⚠️ IMPORTANT: Vanilla's new Layout Editor Thread pages do not include legacy reporting options; if you want to use this new thread layout and have the ability to flag and report content, you must enable the Community Management Dashboard (CMD).
⏳️ AVAILABILITY: This feature is not yet available in all Vanilla communities. It is currently in a beta state and limited to beta testers. This note will be removed and the title updated when the feature is globally available.
CMD is a moderation-management tool that your staff and community members can use to report posted content that they think is inappropriate for any of the following reasons.
The content:
- is offensive or abusive;
- is spam or solicitous;
- contravenes the community's "use" policies;
- is outdated or stale (i.e., it's been posted for a while but hasn't received an answer or any comments);
- is inaccurate or, in some way, misleading; or
- should be reviewed by a community manager (perhaps it's awaiting a reply or follow up from a staff member).
Content-reporting Reasons
When content is reported, the reporting user has to indicate why they're doing so (i.e., the Reason), such as deeming it to contain spam or abusive language.
Reasons are at the core of reporting because it's important that your users can accurately indicate why they are reporting the content. To help with this, Higher Logic Vanilla (Vanilla) provides several common Reasons (refer to Out-of-the-box Reasons, below). In addition to these (which you're free to edit), you can:
- create your own custom Reasons that are specific to your community,
- customize your Reasons to be visible to select users, based on Roles.
In addition to how to add and edit Reasons, this article describes:
Access the Content Settings page
The Content Settings page is where you can turn the CMD on/off, organize and manage your reporting Reasons, and more.
- Access the Dashboard.
- Navigate to Moderation > Settings > Content Settings.
Manage CMD settings
At the top of the Content Settings page are three settings to consider:
- New Community Management System: Use this toggle to turn the CMD on/off.
- When ON, you gain access to the new reporting system and its features as described in this article;
- when OFF, you'll use the Resolved Discussions addon and the Spam and Moderation Queues.
- Enable Triage Dashboard: This is an optional Dashboard you can choose to turn on or off (it's only available to users with the Garden > Staff > Allow permission). When enabled, the Triage Dashboard is the staging ground for all new content so it can easily be reviewed in one central location. Using it, community managers can decide whether to Resolve or Escalate posts. Refer to Triage Dashboard to learn more.
- Resolve All Discussions: This button allows you to bulk-resolve all posts in your Vanilla community. This is useful in situations where you don't believe the current batch of community posts requires review, and so you can "clean out" the Triage Dashboard and start fresh.
Manage your Report Reasons
The Report Reasons section of the Content Settings page is where you manage the Reasons for your community.
It lists both types of Reasons:
- The out-of-the-box Reasons that are pre-built by Vanilla.
- The custom Reasons your organization has created.
In the header section:
- Click Reorder to display a dialog in which you can drag and drop the Reasons to change their top-to-bottom display order. If you make any changes, click Save to apply them.
- Click Add Reason to display a dialog in which you can create a custom Reason (as described in Add/edit a Reason, below).
In the list:
- Click the pencil icon to make changes to the Reason in the Edit Report Reason dialog.
- Click the trashcan icon to delete the Reason; click Delete at the confirmation prompt.
✅ TIP: The Usage column indicates the number of times the Reason has been applied to reported content.
Out-of-the-box Reasons
Vanilla has provided the following out-of-the-box (OOTB) set of Reasons.
✅ TIP: While these may be sufficient for most communities, you're free to create your own set of custom Reasons and/or edit these default ones to suit your needs, as described in Add/edit a Reason, below
OOTB Reason | Description |
|---|
Spam/Solicitation | Ads, spam, and other promotional content that disrupts the community. |
Abuse | Threatening, harassing, and intimidating behavior or content. |
Inappropriate | Offensive and unsuitable content, including profanity and sexually explicit material. |
Deceptive/ Misleading | Intentionally false and/or manipulative content. |
Breaks Community Rules | Content and behaviors that violate the community's guidelines and/or rules. |
Add/edit a Reason
If you'd like to add additional, custom Reasons to those already provided by Vanilla, you can create as many as you need to suit your community.
To add a Reason:
- Click Add Reason above the list.
- In the dialog:
- Specify a Name that is concise and which clearly indicates its purpose. ✅ Avoid using hyphens (-) to separate words for the reasons described in API Name notes, below.
- Accept the Name-based API Name or specify one (refer to API Name notes, below). 📝 This value cannot be changed after the Reason is saved.
- Provide a Description of the Reason. This displays to reporting users so that they can be sure they're assigning an appropriate Reason.
- Select one or more Roles. The Reason will display only to users with the selected Roles. ✅ Leave this blank to have the Reason display to all Roles.
- Click Save.
The Reason will now be available to select when reporting content in your community (refer to Report a post, below) for users belonging to the selected Roles.
API Name notes
This section describes the caveats and nuances of the API Name field you learned about above.
📝 NOTE: API Name is a "unique identifier" that is used primarily in Vanilla communities that have their own developers who want to use the API to build their own integrations or to scrape data.
📝 NOTE: The API Name of the OOTB Reasons cannot be changed. The information in this section applies only to custom Reasons.
The API Name of custom Reasons can be modified only during the creation period. After the Reason is saved, the value:
- is preserved as-is and
- cannot be used again for another Reason, except as described below in API Names and deleted Reasons.
Additionally, as you create a Reason:
- The API Name field will auto-populate with whatever value is input in the Name field.
- The system will force it to lowercase letters and will replace spaces with hyphens. For example:
- Name = Fraud or Scam; API Name = fraud-or-scam
✅ TIP: You can manually input an API Name value to override the auto-populated value and it will be preserved when you click Save. Your override value will not be lowercased, but hyphens will replace spaces.
Duplicate API Names
If an existing API Name value is specified for a second Reason, the system displays an "error" message upon Save.
Click Fix error to have the system automatically use the Description text to make the API Name unique:
📝 NOTE: You can manually input a unique, unused value (described above) to avoid this issue of unexpected duplicates.
API Names and deleted Reasons
If a Reason is deleted, you might be able to reuse its API Name, depending on whether the Reason has been used to report content in your community.
- If a Reason is deleted after having been used, the API Name value is preserved for historical reporting purposes and cannot be used for another Reason.
- If a Reason is deleted and had never been used, the API Name value can be used with a different Reason.
Reported content dashboards
Vanilla tracks your community's reported content and makes it available to review and manage in a dedicated section of the Dashboard: the POSTS section.
There are several dashboards, each of which is devoted to a different type of reported content.
Check out the article below to learn about the purpose of each dashboard, how to filter the lists for easier management, and how to manage its reported content.
How to report content
If users are viewing any type of Vanilla post (discussion, comment, question, answer, idea, poll) and think that the content should be brought to the attention of a community manager, they can easily do so by reporting the content.
⚠️ IMPORTANT: A user must belong to a Role with the Reactions > Flag > Add permission in order to report content.
When viewing the list of posts in a Category or when viewing a post's page, click the flag icon to begin the reporting process.
In the Report Post dialog, you can select one or more Reasons and add a comment using the Rich editor, if additional details would prove helpful to a moderator.
When ready, click Send Report.
Additional community manager options
Staff members belonging to a Role with the Garden > Moderation > Manage permission have access to two additional Moderation options at the bottom of the dialog when reporting content.
You can check:
- Escalate immediately to automatically and immediately escalate the report with no dependence on a threshold being reached and no consideration of previous reports for this content.
- Remove from community to have the reported content immediately removed from where it is posted and visible in the community. 📝 This checkbox does not function independently: when checked, the Escalate immediately option is automatically checked as well.
What happens after I report content?
After content has been reported:
- a "Success! Report has been created." message displays at the bottom left of your browser and
- a basic report is created and is listed on the Reports list page (see Manage your Reported Content) where it remains until either:
- someone acts on it or
- additional reports are sent such that it reaches a threshold and gets escalated.
📝 NOTE: If a staff member chooses to escalate the report via the Escalate immediately option discussed above, the report will be automatically escalated and located in the Escalations Dashboard.
Visual indicators
Reported posts include a few visual indicators on the front end of your community to make it easy to see which posts have already been reported.
As shown below, the post displays a "report" label at the top right, showing how many reports it has received, and you can click the label to jump to the report in the dashboard (if you have the permission to do so).
If a post has been escalated, a banner displays to users with the Garden > Moderation > Manage permission right on the page, below the post's content, providing details such as the:
- escalation's status,
- it's report Reasons,
- the assignee tasked to review it (if one has been assigned),
- and more.
These users can click this banner to access the escalation in the Dashboard for additional details and management options.
Escalation Automation Rules
A unique subset of Automation Rules are dedicated to automating the process of escalating community content into the Escalations Dashboard for review.
⭐️ EXAMPLE: For most Vanilla communities, it makes sense to set up Automation Rules that will automatically escalate posts based on them meeting the established reporting criteria. For example, you may only be concerned with posts once they have been reported three to five times, posts that feature a specific sentiment, or posts that are left unanswered for a certain amount of time. In other words, rather than spending time attempting to evaluate every single report, you can prioritize those that land in the Escalations Dashboard, as these may truly be an issue in your community that require immediate attention.
Read the article below to learn more about these Escalation Automation Rules:
