How do I moderate a topic?

A moderated topic requires a site administrator to review and approve each message submitted to that topic by a student or member before other site participants may read the message.

Tip: If you have already created a topic with the Moderate Topic setting, skip to the following step: View and Deny or Approve Pending messages.

Go to Discussions.

Select Discussions from the Tool Menu in your site.

Select Topic Settings.

Select Topic Settings to edit the settings of a particular topic.

Check the box to Moderate Topic.

Under the Topic Posting section, select the Moderate Topic option.

At the bottom of the page, select Save.

View Moderated Topic.

A Moderated topic will be marked with (Moderated) next to the number of messages that have been posted to the topic.

View and Deny or Approve Pending messages.

There are two ways in which you can access Pending messages to deny or approve them:

  1. Access pending messages via the Pending Messages tab.
  2. Access pending messages via their conversations.

Access pending messages via the Pending Messages tab.

On the main Discussions page, select the Pending Messages tab.

 Note: The tab will also display the number of pending messages in parentheses, e.g., Pending Messages (2).

Deny or Approve pending messages.

  1. Check the boxes next to the message(s) you would like to either Deny or Approve.  You can also select the checkbox at the top of the list of messages to select all pending messages.
  2. At the top of the list of messages, select either Deny or Approve to reject or post the selected message(s). Approved messages will be visible to the rest of the site participants. Denied messages only remain visible to site administrators and the student or member who posted them.

Continue reviewing pending messages or view status message.

  1. If other messages are still pending approval after clicking Deny or Approve for the selected messages, the denied or approved messages will disappear from the Messages Pending Approval page and you can continue reviewing others on the page.
  2. However, if there are no more pending messages, you will be returned to the Discussions main page with a red notice indicating that the selected message(s) were either denied or approved.

Tip: After denying a message from the Pending Messages page, you may add a comment for the participant who posted the message to let them know why it was denied. Follow the steps in the section below to navigate to a conversation with a denied message and add a comment.

Access Pending messages via their conversations.

Select the moderated topic.

Select the title of the moderated topic.

Note: Topics are indented underneath the forum where they are located.

Select the pending message.

  1. A message pending approval will display Pending highlighted in green next to it.
  2. Select the title of the message to view it.

Note: The Pending marker displays to the left of its specific message.  You may need to select the arrow (Expand) icon next to the first post in a conversation to expand the messages in that conversation and see the Pending markers for them.

Select Moderate.

Deny or Approve the post.

Select either Deny or Approve to reject or post selected messages. Approved messages will be visible to the rest of the site participants. Denied messages only remain visible to site administrators and the student or member who posted them.

Comment on a denied message.

If you have chosen to Deny a message, you may leave a comment for the site participant to indicate the reason it was denied.  To leave a comment, select Add Comment when viewing the post.

Enter Comment.

  1. Enter text in the Add Comment box.
  2. Select Add Comment.

View Comment.

The comment is displayed above the denied message to site administrators and the participant who posted the denied message.