My previous blog post generated some comments about moderation.  This is a topic I have been meaning to write about since I was asked about it at Day of DotNetNuke Chicago.  This is probably going to be a two part blog post.  The first part is going to cover specifics around our forums and how we handle moderation.  

All of our forums are moderated, which means certain users might need to have their content approved before it is available on the site.  The primary reason for all the forums to be moderated is to prevent forum spam and bots.  Even with the forums being moderated, Active Forums allows us to set certain roles as "Trusted", which means we can control who is actually being moderated.  All Customers start off as trusted users within the forums which means they can by-pass moderation and their posts will appear immediately.  This happens as soon as you buy a product and never changes unless your account is set to not trusted.   Our support forums are moderated for everyone and currently we only have a couple users that are marked as not trusted, but allow me to explain why our support forums are moderated.

Personally, I hate having to deal with moderation, but it is a necessary evil in my opinion.  However, I will be the first one to say that we need to do a better job.  Again, all of our forums are moderated, but the customer role is added to all forums with trust permission, except for the support forums.  Occasionally, we do mis-configure a forum, which was the case for my blog and why some customers have been moderated for their replies here.  This forum was setup giving Active Forums Enterprise Support customers trust permission, which has now been corrected for customers.  I'm also going to make sure all other forums are properly configured as well.  

We have several reasons why we moderate our support forums.   Contrary to what some might want you to believe, we aren't hiding anything and we aren't trying to silence customers.  It's absolutely ridiculous for us, or any business, to try and hide customer generated content.  It just can't be done.  If you wanted to let the world know how bad you think we are, it would take no time at all.  There are plenty of other forums that get much more exposure than ours.  I think this is fairly obvious to most of our customers, but some (mainly those that find themselves moderated) like to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt over the fact they a moderated. It's just something we have to deal.  

We moderate the support forums because of issues that have happened in the past which caused moderation to be a necessity.  In some cases we have actually protected customers by doing so.  We have had customers post usernames and passwords in a topic.  We have had some post inappropriate content from their site(not intentionally).  We have had customers post "ACTIVE FORUMS GOT HACKED" when it was really their hosting provider and nothing to do with our products.  And yes, we have had customers post critical and sensitive bugs that we wanted to promptly address prior to public knowledge.  I have had customers disagree with me about these reasons in the past and I'm perfectly fine with others disagreeing with me now, but this is the way we run our site.

Since I have been running Active Modules, I have only set one customer to not-trusted because of their comments.  We had a disagreement about what he felt was a security issue and wanted to use our forums to gather support to force us to make the change.  I didn't have a problem with him sharing his concern on the forums or trying to get feedback from others customers, it was his approach.  Creating a false panic because you need a feature for your specific project doesn't sit well with me.  That was a long time ago and that customer is no longer moderated. 

There are times when I will set a user as moderated, but it is very rare.  Right now we have very few users that are set to not trusted.  I've gone back through the list and at the time of this post there are less than 10 moderated users out of 10,000+.  The number one way to get yourself moderated is to continuously post topics in the wrong forum.  I also give plenty of chances to help you better understand where content belongs.  I'll reply to a post letting you know where it should have been placed and in some cases I'll send you an email.  This might sound petty to some, but it's time consuming.  After awhile it becomes easier to just set the user to moderated and know that I will have to move the topic appropriately at that time.  There are couple other things you could do to end up being moderated, but those are really my own personal decisions.  It isn't anything personal.  It usually has to do with how much time I have to spent watching, reading and then dealing with the content of your post.  Usually exaggerations and posting the same thing over and over again will make me look for the moderate button.  

For the record, we are horrible at approving posts.  Usually what happens is that topics will come in overnight and just get lost in the queue.  Then we get caught up with other posts, support tickets, emails and we just really drop the ball.  Not an excuse and I do apologize.  If you posted something recently that didn't get approved feel free to post again.  Now that I've updated the forums, it probably won't need to be moderated or I will make sure it goes through quickly.  If you have questions about why you are moderated feel free to send me a message and I'll do my best to explain.  Were you moderated before and wondering if that has changed? Leave a comment below and find out.  

Finally, if anyone wants to help us with approving posts or just wants to be able to keep us honest, let me know and I'll make you a moderator.  It would be good to have a few users that could back us up when we say we don't have anything to hide.