Developers lacked clarity around publication timelines and what was required of them after a rejection or edit request from moderators.
However, strong satisfaction with moderator feedback and response times suggested the issue isn’t the moderation team’s project handling, but process clarity within the console.
research pivot
Unsatisfied with a simplified solution to a bigger problem, I asked our Moderators to walk me through project rejections and developers’ tickets from the past 3 months.
The recurring themes made it clear: the issue wasn't just ambiguous labels and CTAs, but critical feedback getting missed, and project status updates that are easy to lose track of.
planning
After presenting the findings to stakeholders, I got the green light to extend the project’s scope to reimagining problem areas: project submission, changes required by moderation, and publication timeline.
The way we present moderation guidelines is critical - one small mistake could cause an increase in ticket volume, delay project releases, and damage developers’ revenue. I structured this project to involve the Moderation team in key points.
Reviewed moderation tickets with the team and identified volume and themes across problem areas.
Presented findings with data and screenshots to get buy-in for the extended scope.
Worked with the moderators to write clear statuses and moderation updates and improve the guidelines article according to our policy.
Shipped in phases with careful QA at each stage, reviewing both implementation and content accuracy across games.
challenge
With more than 50 games on CurseForge, creating and maintaining detailed guidelines for every game wasn’t practical.
At the same time, we heard from developers that some of the existing tips felt too generic, making them easier to disregard altogether.
Together with the Moderation team, we decided to focus our efforts on the top 4 games, while removing redundant tips and rewriting the general guidance that remained to be more straightforward and useful.
solution
The changes addressed each of the three problem areas: Guidelines, project status, and moderation feedback. They were released in phases rather than one big launch, which let us catch issues early and adjust along the way.
Notifications used to be passive - they told developers something had changed but gave them no direct way to act. Adding contextual actions cuts down the steps between receiving feedback and responding to it.
A persistent info toast at the top of project tab pages links developers to the moderation guidelines before submission. Updates and status toasts show for submitted and published projects.
outcome
The release was phased across several months. The clearest signal came from the Moderation team: the volume of tickets from developers who didn't understand the guidelines or what changes were needed dropped significantly after the changes shipped.
Significant reduction in moderation support tickets around feedback and timelines.
Notably less back-and-forth with developers per ticket
Critical moderation guidelines previously hidden in tooltips and edge cases is now clearly visible.
reflection
The component work and the content changes should have been two separate stories. Combining them made the review process harder than it needed to be.
At that scale of change, splitting them would have kept QA more manageable and feedback more focused.
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