Moderation / Approval of new discussions and replies

finex

Hi, I'm evaluating Flarum for a customer but I can't find if it does support the following features:

Approval of new discussions by a moderator: before a new discussion is published moderators must be notified (by mail and/or from a dashboard) and the discussion has to be approved.
Approval of replies: each discussion reply needs to be moderated too. As per new discussions, moderators needs to be informed about new replies and a manual approval is needed.

Thanks for your answers :-)

clarkwinkelmann

finex yes you can. The following permission can be changed in the admin panel:

Start discussions without approval (all registered users by default)
Reply to discussions without approval (all registered users by default)

Hari

clarkwinkelmann Start discussions without approval (all registered users by default)
Reply to discussions without approval (all registered users by default)

finex

Thank you!

bavard

But how to approve only the first new discussion or first reply from a user ? I doubt any admin wants to approve each and every discussions and replies.

clarkwinkelmann

bavard you could give a new role to "approved" users so their next posts don't need to be approved.

In the next Flarum version you'll be able to hide such a group from view if you don't want to publicly show who you have put in the approved group.

Pollux

clarkwinkelmann you could give a new role to "approved" users so their next posts don't need to be approved.

For @bavard's needs an auto-promoting feature would be interesting, so that the permission to start discussions / reply without approval could be granted on an automatic basis after a certain time, number of discussions, posts or likes, or a combination of them all.

bavard

clarkwinkelmann bavard you could give a new role to "approved" users so their next posts don't need to be approved.

Can you detail how to do this ?

Pollux For @bavard's needs an auto-promoting feature would be interesting

I don't need it this now, but automatic/parametrized granting of new rights sure is an interesting feature.

Pollux

bavard

Oh I see, so I need to use the FoF Default Group extension to create a group for new members who I will later move to the regular Member group.

I'm not sure you need the FoF Default Group extension. Otherwise that's the idea.

EDIT : I have an issue, those who can start discussions without approval should be the regular members, and those who can start discussions (all short) should be new members, correct ? Well the permission system forces the can start discussions group to be the same as the can start discussions without approval !

This is not the case. You can allow all members to start discussions. As long as they don't have the permission to start a discussion without approval, of course they need an approval. The ability to start a discussion without approval should therefore be limited to a specific member group (you can call them regular members, later, as clarkwinkelmann specified, you can hide their group status).

I also want those new members to only see part of the forum, is the above compatible with the tag restriction ?

Yes.

EDIT : seems like I can only allow a tag, so if I wanted new members to only see one tag I would have to block them from seeing all the others and that is a heavy permission setting.

You can apply several tags to each discussion depending on your settings. So you may have a tag "public" to show discussions to everyone and another "semipublic" to show discussions to new members. Discussions without any of the described special tags would be visible only to your elevated (regular) member group.

Take a look at the Solved tag here in this forum. This tag is used in addition to other tags like Support, Feedback or Dev. You could set it up so that discussions tagged with Solved are only visible to registered users or a specific member group. (Of course that doesn't make sense here)

Pollux

bavard

You just need two kind of regular users, one with and one without said privileges. But unfortunately you need to promote the users you trust manually.

bavard

Pollux Oh I see, so I need to use the FoF Default Group extension to create a group for new members who I will later move to the regular Member group.
EDIT : I have an issue, those who can start discussions without approval should be the regular members, and those who can start discussions (all short) should be new members, correct ? Well the permission system forces the can start discussions group to be the same as the can start discussions without approval !

I also want those new members to only see part of the forum, is the above compatible with the tag restriction ? EDIT : seems like I can only allow a tag, so if I wanted new members to only see one tag I would have to block them from seeing all the others and that is a heavy permission setting.

clarkwinkelmann

bavard I don't think you need the Default group extension. Create a new group "Approved user", and give that group the permission to see the various tags and post without approval. New users won't have any group so they won't have the access to what you restricted to your new group.

Pollux

Oh, @clarkwinkelmann was faster than me...

bavard

Thanks, I've got the approval thing setup correctly, but not the tag restriction thing.
I tried with a single secondary tag that I add to the discussions I want the new members to see (forum terms and member intro) but there's no way to combine this tag restriction with the general/global permission.
You suggest that I use 2 different secondary tags, but I can't force approved members to add the semi public tag to each new discussion.
If I use a the primary tags then I have to exclude all of them in the permission, which is a very messy setup.

clarkwinkelmann

bavard the tag system is not always super logical. If a discussion has a single tag that the user can't see, it won't be visible.

Pollux

clarkwinkelmann If a discussion has a single tag that the user can't see, it won't be visible.

Clark is right, additional tags can only further restrict the target audience, they cannot expand it.

bavard If I use a the primary tags then I have to exclude all of them in the permission, which is a very messy setup.

You only have to do it once. Unless you have hundreds of primary tags, this doesn't look like a real problem to me.

Pollux

bavard

I just stumbled over a recent discussion: Allow to start discussion in certain tag only for one user group and here especially a post by clarkwinkelmann

I think @jordanjay29 suggestion was to set admin+mod under "global", and members under the newbie tag.

I have just tested locally and it seems to work.

At first I couldn't believe it because it contradicted my previous explanation that tags were only able to further restrict the allowed audience and not expand it. But that's not what Clark said. He said:

clarkwinkelmann If a discussion has a single tag that the user can't see, it won't be visible.

Obviously, "global" does not act like a tag. I have always thought that "global" is a kind of invisible and non-removable default tag applied to all discussions. We can still see it that way, with the one exception that "global" restrictions can not only be tightened but also relaxed by tags.

This looks like good news for you: You can restrict "global" to regular members and setup a special tag for new members. Simple as that.

Pollux

bavard It's good to know, but limiting content to one tag is...too limiting.

You can have more than one "new members" tag, but you can't combine these with tags reserved for regular members, because in this case what Clark said above applies:

clarkwinkelmann If a discussion has a single tag that the user can't see, it won't be visible.

The same is true for the permission to start a discussion.

bavard

So there is no simple/clean way of hiding most of the forum from new members ?
I feel that this is where conventional forum categories come in handy.

clarkwinkelmann

bavard unfortunately, not really. I think you'll have to mark every primary tag as restricted, and configure the permission on each of these tags.

If you have few primary tags this shouldn't bee too much of a concern, but I understand this can get tedious if you have many private primary tags.

If needed you could get an extension developed to make the opposite, choose a tag where global permissions don't apply.

If the introduction post does not need to be public, maybe this extension can help ? https://discuss.flarum.org/d/23004-flarum-help-tags So you can hide everything from public view, but let new members create a discussion only them and existing authorized users can see.

bavard

Pollux You only have to do it once. Unless you have hundreds of primary tags, this doesn't look like a real problem to me.

Indeed it has to be done only once, if the setup is though over properly. So I'm more worried of a future proof solution.
I have 10 tags, and to each tag that I restrict I have 50 settings to define (more or less with extensions). This alone makes me wonder why it is designed this way. The Help Tags extension however should help with this issue. Also wonder why can't I just add several tags to one restriction rule.

Now imagine if I want to have a 3 level membership who each can see 3 different parts of the forum.
I feel (with my limited understanding of Flarum system) that it would be a gigantic mess in the permissions.