Moderating chat
What happens when a member reports a chat message, and what Dismiss, Hide and Delete each do about it.
Any member can report any message. Reports gather at Admin > Chat > Reported, and anyone with the Manage Chats permission can act on them.
Each row shows the message and its author, the conversation it came from with a link straight to it in context, and every report against it with the reason the reporter gave.
Use the search box to find a message or an author, and the Needs attention filter to switch between what is outstanding and what has already been dealt with.
The three actions
| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
| Dismiss | Clears the reports and leaves the message alone. Nothing changes in the conversation. |
| Hide | Keeps the message out of the conversation for everyone except moderators, who still see it and can Unhide it. |
| Delete | Removes the message for good. |
Dismiss is the right answer more often than it looks. A report is one member's opinion, and clearing it records that a moderator looked.
Hide is the reversible middle option, and the one to reach for when you are not sure. The message stops being visible to the conversation immediately, and you can put it back.
Delete cannot be undone. Replies that quoted the deleted message stay in the conversation, showing Message deleted in place of the quote, so the thread still reads.
Reading a message in context
A single message is often impossible to judge on its own. The conversation link on each row opens the message where it was posted, with everything around it.
This works even for a channel you are not a member of. A moderator can read any channel in order to judge a report, without being in its roster, and can still read one that has since been disabled or archived, because reports outlive the room they were raised in.
Being able to read a channel is not the same as being in it. A moderator who is not in a channel's roster cannot post, reply, react or report in it. Moderating a room is not joining it.
How moderators hear about a report
The first report on a message raises an alert, and an email, for everyone with the Manage Chats permission. Later reports on the same message do not, so a pile-on does not become a pile of notifications. The email links straight to the reported message in the moderation queue.
Members with Manage Chats control this like any other notification, under Chat at Profile > Notifications. See Notification preferences.
Tips
- Deal with reports promptly even when the answer is Dismiss. The queue is only useful while it is short.
- Prefer Hide to Delete while a situation is live. You can always delete afterwards, and you cannot undelete.
- If one channel produces most of your reports, the problem is usually the channel's membership, not the messages. Look at the groups it is sourced from.
See also
- Using chat: how a member reports a message
- Channels: create a chat room with its own member list
- Permissions: what Manage Chats allows