How to moderate the community with several moderators?

Hi Gaëlle,

first of all welcome on the inSpired Community! :)

I actually remember that I was asking this myself a few years ago, when I received help by an extra moderator... I was also a little bit confused how to know what needs to be read and what not.

Don't worry, everything works as expected. You are simply looking in the wrong column: The bold topic titles are only showing what you have not read yourself. This has nothing to do with what Swanny has read.

You have to follow the green indicator under "status": If it says "new topic", or if it shows the number of new comments in green, then it means that nobody from the team has read it yet.

So the bold topic titles is about what you have not read yet. The number (or text) that is being displayed under "status" tells you if anybody from your team has read it. If the field under "status" is empty, then Swanny has read it before.

If you still should have questions or problems, just let me know! :)

Cheers,

Julian

Hey Gaëlle,

As an addition I changed Swanny's user role so they now appear in the 'assign moderator' dropdown:

So it could be an idea to start assigning yourself to topics and then you won't need to look at topics which are assigned to the other moderator, an example:

Hi @Shane1, hi @Julian,

I'm a bit late to the party but hope you can share some tips with us 🙂 I'm Gaëlle's counterpart on the English Deezer Community.

I understand why the topics are shown as unopened for Gaëlle but for the future, we are trying to find the best way for everyone (Moderators and Managers) to work on the same forums and all topics together.

Therefore assigning a topic to one moderator does not really work for us as we want other moderators to reply to those topics too if needed.

Is there a way of (automatically) marking a topic as "viewed by a moderator" or similar?

Or maybe someone wants to share their way of working with us? 🙂

@Anja @Gaelle
Using advanced filters, you can filter new topics, new replies and topics that have been viewed by a moderator. You can also use labelling and filtering labels, but seeing as nothing is automated about labels it's very prone to human error. I would strongly advise against using labels for your workflow.

How to use advanced filters:
https://community.insided.com/how-to-s-37/how-to-filter-topics-advanced-filters-422

I'd prefer it if the Control environment could filter new topics and replies at once, seeing as there's just no advantage in having seperate filters for new topics and new replies. It makes the workflow more complex in stead of streamlined. Also, if you open a topic accidentally - which happens - it will never show up as a new reply or topic again. You have to design your way of working around these flaws.

Please vote for my ideas to fix them:
https://community.insided.com/ideas/365
https://community.insided.com/ideas/546

Hi all! :)

@Anja What you are describing sounds a lot like the way that I was working with the platform in the past.

Is there a way of (automatically) marking a topic as "viewed by a moderator" or similar?

This is why there are two indicators for new content: "Status" indicates the status for all Moderators, while "Replies" counts the new content for you only:

Maybe it helps if I explain how I used to do it in the past: While my Moderator was reading all new topics (thus opening and checking all topics which are displayed as new in the "Status" field), I was checking which topics have not yet been read by me, but sounded like they need a reply (thus following the indicator in the "replies" field).

This way you can do both: check new content that no Moderator has read yet, but also see what has been read by a Moderator (but not by myself).

Does this answer your question?

@Jurgen Good suggestions! I also remember the issue with accidentially opened topics - however you can also mark the topic as unread (top right in topic view), then the "status" field will reset.

Cheers,

Julian

Hi all! :)
@Jurgen Good suggestions! I also remember the issue with accidentially opened topics - however you can also mark the topic as unread (top right in topic view), then the "status" field will reset.

Awesome, I had no idea this option was buried there 😃

Thanks @Julian, I'll definitely check that option 🙂

Hi all! :)
@Jurgen Good suggestions! I also remember the issue with accidentially opened topics - however you can also mark the topic as unread (top right in topic view), then the "status" field will reset.Awesome, I had no idea this option was buried there :D

@Julian
Turns out, this feature doesn't quite work out for us. We have a filter 'New topics without a reply' and 'New replies' so that we have two mutually exclusive lists of topics. If you 'mark as unread', the control environment counts it as a brand new topic and not as a new reply to an existing topic. That means it disappears from our filters if the topic has any replies.

Back to the drawing board I guess ...

Hi Jurgen,

thanks for sharing this with us! I personally rarely use filters, so that's why I did not really know about this....

@daniel.boon Please see the comment from Jurgen:

I'd prefer it if the Control environment could filter new topics and replies at once, seeing as there's just no advantage in having seperate filters for new topics and new replies. It makes the workflow more complex in stead of streamlined.

We should discuss how we can improve it.

Cheers,

Julian

Yoeri said he would look into it as well :)

A more streamlined Control environment is worth a lot to moderators who work for a busy community on a daily basis.

Ah ok, good to hear that! 🙂

Yes, I agree with that 100%. Having spend countless hours in the control environment, I know how much time changes like these could save for all people involved...

Hi all! :)
@Jurgen Good suggestions! I also remember the issue with accidentially opened topics - however you can also mark the topic as unread (top right in topic view), then the "status" field will reset.Awesome, I had no idea this option was buried there :D@Julian
Turns out, this feature doesn't quite work out for us. We have a filter 'New topics without a reply' and 'New replies' so that we have two mutually exclusive lists of topics. If you 'mark as unread', the control environment counts it as a brand new topic and not as a new reply to an existing topic. That means it disappears from our filters if the topic has any replies.

Back to the drawing board I guess ...


I found a workaround for this :)

If you add a filter ‘New topic’ and you sort by ‘Status’, the New topics that have a reply (which we have the other filter for) are pushed down and the ‘New topics’ are sorted by ‘Last active’ (by sheer luck).

If you mark a Topic with replies as unread, it shows up in your ‘New topic’ filter and above the new topics with a new reply. So all you have to do is use this filter 'New topics' instead of 'New topics without a reply' and ignore the new topics that have replies which the "+1" status makes clear enough.

This is a super useful topic thread and I have learnt a few things here that I wasn't even aware of!

Some changes to ways of working in my team are now in progress, thanks all!!

Darran

Thanks for sharing, Jurgen! I will try it out myself later today.

This is a super useful topic thread and I have learnt a few things here that I wasn't even aware of!

Awesome, great to hear that! That's why we are doing this here for, after all! 🙃