Moderating end-user content

One setting with two modes, three actions in the queue, and Reject deletes the post rather than hiding it.

Moderation is one setting with two modes and a queue with three actions. The one to know before you start: Reject deletes the post rather than hiding it.

Turn it on

1. In Knowledge admin, click Settings.
2. Select Content moderation.
3. Choose Moderate words or Moderate all content.

You must be a Knowledge admin both to enable this and to work the queue. New and edited end-user content then goes to the queue instead of straight to your help centre.

The two modes

Moderate words is the setting that keeps the queue worth reading. Hold back everything and moderators spend their attention on ordinary posts and start skimming, which is when something gets through.

The three actions

Because Reject deletes, use Mark as spam for what is spam: it goes somewhere you can still look, rather than nowhere.

Follow the queue rather than remembering it

Click Follow in the upper-right corner of the queue. It is checked every four hours, and you get an email when something is waiting. Following this queue also subscribes you to the spam queue, so expect both.

That is better than a daily habit, because the failure mode here is not slowness but silence: posts sit for days, contributors conclude the community is dead, and they are not wrong.

Approve everything, or approve nothing

Reviewing every post before it appears is defensible for a small or sensitive community. Publishing immediately and moderating on report is defensible for a large one. What does not work is a queue nobody empties.

Tell the person why

Briefly, when you take something down. Silent removal produces a second post asking what happened, and a reputation for arbitrary moderation. One line is enough, and it has to be sent before you reject, because rejecting removes the post you would have replied to.

Nothing goes out on its own: Zendesk does not notify the person of any of the three actions, approve included. So somebody whose post was held and then published never learns that either, so a contributor may ask why their post appeared a day late.

Editing somebody's words

Fix a broken link or a formatting mistake. Do not rewrite their point. A community where posts get quietly reworded stops being a community.

See also

• Fighting spam in the Help Center
• Managing topics and posts
• Setting up the community