Forum Moderation

Moderate forum entries, such as discussions, reviews, and comments.

Table of Contents

1. What is moderation and how does it work?
2. What types of activities can be moderated?
3. Who can moderate?
4. How do I turn on moderation in the platform?
5. What functions are available for moderating a forum?
6. How do I moderate a forum?

What is moderation and how does it work?

Certain resources on the platform, such as apps, APIs, and groups, have their own Board. All platform users who have visibility of the resource can see the Board.

The Board includes items such as discussions, reviews, and team invitations.

The platform has settings that allow the Site Admin to control whether discussions, reviews, and comments are automatically published when written, or must be moderated. If moderation is specified, when a user adds one of those items it is in an Unpublished state until reviewed. At that point, it is visible only to the author and to users with the right to approve the Board item.

The Moderator can publish, reject, or delete the item.

Once it is published, the Moderator can unpublish an item or can delete it.

With reviews, the author can modify the review. In this scenario, the original review remains published while the revised review is going through the approval process. Once the revised review is approved, the original review is deleted. The new review has a marks count of 0.

For information about who can moderate and how it is done, see Who can moderate? and How do I turn on moderation in the platform?

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What types of activities can I moderate?

You can moderate the following activities in the platform, if they are set up to be moderated:

• Discussions
• Reviews
• Comments on discussions
• Comments on reviews
• Alerts
• Contract Requests
• Group Membership Requests
• Reviews
• Tickets

For information about how moderation is done, see Who can moderate? and How do I turn on moderation in the platform?

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Who can moderate?

Users with the following roles can moderate forums:

• Business Admin: can moderate all forums.
• Site Admin: can moderate all forums.
• API Admin: can moderate forum entries relating to the specific API.

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How do I turn on moderation in the platform?

By default, discussions, reviews, and comments are auto-published. Moderation is not required.

Moderation can be turned on by the Site Admin via the Settings pages. Each type of resource that allows moderation has a Publishing field that is set to one of two values:

• Auto-Published: when the discussion, review or other piece of user-generated content is written, it is automatically published with no moderation.
• Approval Required: When it is written, it is placed in an Unpublished state and an entry appears in the Forum, where a moderator can review it and approve or refuse the publication request.

To turn on moderation for a specific type of resource in the platform:

1. Log in as the Business Admin, Site Admin, or API Admin, and click the Administration quick filter (wrench icon).
2. Click Forum.
3. Choose the applicable settings page, find the Publishing field, and choose Auto-Published or Approval Required as explained above. This field is available on the following pages:
   • Comments
   • Discussions
   • Reviews
4. For more information on the settings for these resources, refer to the applicable topic in Configuration.
5. Choose to save or open the export file.

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What functions are available for moderating a forum?

When you log in to the platform and have rights to moderate a forum, you can click the Administration quick filter (wrench icon) > Forum to access the Forum.

Use the fields at the top of the page to narrow down the items you want to moderate. When you make a choice, the list refreshes automatically.

• Published/Unpublished drop-down: If needed, you can choose to view only Unpublished items that need your attention.
• All Forum Items drop-down: You can choose a specific type of forum entry. Available choices:
  • Alerts
  • Contract Requests
  • Discussions
  • Group Membership Requests
  • Reviews
  • Tickets
• Search Subject box. Use this to search for a specific resource, such as an app or API. For example, you can:
  • Paste or type part of the ID and look for the drop-down list of matching results. You must choose an item from the matching results. The list refreshes to show you only entries relating to that specific resource. You can search by App ID, App Version ID, API ID, API Version ID, or Group ID.
  • Type API, app, or group, and the list will be narrowed down to entries for resources of that type.

Depending on the current state of the forum entry, and the type of forum entry, you might have different actions available. Available choices are shown below.

For this type of resource...	In this state...	You can perform these actions...
Discussion	Published	Unpublish, Delete
Discussion	Unpublished	Approve, Reject, Delete
Review	Published	Unpublish, Delete
Review	Unpublished	Approve, Reject, Delete
Contract Request	Published or Unpublished (Click Show Comments to view published or unpublished comments)	Delete comments
Group Membership Request	Published	Resend
Ticket (Published or Unpublished)	Open	Resolve, Close
	Resolved	Close, Re-open
	Closed	Re-open

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How do I moderate a forum?

If you have rights to moderate a forum you will see the Administration icon (wrench icon) in the top menu bar.

To moderate a forum:

1. Log in as the Business Admin, Site Admin, or API Admin, and click the Administration quick filter (wrench icon).
2. Click Forum.
3. If needed, choose from the controls at the top of the page to narrow down the forum entries displayed. See What functions are available for moderating a forum?
4. Review the content as needed, and click available buttons to approve or reject the forum entries.

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