Forum Moderation

Moderate forum entries, such as discussions, reviews, and comments.

Table of Contents

What is moderation and how does it work?

Each app, API, and group on the platform has its own Forum. All platform users who have visibility of the resource can see the Forum.

The Forum includes items such as discussions, reviews, and team invitations.

In addition, each user has his/her own Forum, accessible from the top navigation bar. The user Forum includes all forum entries relating to apps, APIs, or groups the user is associated with.

The platform has settings that allow the Site Admin to control whether discussions, reviews, and comments are automatically published when written, or must be moderated. If moderation is enabled, when a user adds one of those items it is in an Unpublished state until reviewed. At that point, it is visible only to the author and to users with the right to approve the Forum entry.

The Moderator can publish, reject, or delete the item.

After it has been published, the Moderator can unpublish an item or can delete it.

With reviews, the author can modify the review. In this scenario, the original review remains published while the revised review is going through the approval process. Once the revised review is approved, the original review is deleted. The new review has a marks count of 0.

For information about who can moderate and how it is done, see Who can moderate? and How do I turn on moderation in the platform?

What types of activities can be moderated?

You can moderate the following activities in the platform, if they are set up to be moderated:

  • Discussions
  • Reviews
  • Comments on discussions
  • Comments on reviews
  • Alerts
  • Contract Requests
  • Group Membership Requests
  • Reviews
  • Tickets

For information about how moderation is done, see Who can moderate? and How do I turn on moderation in the platform?

Who can moderate?

Users with an appropriate role can moderate a forum for that resource, such as an app or API:

  • Business Admin: can moderate all forums.
  • API Admin: can moderate forum entries relating to the specific API.
  • App team member: can moderate forum entries relating to the specific app.
  • Group Leader: can moderate forum entries relating to the specific group.

How do I turn on moderation in the platform?

By default, discussions, reviews, and comments are auto-published. Moderation is not required.

Moderation can be turned on by the Site Admin via the Settings pages. For instructions, see Site Resource Settings (Site Admin help). There is a separate page for different types of content that can be moderated, such as Discussions or Reviews. For a full list, see What types of activities can be moderated? above.

Each type of resource that allows moderation has a Publishing field that is set to one of two values:

  • Auto-Published: when the discussion, review or other piece of user-generated content is written, it is automatically published with no moderation.
  • Approval Required: When it is written, it is placed in an Unpublished state and an entry appears in the Forum, where a moderator can review it and approve or refuse the publication request.

If you think content should be moderated, and it is not, ask the Site Admin.

What functions are available for moderating a forum?

When you log in to the platform and have rights to moderate a forum, you can access and moderate the Forum.

To access the Forum

  1. Log in and go to the page for your resource, such as app, API, or group.
  2. From the left menu, click Forum.

Viewing the Forum

Use the fields at the top of the page to narrow down the items you want to moderate. When you make a choice, the list refreshes automatically.

  • Published/Unpublished drop-down: If needed, you can choose to view only Unpublished items that need your attention.
  • All Forum Items drop-down: You can choose a specific type of forum entry. Available choices:
    • Alerts
    • Contract Requests
    • Discussions
    • Group Membership Requests
    • Reviews
    • Tickets
  • Search Subject box. Use this to search for a specific resource, such as an app or API. For example, you can:
    • Paste or type part of the ID and look for the drop-down list of matching results. You must choose an item from the matching results. The list refreshes to show you only entries relating to that specific resource. You can search by App ID, App Version ID, API ID, API Version ID, or Group ID.
    • Type API, app, or group, and the list will be narrowed down to entries for resources of that type.

Depending on the current state of the forum entry, and the type of forum entry, you might have different actions available. Available choices are shown below.

For this type of resource... In this state... You can perform these actions...
Discussion Published Unpublish, Delete
Discussion Unpublished Approve, Reject, Delete
Review Published Unpublish, Delete
Review Unpublished Approve, Reject, Delete
Contract Request

Published or Unpublished

(Click Show Comments to view published or unpublished comments)

 Delete comments
Group Membership Request Published Resend
Ticket (Published or Unpublished) Open Resolve, Close
  Resolved Close, Re-open
  Closed Re-open

How do I moderate a forum?

If you're an Admin, you can moderate a forum.

To moderate a forum

  1. Log in and do one of the following:
    • Business Admin: go to the Admin section.
    • API Admin, app team member, or group leader: Go to the page for your API, app, or group.
  2. From the left menu, click Forum.
  3. If needed, choose from the controls at the top of the page to narrow down the forum entries displayed. See What functions are available for moderating a forum?
  4. Review the content as needed, and click available buttons to approve or reject the forum entries.

How do I enable Markdown for forum entries?

The platform supports the use of Markdown to add rich text formatting, inline images, and downloadable files in user-generated Forum entries.

If enabled, Markdown is supported for discussions, tickets, alerts, reviews, and comments.

Markdown is enabled for each type of resource separately—so, for example, it might be enabled for discussions but not for comments.

The Site Admin controls this feature in the site settings. For more information, see How do I enable Markdown for Forum items? (Site Admin only).

For more information on using Markdown, see Using Markdown.

How does the use of Markdown affect forum moderation?

If you're moderating a forum, and some or all of the forum entries use Markdown, you'll see the Markdown formatting and possibly inline images, links, and/or URLs. You'll also see the Source and View tabs.

By default, forum entries that include Markdown are displayed in View mode, so that you can see how the discussion, ticket, alert, review, or comment will appear to users once it's published. You can click to the Source tab to see the forum entry in plain text, including the Markdown and the link/file coding.

If one or more files were uploaded as part of the Markdown, you also have the option to download each file.

You can't change the Markdown, and the actions you can take with each forum entry are the same regardless of whether the forum entry uses Markdown or not.

For more information on the use of Markdown, inline images, links, and URLs in forum entries, see Using Markdown.