You can moderate the content that displays in your Higher Logic Vanilla (Vanilla) community. This means that you can control what user-generated content does and doesn't appear in the community. Vanilla also simplifies this by providing some "automated" options (described below).
Additionally, as an Admin, you can assign the role of Moderator to other users who then can also review, edit, and approve/deny content.
📝 NOTE: Moderator is an out-of-the-box Role with the necessary permission (among others) already applied.
- Navigate to Dashboard > Settings > Membership > Roles & Permissions.
Site management
These tools help Moderators manage your community. To access them:
- Navigate to Dashboard > Moderation > Site.
Messages
Moderation Messages are a great way to easily communicate to all community users because the messages display right in the community and are visible to all. You can use them to inform users of community news and events, and any other important information (such as site maintenance) that you want to share.
To learn about these messages, see:
Users
The Manage Users page lists all your community users along with other information, such as site visits and assigned Role. There are also management options (edit, delete, spoof) right on the page so that Admins can work more quickly, without having to access each user's profile.
To learn about managing your users, see:
Ban Rules
The Ban Rules page lists all of the rules that have been set up in your community to deny/limit site access to specified users and/or groups.
- To learn about creating and managing your Ban Rules, see:
Badge Requests
This section allows you to approve the badges requested by your users.
Content management
These tools help Moderators manage items that impact your site's content. To access them:
- Navigate to Dashboard > Moderation > Content.
Flood Control
You can set various thresholds to limit how many discussions, comments, activities, private messages, and replies to private messages an individual user can post in the selected timeframe. If the count or the timeframe is surpassed, the post is blocked as spam.
To learn about this feature, see:
Spam Queue
This page lists your community contents that were identified as spam.
To learn about this feature, see:
Moderation Queue
In your community, the possibility exists that someone will — intentionally or inadvertently — post a discussion, question, or comment that goes against your community's Code of Conduct or, in some way, is inappropriate. Because of this, Vanilla provides numerous ways to prevent such content from being visible to your users.
To learn about this feature, see:
Change Log
This page lists all posts that were either edited or deleted. You can restore or permanently delete a post.
To learn more about managing posts on the Change Log page, see:
Inline moderation
Admins and Moderators get in-line controls to affect single or multiple discussions. These controls give them the ability to perform a variety of actions (such as close, announce, split, merge, and delete) on their community discussions and comments in order to, for example:
- generate awareness of and participation in a discussion,
- unify discussions that complement one another, and
- remove discussions that deviate from community guidelines or are considered spam.
📝 NOTE: The options available in the menus shown below are dependent on two things: The permissions a user has and the addons enabled on their Vanilla community. What you see in your community may be different.
Admins and Moderators can:
- Act on an individual discussion via its ellipsis (...) menu.
- Select multiple discussions to access additional options in the menu that appears at the bottom left of the screen:
- Manage comments via their ellipsis (...) menus.
✔️ TIP: Many of the options shown above are discussed in their associated knowledge base articles.
Delete discussion/comment
This allows moderators to remove contents that are not acceptable based on community guidelines. This can also be useful in some cases when users request their posts to be deleted from the community.
Move discussions
This allows moderators to move a discussion from one category to another. This helps in ensuring that the community contents are aligned with each topic they are intended to. Having discussions aligned with the categories they are bucketed, helps community members find discussions of their interest easily.
Merge and Split discussions
Admins and Moderators have two very useful tools to aid in their discussion-moderation:
- Merge - gives them the ability to merge two discussions. This is useful if both discussions could benefit from being with the other.
- Split - gives them the ability to create a discussion from a comment. This is useful if, for example, a comment thread has gotten off-topic but still has a lot of value for the community.
To learn more about the Split / Merge functionality, see:
Recommended moderation addons
Akismet
Dedicated spam-fighting server that will automatically filter all your forum content and user registration requests.
Stop Forum Spam
Along with Akismet, this compares IP addresses and email addresses against a list of known spammers from stopforumspam.com to prevent spammers from infiltrating your community.
Civil Tongue
Allows you to enter a list of forbidden words and have them replaced with text of your choice.
Keyword Blocker
Allows you to select certain unacceptable words and have the entire post sent to the moderation queue.
Spam and Abuse Reactions
A one-click response to discussions and comments.
Additional moderations addons
Now that you are familiar with Moderation Tools and Recommended Addons, we will now dive into additional moderation addons that are available to you as well. Below are examples of Moderation addons that are more proactive in nature and require intervention from moderators and administrators.
Warnings and Notes
An addon that allows moderators to proactively manage the community. This is often used to call out user behaviours that are not adhering to the community guidelines.
Troll
A proactive approach in managing community is the ability to be able to mark users as “trolls.” This is especially helpful when you want to “manage-out” a user from your community because this user is not adding value rather is a liability.
Reporting
A way to maintain order within the community. This addon allows users to report any content that they deem inappropriate.
Ignore
This addon allows users to ignore other users, with the exception of Administrators. If you also want the moderators to be exempted from the ignore list, advise your CSM before having this addon enabled.
Resolved Discussion v2
This can be tedious if you have a limited number of people managing your community. This ensures that every discussion has the opportunity to be reviewed (read) by a Staff user before it is made public in the community.
Additional resources
Click the link below to access a video expanding on what you learned in this article.
