In a Higher Logic Vanilla (Vanilla) community, Admins and Moderators (and other Roles with the proper permissions) can moderate user-generated content by previewing and then approving or rejecting it.
This is a crucial content-management feature for online communities because it gives Admins and their trusted agents control over what user-generated content does and doesn't appear in the community, so that they can minimize the occurrences of questionable and offensive content.
Grant the Moderator Role
Admins can assign the out-of-the-box Moderator Role to trusted users who can then also review, edit, and approve/reject content. The Moderator Role comes with the necessary permission to perform these actions (among others).
TIP: You can review a Role's permissions in the Dashboard, on the Settings > Membership > Roles & Permissions page.
To give the Moderator Role to a user:
- Access the Dashboard.
- Navigate to Moderation > Users > Manage Users.
- On the Manage Users page, click the pencil icon for the user you want to give the Role.
- In the resulting dialog, click the Role dropdown and select Moderator.
- Click Save.
- Repeat these steps to add more Moderators.
Your Moderators can review, edit, and approve/reject user-generated content in your Vanilla community.
Moderation options
Let's review a few of the ways that Admins and Moderators can moderate user accounts and user-generated content.
Inline moderation
This is located in individual posts and comments, typically via an ellipsis (...) menu.
There is a set of options that Admins and Moderators can use to moderate the content of individual posts and comments.
NOTE: Admins and Moderators can also multi-select posts and then manage them in "bulk."
To learn more, see the Inline Moderation section in:
Banning users & Ban Rules
Occasionally, a user in your Higher Logic Vanilla (Vanilla) community may break your code of conduct or community rules to such a degree that a ban is necessary to prevent them from participating any further in your community.
You can also set up Ban Rules in your community to deny site access to specified users and/or groups of users. Individual and group bans can be set by:
- IP address
- email address,
- name, or
- fingerprint.
Content management
There is a set of tools (such as Moderation Queue and Spam Queue) that Admins and Moderators can use in order to focus moderation efforts directly on posts that impact the community.
These queues get populated by trusted members "flagging" content, making it easier for Admins and Moderators moderators to take care of issues before they become problems. Allowing the community to self-moderate reduces the workload on Admins and Moderators, and involves the community in deciding what content is and is not acceptable.
Latest content-moderation experience
Moderation tools and addons
There are a number of addons (such as Warnings & Notes, Stop Forum Spam, and Civil Tongue) that are specifically designed to enhance your moderation efforts.
Admins can use the Pre-Moderated Category addon (in Addons > Pre-Moderated Category) to set Categories as being pre-moderated so that all new posts and/or comments in the selected Categories are automatically sent to the Moderation Queue.
Check out the article below to learn more:
Additional resources
Click the link below to access a video expanding on what you learned in this article.