Moderation has three queues. Requests are posts waiting for your approval before anybody sees them. Forum access holds members asking to be let into a forum that only opens on request. Reports are posts, comments and chats that members flagged, plus everything the system hid on its own.
The counters on the tabs update while you work, so a number next to a tab always means somebody is waiting.
Requests
A post lands here when a member writes it in a Moderated forum. Posts your team writes from the admin area skip the queue and appear straight away.
Until you decide, nobody sees the post. That includes its author: it does not show in their own feed either, so a member who posts into a moderated forum and sees nothing should not be surprised.
The sidebar splits the queue into Open posts, Approved posts and Rejected posts, and you can sort by Newest or Oldest. Only open posts can be decided. A rejected post stays rejected: there is no way to approve it later, so the member has to write it again.
Rejecting opens Reject Post and asks for a Reject reason. The reason is required, and it goes to the author. The member gets a notification in the bell and an email saying that their post was not published, with your reason and the beginning of the post, so they know which one you mean. The email follows the member's community email settings; the entry in the bell always arrives. Approving sends nothing, because the post simply appears.
Write the reason for the member, not for your team. A clear reason such as "Please post offers in the Marketplace forum" tells them what to change and makes the next post a better one. A vague one only frustrates, and the member has nobody to ask. Nothing is sent if the author's account has been deleted or they are no longer a member.
For a backlog, tick the posts or use Select all, then Approve or Reject. A bulk rejection asks for one reason: "The same reason will be applied to all selected posts." Every author receives that same reason, so keep it general enough to fit each post.
Approving runs the same checks as publishing. A post that contains a word from your blocklist stays hidden and shows up under Reports instead, and a post whose forum has been archived or moved to the trash in the meantime is not published.
Moderate a forum for the first weeks of a new community, then switch the moderation off once the tone is set. Permanent moderation slows a community down more than it protects it, and members get no feedback while they wait.
Forum access
A forum can be set to On request. Members see it in the forum list, but nobody gets in without asking: they press Request access, and the request lands in this tab. The account owner also gets an email for every new request.
A request shows who is asking, which forum, when, and the justification the member wrote. Whether a justification is required is set per forum. A member can only have one open request per forum, so repeated clicking does not flood the queue.
The sidebar splits requests into Open requests, Approved requests and Rejected requests. Search finds a member or a forum, All forums narrows the list to one forum, and you sort by Newest or Oldest.
Approving opens that one forum for that one member. Rejecting opens Reject request with an optional Note for the member. Both decisions send the member an email, and the note goes into the rejection email. Write it, because it is the only explanation the member gets. After a rejection the member can ask again.
Decisions are not final. An approved request can still be rejected, which takes away the access this request granted, and a rejected one can be approved. Each change sends a new email. You can also tick several requests and decide them in one step. A bulk rejection uses one note for everyone: "The same note will be sent to all selected members."
Reports
Reports come from two places: members, and the system itself.
| Reason | Where it comes from |
|---|---|
| Spam, Harassment, Hate Speech, Violence, Misinformation, Other | A member reporting a post or a comment, optionally with more details |
| Inappropriate content | A member reporting a chat. Chat reports always carry this reason |
| Blocklist word | The system, when a post or comment contains a blocked word |
| Automatically hidden | The system, when three different members reported the same post or comment |
The sidebar holds four lists:
- Open reports is the work still to do.
- Resolved content is everything you have decided on.
- Removed content is what you or your team took down with Delete content.
- Automatically hidden is what the system hid before anybody on your team looked at it, through the blocklist or the three-report threshold.
Filter by content type (All content, Posts, Comments, Chat) and by reason, and sort by Newest or Oldest. The list shows 20 items per page.
Several reports about the same item are grouped into one card, so you judge the content once rather than once per complaint. The card shows a Reason summary, the Matched words for a blocklist hit, every report under Attached reports with who sent it, and whether the content is currently Visible or Hidden.
What you can do with a report
Three actions, each closing every open report on that item.
- Delete content hides the post or comment from everyone. It is not erased: it moves to Removed content, and Release anyway brings it back.
- Release anyway publishes the content again. This is how you undo an automatic hide that was wrong.
- Dismiss reports closes the reports and changes nothing else. Visible content stays visible, and content that is already hidden stays hidden.
The last point matters for automatic hides. Dismissing a blocklist hit does not put the post back; only Release anyway does.
Tick several cards, or use Select all, to apply an action to all of them at once. Chat reports are left out of bulk deletes and releases.
A reported chat can only be read and dismissed. Open View chat history to read the whole conversation: for a direct chat, the other person in it, for a group chat, the group. Your team cannot delete chat messages, so when a chat report is about harassment, the answer is about the person rather than the message.
The word blocklist
The Word blocklist in the Post rules tab of the community settings is a list of words and phrases that may not appear in posts, comments and answers. Content that contains one is hidden the moment it is saved, including content your team writes, and appears in reports as Blocklist word with the matched words shown.
The list matches whole words, regardless of upper and lower case. An entry of "spam" catches "Spam!" but not "spammer", and an entry of two words catches that exact phrase. Chat messages are not checked.
Keep the list short and specific. Every false positive hides a post from a member who did nothing wrong and puts work in your queue.
Muting a member
When the problem is one person rather than one post, mute them on the Members page of the community. A muted member can still read, but cannot post, comment or react until the mute ends. Muting does not affect direct chat.
A workable routine
Look at the queues once a day rather than reacting to each notification. Handle the two request queues first, because somebody is waiting on those, then reports.
If the queues are permanently full, the answer is usually structural. Check for a moderated forum that no longer needs it, a blocklist that is too broad, or one member who needs a conversation rather than a delete button.
For a member who keeps causing trouble everywhere, deactivating or banning the account from their profile closes every door at once, chat included.