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How to Moderate Questions

  1. How to Moderate Questions, Open a Question: step 1, image 1 of 1
    • Navigate to the question that needs moderation and click the Options link in the top-right corner.

    • Select Moderate from the drop-down menu.

    • This option will only be available to users with reputation over 100 points, as well as privileged site users.

  2. How to Moderate Questions, Remove as Spam/Offensive: step 2, image 1 of 1
    • Five community user votes are required for the question to be removed as spam/offensive.

    • This deletes the post and docks the author's reputation 100 points.

    • This should be used as a last resort. Reputation is too hard to come by to punish someone for a one-time or innocent mistake.

  3. How to Moderate Questions, Remove as Not Related: step 3, image 1 of 1
    • Five community user votes are required for the question to be removed as not related.

    • This deletes the question, but it does not remove reputation from the asker. If a new question is off-topic, just vote to remove it.

    • It is best to get these out of the way of relevant questions as quickly as possible.

  4. How to Moderate Questions, Archive as Not Answerable: step 4, image 1 of 1
    • Three community user votes are required for the question to be archived as not answerable.

    • Archived questions do not show up on any index page, but they do appear on a member's profile. If the question is edited, it will be reopened.

  5. How to Moderate Questions: step 5, image 1 of 1
    • One community user vote (yours counts as the single vote) is required for the question to be locked.

    • Locking a post allows it to be found and read by the community. However, it removes the option for users to comment or interact with the thread moving forward.

    • Locking a post does not result in anyone losing reputation.

  6. How to Moderate Questions, Merge as a Duplicate: step 6, image 1 of 2 How to Moderate Questions, Merge as a Duplicate: step 6, image 2 of 2
    • Three community user votes are required for the question to be merged as a duplicates.

    • Duplicate questions are questions that ask the same thing that has been asked before and, logically, have the exact same answer.

    • Often two questions are very similar (if not exactly the same), but the person asking the second question has not searched for or found the first question.

    • The second person has a valid question, so we don't want to attack them for not understanding the system.

    • Marking the second question as a duplicate automatically gives it all the answers from the first question.

    • In this case, you must be able to accurately judge whether a question is truly an exact duplicate.

    • You'll need to find the original question in the forum that the answers will be pulled from to address this duplicate. Open that thread in a different tab, copy the URL, and paste in provided field.

    • Click Submit.

  7. How to Moderate Questions: step 7, image 1 of 1
    • Three community user votes are required for the question to be migrated to Meta.

    • Where Answers is our forum about repair, Meta is our forum about our Answers repair forum.

  8. How to Moderate Questions, Forcing a Vote to Pass: step 8, image 1 of 1
    • If you have Moderator or Administrator privileges for the site, you will see the Force vote to pass? under the moderation options.

    • Checking this box means that you are using your privileges to bypass additional votes required to complete your moderation selection.

Amber Taus

Member since: 01/10/22

11 Guides authored

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