Improving moderation queue for premoderation
megalomaniak
New
This has sort of been asked before:
While I wouldn't call it useless, there's probably much that could be done to improve it further.
While in our forum we rarely place users into premoderation(user group requiring post approval) since the overhead per each user is huge, there are a few rare cases we are willing to go that route over banning problematic users. For an example we have a user with OCD and issues with impulse control. The forum is on game development and very much intended for people to come ask questions and learn so I see no reason why we should exclude people just because they have some issues. I do think they are likely finding themselves marginalized enough as is. So banning such users would certainly avoid issues and cut down on moderation tasks/queue, however it would frankly also be in bad taste, IMO.
As it stands this user goes through periods of posting a lot in a go and even into topics of other users where they are at best barely on topic and fairly often derailing them a bit. The posts in the moderation queue look reasonable enough assuming the user is posting into their own topic, but since no context is offered by the moderation queue our moderation staff can't tell where the posts are heading. Unless it is a whole new topic that is, then there is at least a title rendered in bold at the beginning.
With that in mind the obvious first thing I'd like to request is that:
- at the very least the title of the topic the post is heading to should always be shown.
- in case of a new topic it would be good to see the category it is heading to
- better still would be if it was a drop-down menu allowing us to reassign the category before approval
- in case the post has only but a small issue, it would be nice to be able to edit it before approving...
- with edited posts requiting a private message to the author before the post gets approved so that the user is informed of what was wrong and should be avoided in the future, but also so they have a fair heads-up about a change having been made to their post.
- Obviously a log of such edits made needs to exist, but the change log that already exists should be enough, I would hope at least.
I'm sure more could be thought of however even just the very first point would be a huge QoL improvement. I am however very thankful we have seen some improvement for the moderation queue, being able to expand and see the whole post is a significant improvement too. I do hope we will see continued improvement on this front, thanks.
Comments
I'm also part of the same forum, and these changes would indeed make our job a lot easier and would significantly reduce the amount of guess work involved with moderating. Just being able to see which topic each post will go to would be a tremendous help.