Moderator Features

The Talk Admin

The Admin is where your moderators will moderate your comments, and your Admins will configure and manage the different parts of Talk.

Moderate

This is the tab where Moderators will spend the majority of their time. They can choose (via the dropdown) which story they would like to moderate, or moderate site-wide.

Default Mod Queues

New

Conditions: Pre-Mod disabled

Comments have been published? Yes

The New queue contains all comments that have not been moderated yet. This queue contains comments that haven’t yet been Accepted or Rejected by a moderator

Pre-mod

Conditions: Pre-Mod enabled

Comments have been published? No

This queue contains comments that haven’t yet been Accepted or Rejected by a moderator

Accepted

Comments have been published? Yes

Comments that have been approved by a moderator, written by a Staff member (and so auto approved), or Featured (and so auto approved). Tags for reports still appear on comments in this queue, but the comments will not go back into Reported.

Rejected

Comments have been published? No

Comments that have been rejected by a moderator, or rejected because they contained a banned word/phrase. Tags for reports still appear on comments in this queue, but the comments will not go back into Reported.

Reported

Conditions: Pre-Mod disabled

Comments have been published? depends

This queue contains comments that have been reported for moderator review, either by users or automatically by Talk, and have not yet been Approved or Rejected. If there are comments to review in this queue, a red dot will be displayed in the top menu.

All

The All queue contains all comments that have been submitted either article or site-wide.

Moderation Tags that appear in Reported/other queues

Pre-mod

Comment published? No

The Pre-mod tag signifies comments that are being pre-modded.

User

Comment published? Yes

Comment has been reported by a user. The ‘More Details’ box contains the name/s of the users who reported the comment, and any additional information they provided.

Staff

Comment published? Yes

Comment has been reported by a staff member. The ‘More Details’ box contains the name/s of the staff member who reported the comment, and any additional information they provided.

Suspect Word

Comment published? Yes

Comment contains a word or phrase that is on the ’Suspect words’ list in the Configure > Moderation tab (administrators only). The word/phrase will be highlighted in yellow.

Karma

Comment published? No

The History tag signifies comments that have been flagged because the user’s history indicates their Accepted:Rejected ratio has reached below the karma threshold. Read more about karma here.

Spam

Comment published? No

If you are using the Akismet anti-spam plugin, this tag means that Akismet has flagged the comment as spam. You must Approve it for it to appear in the stream. Requires: talk-plugin-akismet

Toxic

Comment published? No

If you are using the Toxic Comments plugin, this tag means that Perspective API has flagged the comment as likely to be toxic, above the threshold you have set (default: 80%). You must Approve it for it to appear in the stream. Requires: talk-plugin-toxic-comments. Read more about Toxic Comments here.

Contains Link

The Contains Link tag signifies a comment that contains a link, which can sometimes mean it is a spam or ad comment.

More Details View

At the bottom of each comment in the moderation queues, you can see more information about a comment’s flags by clicking on More Detail.

Moderator Actions

Accept

Accepting a comment ensures that the comment is displayed on the stream.

Reject

Rejecting a comment removes the comment from the stream.

Feature

Featuring a comment adds that comment to the Featured Comments tab on the stream.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Talk also supports a number of keyboard shortcuts that moderators can leverage to moderate queues quickly:

Note: “Zen mode” allows a moderator to view and action only one comment at a time. Enjoy the silence!

The User Drawer

In order to get an idea of what sort of a commenter someone is, moderators can click on the commenter’s username in any moderation queue/elsewhere in the admin (eg the Community page) to see details about their comments, and to take actions.

User Drawer Actions

Suspend User

Suspending a user allows a moderator to give a commenter a “time-out” for a set time chosen from four options; during that time they won’t be allowed to post comments or react to comments.

Ban User

Banning a user allows a moderator to permanently disallow a commenter to interact with their community. The commenters previous comments will remain on the site. This action can only be un-done manually by a moderator.

Reject Username

If a username is violating your guidelines but isn’t bad enough to lead to a ban (eg. they are impersonating a famous person), you can reject their username. This will prevent them from publishing comments until they submit a new username. The new name will appear on the Community page for moderator approval before they can publish comments again.

Username, Email and Member Since Date

This shows the basic details about a commenter’s account

Total Comments

This shows the number of comments that a commenter has made that currently display on the site.

Reject Rate

This shows the % of comments a commenter has had rejected by moderators, or automatically.

Karma score

The user’s current score. To see the default threshhold, click on the ‘i’ next to the word Karma. If the user’s score is equal to or below the default threshhold, the number will be highlighted red. Read more about karma scores here.

User History

This shows the history of the account - if a user has changed their username, or been suspended or banned. The name of the moderator who suspended/banned them/lifted the suspection or ban is displayed here as well.

Moderating from this View

Talk also allows you to moderate a commenters recent comments from this view. You can ‘Select all’ to select up to ten previous comments, and take bulk accept/reject actions.

Stories

In the Stories tab moderators can view all the stories that have Talk comments embedded on them, as well as be able to Open or Close comment streams on stories.

Community

The Community tab houses everything having to do with your team and your commenters.

Moderating Usernames

Any usernames that have been reported will show in the Reported Usernames sub-tab. Moderators can approve usernames if they’re suitable, or reject a username. If a username is rejected, the commenter will be notified that they need to change their username; until they do, they will be suspended from Talk. The updated username then again appears in this queue for a decision by moderators.

Managing People & Roles

All your team and commenters show in the People sub-tab. From here, you can manage your team members’ roles (Admins, Moderators, Staff), as well as search for commenters and take action on them (e.g. Ban/Un-ban, Suspend, etc.).

Configure

See Configuring Talk.

Moderating via the Comment Stream

Moderators can also choose to moderate comments in situ. If you are logged in as a Moderator or Admin, you will see a caret dropdown on each comment that allows you to Approve, Reject, or Feature comments, or Ban a User directly from the comment stream.