An initial placeholder for information about setting up and controlling the moderation of messages.
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Introduction
When Groups.io receives a message intended for a given group it makes a series of evaluations to decide whether that message should be accepted immediately into the group's Messages section or whether it should be delivered instead to the Pending page so that a group moderator or owner can determine whether to accept or reject the message. The latter is referred to as Message Moderation.
Note: although there are many rules, the default for (almost) all of them is not to cause a message to be moderated ¡ª a group admin must enable each rule before it applies to any messages.
An exception is New Users Moderated, which is the default Spam Control setting when a group is created. Another exception occurs for group members copied in by the Easy Yahoo Group Transfer feature: those members are initially given the Posting Privilege they had in the Yahoo Group.
The message moderation rules are applied equally whether the message is created online in the group's web pages (New Topic and Reply features) or is sent to the group by email. Messages are forwarded to members by email at the same time that they are accepted into the group's Messages section.
Message moderation in Groups.io is very flexible, including controls for moderating messages at the group, hashtag, topic, and individual member level. This flexibility reflects the understanding that there is no one "right" way to moderate messages in a group - different groups have different needs.
Basic Setup and Usage
One of the first tasks faced by someone after creating a new group is to go through the Settings page and set up the various controls for the group. There is an important choice to make in the Spam Control section relating to how the group managers (owners and moderators) will control member messages in the group. Groups.io does not allow a group to be completely uncontrolled, as that would too easily lead to a group sending spam or other undesirable content to its members.
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How do I unmoderate members (messages posts, in bulk)
How do I moderate individual members
Group Controls
The Spam Control section of a group's Settings page contains two checkboxes relevant to message moderation.
Moderated: This checkbox causes messages to be moderated unless an override applies.
New Users Moderated: This checkbox causes newly joined members to start with the Override: new user moderated. If unchecked new members start set to Use Group Moderation Setting.
The Message Policies section has a few more related controls:
Allow Non Subscribers to Post: This checkbox allows the group to receive messages by email from non-subscribers, but all such messages will be moderated (overriding the Moderated checkbox).
Automatically Moderate Topics Older Than x days: This checkbox causes topic moderation to be automatically turned on when each topic reaches the specified age (overriding the Moderated checkbox).
Viruses: This control allows detection of a virus in an incoming message to cause the message to be moderated (overriding the Moderated checkbox) instead of blocked.
The Message Formatting section (surprisingly) has one more related control:
Attachments: This control allows a message with one or more attachments to be moderated (overriding the Moderated checkbox).
Member and Integration Controls
Posting Privileges: this section at the bottom of a member's page, accessed from the Members list, has a multiple-choice selection ("radio" control) that directly controls how messages from this member are handled:
- Use Group Moderation Setting
- Override: not moderated
- Override: moderated
- Override: new user moderated
- Override: not allowed to post
- Override: moderate the first message of every topic this person starts
- Override: moderate all messages of every topic this person starts
The first of these makes the member's messages subject to the various group settings (above), and to topic moderation. The other choices override those settings for this particular member.
Integrations: while not members, Integrations allow third-party services and non-subscribers to send messages to the group. Each integration has a Moderated checkbox to cause messages from this source to be moderated (overriding the group moderation controls).
Topic and Hashtag controls
Topic Options: These controls are available (to a group admin) via the More menu that appears in the bar below each message.
- Moderate Topic ¡ª all replies to this topic will be moderated
- Lock Topic ¡ª all replies to this topic will be rejected.
Hashtag Options: These controls are available (to a group admin) via the Edit button that appears on each Hashtag on the Hashtags page.
- Topic Duration w/ Lock Topic ¡ªTopic will be locked after the specified time period.
- Moderated ¡ª Messages (New Topic or Reply) will be moderated.
- Replies Unmoderated ¡ª Replies to this topic will bypass the group's Moderated checkbox.
- Locked ¡ª Replies to this topic will be rejected.
- Use by Mods Only ¡ª Messages (New Topic or Reply) will be rejected unless posted by a group admin.
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The official Groups.io user documentation is in the Groups.io Help Center.