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 Hi, everyone.

I thought this was a bit difficult to explain in one sentence what I was looking for, so will dive into more detail below.

 

The problem

 

We are a growing community, which means more and more topics. What we have in place at the moment is a 48-hour rule:

If there has been no comments in 48 hours, we will comment attempt to solve the problem. 

There are exceptions to the rule, of course, and sometimes we’ll chime into topics sooner or even if there are other comments already there. It all depends. But, we usually live by that 48-hour rule.

What the problem is when we moderate, we may have to reply to loads of topics! But, on the day of moderation, there may be a bunch of new topics that are now getting pushed further and further below the fold.

These new topics may not be getting a fair chance of being seen 😪.

 

 

I would love to hear people’s thoughts on how to best solve this. We could consider changing the timings of our moderation rule, but surely, new topics will get caught at some point because we have to moderate and reply on a certain day. If we shorten it, it reduces us spamming the community! But, it decreases the chance of another member commenting.

For more context, lots of our topics are conversations. So, the help others tab in the activity feed doesn’t include everything so stuff will still get missed.

Are there other areas we can be promoting these topics with zero/few comments within the first 48 hours? I appreciate any help!

Cc: @olimarrio 

I don’t have the team of moderators that it sounds like you do, but my recommendation is to look at automating with Zapier or a similar tool. 

You can set some time-based actions based on the trigger action of a webhook or the out-of-the-box New Topic trigger action they provide for Zapier. 

Then, depending on how you prioritize replying, you could add a moderator tag or moderation label on the backend, or something like that. If your default replies after 48 hours are typically the same, you can even automate the reply itself. 

I did something along these lines with questions that go 72+ hours without a reply. I wrote up my steps here: 

 

Good question @lewysgammondphi !

I assume you mean that by commenting and answering the “older” questions, the new ones go “down” on the community home page feed and no one sees them?

I don’t have any simple answers to this, but I know that our superusers and actives use this view: https://yhteiso.elisa.fi/search/activity/sincelastvisit to see what’s new since they last visited the community. I guess that helps us, as most of the topics get answered by peers as well 😊

And one question - do you moderate on a daily basis? If not, maybe that’d help so that there’s not so many topics to be answered?

Thanks, @DannyPancratz.

And interesting view to share, @Suvi Lehtovaara. I wonder how many members use that already from the dropdown menu. My assumption is that most members ultimately use the feed from the homepage. Obviously, it would be great news if they look elsewhere too!

I will try and think how to promote these other views to members. 

And yes, moderate everyday (zero comments, 48 hours old = we answer. X comments, Y old = we may comment to add to the conversation).

I shared this question a day after we received like 10+ topics on one Monday, which all got pushed down due to us replying to other topics from before the weekend.

Thanks for your help!

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