Community Moderation
Keeping the Community free of spam, abuse, and inappropriate content is handled through a dedicated moderation system. Moderators — agents and administrators with the appropriate role permissions — review flagged content, manage user avatars, and take action on problem users. The Moderate tab on the Community Home page (visible only to users with moderation permissions) acts as the moderation queue; it only appears when there are items requiring attention.
Moderation permissions are controlled through Roles. Agents can be granted the ability to moderate Community threads, Knowledge Base comments, or both. System administrators can moderate everything and can also moderate avatars and manage flagged users and conversations — actions limited to agents with admin-level access.
Avatar Approval
When the Require Avatar Approval option is enabled in a Brand's Permissions settings, any avatar uploaded by a portal user must be reviewed before it becomes visible to the community. Until a moderator approves it, the uploaded image is only shown to the user who uploaded it — all other community members see a generated monogram placeholder instead.
Pending avatars appear in the moderation queue under the Moderate tab. Each item shows the submitted image alongside the user's display name. Moderators can:
- Approve — The image is published and becomes the user's visible avatar throughout the Community.
- Reject — The image is deleted and the user's avatar is cleared. The user's account is flagged as having had an avatar denied, which can affect future upload permissions.
This setting is particularly useful for communities with a broad public audience where uploaded images are visible to customers and prospects.
New User Post Moderation
New user post moderation provides an automatic hold on posts from recently registered or first-time users until a moderator reviews them. This is controlled by the Enable Moderation setting in Brand settings, under the Moderation group.
When enabled, posts from users flagged as moderated are held from public view. Once a moderator approves a sufficient number of posts from a given user (the system threshold is 5 approved posts), the user's account is automatically promoted out of moderated status and their future posts publish immediately without review.
Pending posts appear in the moderation queue with the reason listed as New User Post. Moderators can approve or delete each post individually. This is one of the most effective tools for preventing spam from bots and newly registered accounts.
Reporting and Reviewing Flagged Posts
Any community member can report a thread post as abusive by using the report option within a thread. When a post is reported, it is added to the moderation queue under the Moderate tab so a moderator can review it. Reports include a reason selected by the reporter, which falls into one of the following categories:
- Offensive Language — Content that is abusive, discriminatory, or violates community guidelines.
- Wrong Category — The post is in a category where it doesn't belong and should be moved or re-posted elsewhere.
- Spam — Promotional, repetitive, or irrelevant content posted to the Community.
In the moderation queue, each flagged item shows the thread title, the name of the poster, the reporter's name, and the reason given. If multiple users have reported the same post, the queue shows a count of reports. Moderators can click through to the thread to read the post in context, then take one of the following actions:
- Approve — Dismisses the report and leaves the post visible. Use this when the report appears to be in error or the content is within community guidelines.
- Delete — Removes the post permanently. Use this when the content clearly violates community guidelines.
Managing Flagged Users
In addition to flagging individual posts, community members can report users directly. User reports appear in the moderation queue with the same three abuse reason types: Offensive Content, Spam, and Harassment. System administrators reviewing flagged users can take the following actions from the user's profile:
- Dismiss — Clears all pending reports against the user, indicating the reports were reviewed and the user's behavior is within guidelines.
- Ban — Locks the user's account, preventing them from posting, replying, voting, or
otherwise participating in the Community. Banned users can still read public threads. When banning, the
moderator can optionally:
- Hide the user's existing threads and posts from public view.
- Blacklist the IP addresses associated with the user's posts, blocking that IP from future Community participation. This is particularly useful for spam accounts created from the same network.
Banned users appear in the Banned tab on the Community Home (visible to all logged-in users). The reason for the ban is shown next to the user's display name. Clicking on a banned user's name opens their profile, where an administrator can reverse the ban if appropriate.
Flagged Conversations
Users can also report private Conversations (direct messages between portal users). Reported conversations are surfaced in the moderation queue for review by system administrators. Moderators can view the flagged messages between the two parties and choose to either dismiss the report or remove the conversation and block further messages between those users.
Moderation Best Practices
A few recommendations for keeping the Community healthy:
- Enable New User Post Moderation if your portal allows open registration. It adds a brief review step for new accounts but dramatically reduces spam from bots and throwaway registrations.
- Enable Avatar Approval if your community is customer-facing and brand consistency or content appropriateness is a concern.
- Review the moderation queue regularly — items in the queue are not visible to the public until approved, so delayed reviews can cause legitimate posts from new users to sit unpublished.
- When banning a spam account, use the option to hide their threads and blacklist their IP to clean up any previously published spam content in one step.
- Use the Banned tab to periodically review who is banned. Users sometimes get banned in error or have changed their behavior and warrant reinstatement.