Supervising Forum Content

Use

You can check and supervise forum content as follows:

  • You can check posts and/or threads before they are published in a forum.
    1. If the moderation function for a forum is activated, all posts and/or topics in the forum in question are submitted to the moderator for checking. Trusted users can be excluded from requiring moderation. Your administrator defines trusted users.
    2. If the moderation function is not activated, you may still have to check posts and/or threads that are posted by certain users. If this is the case, your administrator can define that these users' posts are to be checked as soon as they try to post to a forum.
    3. If the moderation function is not activated, you may still have to check posts that contain content that is not suitable for the forum in question. If this is the case, your administrator defines that certain content and phrases have to be checked if they appear in a post.
  • If threads and posts have already been published in a forum, you can carry out the following tasks:
    • Check threads and posts if, for example, you want to delete parts of individual posts that you don't think are suitable.
    • Delete threads and posts.
    • Close threads and move them into another forum.
    • Make a new thread from a post.

Procedure

Checking posts and threads before they are published

You can check and approve new threads and posts before they are placed into a forum and displayed to forum participants.

  1. Open the Content tab page in the Admin Console.
  2. Choose Moderation Summary from the navigation area on the left-hand side.
  3. Select a forum to display a list of pending posts.

    Optional: Use the search filter to find posts that need to be approved.

  4. Moderate the posts by selecting the appropriate option.

    Double-click a post or use the Show Message Text function to view the long text for a post.

  5. Decide what action to take on the posts in question and select one of the following actions:
    1. Defer

      This function defers your approval or rejection. The deferred post remains in the list of pending posts after you have saved it.

    2. Approve

      This function approves the post to appear in the forum.

    3. Edit & Approve

      This function opens the post and allows you to change the subject line and text before approving it. You can determine whether or not the system adds an edit stamp at the bottom of the post.

    4. Reject

      Blocks the post from being posted to the forum.

Changing and deleting threads and posts in forums

You can change and delete threads and posts by other users in forums for which you have moderation permissions.

To do so, choose Edit or Delete to the right of a thread or post in a forum.

You can change the subject line and text of threads and posts by other users. If you want, you can also add information on when the text was changed and who changed it. Your user name is added by default.

Closing threads in forums

If you think that a thread has been thoroughly discussed or if you think a discussion is escalating you can close the thread in question.  This means that no more posts can be added to the thread.

To do so, choose Lock to the right of the thread you want to close.

Moving threads within forums

You can move a thread from one forum to another. You might want to do this because you think the topic of the thread is more suited to another forum of because you want to place locked threads in a special forum to clean up the forum in which those threads are currently located.

To do so, choose Move to the right of the thread you want to move.

Moving, locking, and deleting threads using the Admin Console

You can also move, lock, and delete threads using the Admin Console

  1. Choose Content in the Admin Console and then choose Category Summary on the left-hand side of the screen.

    The system displays the root category and the categories beneath it.

  2. Click the category in which the forum whose content you want to edit is located.

    A table containing a list of the forums in that category appears. A number tells you how many threads exist in each forum.

  3. Go to the forum whose content you want to edit and click the number showing the number of threads.

    A list of threads appears.

  4. You can perform the following actions for each thread:
    • Move the thread to another forum.
    • Lock or unlock the thread.
    • Delete the thread and all posts belonging to it.

Making a new thread from a post

You can make a post into a new thread in the same forum. You may want to do this if a post is not really relevant to the thread it is on. If this is the case, make the post into a separate thread as follows:

  1. Click on the symbol for splitting the thread () to the right of the post that you want to make into a new thread.
  2. Enter a heading for the thread and then choose Branch this thread starting with this message.

Note that the post is not moved after the branching operation - it is still located in the same place. You can then lock the thread and make an announcement to tell users that they can now continue their discussion on another thread, for example.