Blog Documentation Try Vanilla Cloud
Please upgrade here. These earlier versions are no longer being updated and have security issues.
HackerOne users: Testing against this community violates our program's Terms of Service and will result in your bounty being denied.
Options

Pre-moderating posts

JeefunkJeefunk
edited October 2010 in Vanilla 2.0 - 2.8
Apologies if this has been covered. I'm new here. I've found a few old discussions about pre-moderating posts but no definitive answers. What I need is the ability to approve or deny posts before they go live.

It'll be a pain and demanding on resources but it's absolutely necessary due to the company's strict duty of care. Can anyone point me in the direction of an add-on capable of solving my problem?
Tagged:

Comments

  • Options
    cdavidcdavid New
    I don't think there is such a plugin created already. But if you have some spare time, you can try building it on your own: http://vanillaforums.org/page/PluginQuickStart

    /cd
  • Options
    JeefunkJeefunk
    @cdavid. Thanks mate but probably not by bag. I've seen posts about pre-moderating posts on here as far back 2008. I guess I just assumed there would be something in place by now.

    I may have to go elsewhere which is a shame.
  • Options
    JeffDunneJeffDunne New
    edited October 2010
    I haven't tried this but I can't see why it wouldn't work.

    Create a category for your pre-moderated posts, give users 'Add' permissions for Discussions but not 'View' permissions on this category.

    On all other categories, disable the 'Add' permission for Discussions.

    You should then be able to list these Discussions by the category. Enabling the Discussions would simply mean updating the category on each Discussion in the list.

  • Options
    JeefunkJeefunk
    @JeffDunne. Nice bit of lateral thinking there mate. You succeeded in temporarily turning my brain into spaghetti (in a nice way).

    But doesn't this mean they add comments to one version of a discussion and view them in another? And they'll be frustrated by their inability to 'reply'.

    It's going to be tough because I have eight main topics with a number of discussions in each. Even if I could successfully swap categories and help users navigate their way around, it might not be sustainable.

    You see, I'm hoping to have the human resources to make the approval process a matter of seconds and retain the feel of a live forum.
  • Options
    JeffDunneJeffDunne New
    Yeah sorry, my suggestion was only applicable to new discussions, not comments.

  • Options
    JeefunkJeefunk
    Hey folks, it DOES exist!

    http://vanillaforums.org/addons/addon/295/premoderation

    I'm a happy admin :)
  • Options
    DavyBDavyB
    Thats a Vanilla 1 plugin NOT a Vanilla 2 - it may NOT work
  • Options
    JeefunkJeefunk
    Oh dear God, I just can't win. :-(
  • Options
    JeefunkJeefunk
    edited October 2010
    I think the AutoHide extension might work. Sounds like it's basically the same thing as pre-moderation, not that I'm having any luck installing it.

    Oh, that's a Vanilla 1 add-on as well :-p

  • Options
    DavyBDavyB
    edited October 2010
    You could modify it yourself, make it work and submit it back as a vanilla 2 plugin this is after all, open source software (GPL2 license AFAIK)
  • Options
    judgejjudgej ✭
    If it is any use, I have put together a module that moderates posts and comments according to a list of keywords and key phrases. If any of the keywords are found in a post (discussion or comment) then the post is put into "requiring moderation" mode and the moderators are emailed.

    The post then just appears as the text "** awaiting moderation **" to most users. To moderators it shows this text along with the original text. If it is a discussion that triggers the moderation mode then the thread is also closed (it can be reopened by a moderator).

    I can tidy this up and release it as a module if you think it would be any use? It does not hide posts completely, but just hides the content.

    -- Jason
  • Options
    JeefunkJeefunk
    @DavyB. I'd love to but I'm not a dev. My know-how is limited to html. Thanks for the suggestion though.

    @judgej. I can see how module would be handy. For my purposes, the logic would be: every post is 'awaiting moderation'. Maybe that would be a small but valuable tweak to your module. As long as it was easy to approve them, that would effectively make your module a pre-moderation tool.

    But alas, I've spent a couple of weeks getting to this stage and I've run out of time, so I've decided to buy a license for software that already has pre-moderation. But thanks to everyone who tried to help me out.
  • Options
    judgejjudgej ✭
    edited October 2010
    I'll make that tweak - sounds like a good idea. Full pre-moderation is what the client originally asked for, but we persuaded them that it would mean more work for them, and slows things down a lot.

    I recently needed some support on a RAID card from Intel. Their discussion forum engineers were very knowledgeable and helpful and did give me the right solution in the end, but because *they* implement full pre-moderation on every single post, it took nearly a week to get through a conversation that could have taken half a day. It's horrible as a user, but I do understand there could be a need for it in some areas.

    If there is no urgency for my code, I'll take a little more time to tidy it up before releasing it.

    -- Jason
Sign In or Register to comment.