Moderating a Space
The Space's report queue, the decisions you can take, and the audit log that records them.
Moderation is how a Space deals with content that breaks its rules. The report queue needs the members moderate capability, which means Moderator and above. Taking content down also needs that tool's top capability: moderate for posts, comments, and chat, manage for events and polls, write for notes, and approve for articles — which by default leaves articles to Admins and the owner.
The report queue
Moderation in the Space lists reports about content in that Space, newest first, with Open, Resolved and Dismissed to switch between them. Access and actions are scoped to this one Space — nothing here reaches anything outside it.
Each report names the reported content and the reason chosen. Open the reported content from the row. If it has already been deleted, the row says the content is no longer available, and you can still close the report.
Not every report about your Space arrives here. A report about a person or about the whole Space, a report about something written by the Space's owner or one of its moderators, and every report in a severe category go to Novagora's own safety queue instead — regardless of where the content sits. A Space's moderators cannot overrule that, and do not see those reports. See Reporting content and getting help.
Resolving a report
A report is closed with one decision:
| Decision | What it means |
|---|---|
| Dismiss | Nothing was wrong |
| Warn | The person is told |
| Remove content | The content comes down |
| Restrict member | The author is set to read-only in the Space |
| Escalate to platform | It goes to Novagora |
Restrict member is offered only when the author is a member below your level, not banned, and not the Space owner.
Suspending an account is Novagora's, not a Space's; escalate instead.
Removing a post as a moderator is not the same as an author deleting it: you give a reason, the author is notified, and it is recorded where it can be reverted. It is confirmed first.
Escalate is the right answer whenever something is beyond a Space's remit — threats, anything involving a minor, anything you think may be illegal. Do not sit on it.
Auto-moderation
On a Space with Ultra — the owner's plan or the Space's own — Admins and the owner can screen what members write. Auto-moderation is in the Space's settings, on the web and in the app.
A rule is either Keywords — words and phrases, matched as whole words or
anywhere in the text, with * as a wildcard, ignoring case and accents — or
Links: block all links, allow only some domains, or block some domains.
Subdomains count as their domain. A Space can have up to 50 rules.
Each rule does one thing when it matches:
| Action | What happens |
|---|---|
| Block | The post, article, comment or channel message is not published, and the author is told why — with your reason, if you wrote one |
| Hold for review | A post or article is kept hidden; only the author and the Space's moderators see it, marked Waiting for review, until a moderator approves it |
| Flag | It is published as usual and added to the review queue |
Comments and channel messages can be blocked or flagged, not held. Direct messages and group chats are never screened. The owner and anyone who can moderate members are never screened, so a rule cannot lock the moderators out. Rules check what is written from then on, not what is already there. Test this text in the settings shows what your rules would do with a piece of text, without posting anything.
Join questions: a Space that takes requests can ask up to five questions, each required or optional. The answers sit with the request in the request queue, and a keyword rule can flag them for a second look — it never decides the request.
Slow mode: a channel's settings can make members wait between their own messages — from 5 seconds to an hour. The composer counts down; moderators are not limited.
The auto-moderation queue
Moderation has an Auto-moderation tab next to reports, for Moderators and above, with Open and Handled. Each entry shows what was caught, who wrote it, and the rule. Approve publishes a held post or article and tells the author; Dismiss clears a flag; Remove takes the content down the same way a moderator removal does; on a flagged join request the button is Reject, which declines it. Caught articles show up only for roles that can review articles.
Rule changes, slow mode, join questions, and every queue decision are recorded in the audit log. A single blocked post is not; the rule counts its matches instead.
If Ultra ends, the rules, slow mode, and questions are kept but stop running until Ultra is back. The queue keeps working, so nothing held stays hidden for good. If Novagora switches a Space's auto-moderation off, the settings say so.
Content you can act on
Moderation reaches the Space's own reportable content: posts, comments, articles, events, polls, notes, and its channel messages. Tasks and files are not reportable. It does not reach direct messages or group chats between members, which are private to the people in them.
The audit log
Moderation actions, membership decisions, and role changes are recorded in the Space's Audit log, which is under the Space's settings on the web and in the app, for Admins and above. It records who did what and when; the details of what was reported are not repeated in it. Removing content, restricting, timing out, banning, and removing a member are recorded as revertible, which is the safe way to undo a mistaken action. Join-request decisions are not: undoing an admission is removing the member, and a rejection has no inverse.
On the web you can filter the log by category and by person and Export CSV. A reversible entry offers Undo action, and a ban offers Lift ban; an entry that has been undone is marked Reverted.
Moderating with a light hand
- Reach for a restriction or a timeout before a removal. All three can be undone, but only the first two leave the person able to read along while it is sorted out.
- Say what rule was broken. Rules that are never cited stop being read.
- Reports are confidential. The person you acted on is never told who reported them.