How do I moderate challenges?

Introduction

This article describes how to moderate ideas and comments submitted to your Dialogue. For more guidance on developing an effective moderation policy, please see our article 'Keeping the conversation going - advice for quality moderation'.

There are two site-wide moderation options available in Dialogue: pre- and post-moderation.

If you choose pre-moderation, you have the opportunity to prevent any ideas or comments across the site going live until you’ve read them and checked them. 

Post moderation means that ideas and comments go live immediately and that your moderation happens after that point. 

Please see 'How do I change the moderation settings?' for more information on these site-wide options.

Accessing the Moderation Queue

Log into your Dialogue as a moderator or site admin. Select the "Administration" link at the top of the public site to access the admin area and the first place you'll be taken to is the main 'Manage and Moderate Challenges' page. If you are a site admin this will show you all the challenges on the site. If you are a moderator, you will see all public and hidden challenges and any restricted challenges you've been given access to.

To moderate the ideas and comments on a specific challenge, select the relevant challenge from the list. You'll be taken to the challenge dashboard and from here you have links to moderate ideas and moderate comments. You also have progress bars to show you how many you have completed so far.

If you want to moderate the ideas and comments for all the challenges on the site, you can do so from the initial 'Manage and Moderate Challenges' page, at the bottom left there are links to moderate all ideas and moderate all comments.

Moderating ideas

The queue for moderating ideas is grouped into tabs representing ideas in five different states:

• Awaiting Post-Moderation: Ideas are live on the public side of the site, but have not yet been reviewed by a moderator
• Awaiting Pre-Moderation: Ideas are not yet live on the public side of the site and need to be approved by a moderator before they are visible
• Locked: Ideas are visible to the public, but have been locked by a moderator or admin so no more comments or ratings can be added
• Rejected: Ideas are not visible to the public and have already been rejected by a moderator or admin
• Approved ideas: All ideas which are live on the public-side of the site and have already been approved by a moderator or admin

Most moderation activity will take place in one of the first two tabs ('Awaiting Post-Moderation' or 'Awaiting Pre-Moderation', depending on your site's moderation settings).

Select the title of the idea you want to moderate to be taken through to the detail of that idea. You will be given three options: Approve, Reject, or Lock.

• Approve idea - for pre-moderation this will make the idea visible on the public side of the challenge, and enable other participants to rate or comment on it. For post-moderation the idea will already be visible to all users, so approving it will simply mark it as approved for your records. The idea will move from this moderation queue into the Approved ideas list.
• Reject idea will make (or keep) the idea hidden from the public side of the site. There is a text box to provide a reason for rejecting the idea; this will be visible to the user that submitted the idea as well as to other moderators and site admins.
• Lock idea will keep the idea visible on the public side of the site, but will disable any further comments or ratings for the idea. You can provide a reason for locking the idea; this will also be visible to all users.

Re-moderating ideas

You can change the moderation status of an idea at any time. If an idea was rejected or locked in error it can later be approved by looking for it under the relevant tab of the moderation queue.

Ideas that have already been approved can later be rejected or locked, you'll just need to find them in the 'Approved' list. 

Moderating comments

Comment moderation works in a similar way to ideas, although they can't be locked, only approved or rejected. The comment moderation list has four tabs:

• Awaiting Post-Moderation: Comments are live but have not yet been reviewed by a moderator
• Awaiting Pre-Moderation: Comments are not yet live and need to be approved by a moderator before they are visible
• Rejected: Comments are not visible to the public, although a placeholder remains in the public site showing that the comment was removed by a moderator
• Approved: Comments are live and have been approved already

Most moderation activity will take place in one of the first two tabs ('Awaiting Post-Moderation' or 'Awaiting Pre-Moderation', depending on your site's moderation settings).

There are two options for moderating comments:

• Accept - for pre-moderation this will make the comment visible to all users. For post-moderation the comment will already be visible to all users, so approving it will simply mark it as approved for your records, and remove it from the moderation queue.
• Reject - will make (or keep) the comment hidden from public users. There is no option to provide a reason for rejecting a comment

Rejected comments have a single moderation button:

• Unreject - this will make the comment visible to public users.

Re-moderating comments

You can change the moderation status of a comment at any time. If a comment was rejected in error it can later be unrejected (i.e. approved) by looking for it under the 'Rejected' tab of the comment moderation queue.

Comments that have already been approved can later be rejected. Site admins and moderators can find already-approved comments under the 'Approved' tab.