What are all the things a category moderator can do?

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We are looking to add some community moderation to our site and are trying to determine the best way to go about it. We initially thought about trust levels (TL4) but 1) some users are already TL3 so the operating window is very small and 2) this would give them some site-wide privileges that we don’t want.

We are instead looking to create moderation user groups and grant them moderation privileges in select sub-categories. This begs the question: What can they do in those categories?

CleanShot 2024-05-20 at 15.52.43

The main aspects that we would like to accomplish are:

  1. Edit topics
  2. Edit posts (to clean up formatting)
  3. Edit tags & categories
  4. Mark solutions

I’m confident that 1-3 are possible. Is #4? Are there any other privileges that we should be aware of before we open it up?

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To add to this (on @putty’s behalf): We are attempting to give community members the ability to moderate the community they are in every day. We want to be very, very careful about what we give them, though. For example, we don’t want to give them the ability to edit all topics, because we wouldn’t want them editing announcements, security topics, etc.

We did read this topic:

We weren’t sure what the value of TL in the Category Moderator column meant. I read that the TL = Trust level dependent, but that doesn’t quite make sense. If a person is of a trust level, and that trust level is enabled to do that thing…then why do they need to be made a category moderator?

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Because of the things their trust level cannot allow them (e.g. reviewing flags), or because you want them to be able to do things only in a special category, like editing posts only in a specific category while a higher trust level would allow them to do that everywhere.

But I agree there is not much documentation about category-moderators besides the announcements.
Category Group Review/Moderation

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A short list of what Category Moderators can do in their category:

  • Edit posts
  • Edit topics
  • Move topics (note - if a Cat Mod moves a topic into a category they don’t have moderation perms for, they will not be able to move it back)
  • Make posts/topics Wikis
  • Add staff notices
  • Close, archive, pin, delete, merge, and unlist topics
  • Review flags
  • Edit category descriptions

Category Moderators cannot:

  • Change posts into PMs
  • Add staff colors, lock posts, rebuild HTML
  • Check moderation history on a post/topic
  • Add topic timers, change timestamps, transfer ownership of posts, set slowmode, or reset the bump date
  • Manage users
  • Access the Admin Dashbord

If you give people Cat Mod perms in a category that you will be posting these in, they can. Cat Mods can edit all posts inside their category.

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Ah, this is the part that was missing!

I’m onboarding a new developer on my team and we’re having them develop on Discourse. I’ve been thinking of low-to-medium (I hope) things for them to work on, so this could be a good idea.

A plugin to extend the functionality of category moderators, potentially.

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May I ask why isn’t the option to reset bumps enabled?

Title edits require this feature, and it would significantly lighten the load for general moderators.

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No particular reason, other than it hasn’t been asked for. It’s not something that many people heavily use, I don’t believe. Why do title edits require a bump date reset, in your workflow?

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There’s a feature request here you may find interesting - Allowing category moderators to have access to the full extents of moderation tools in their own category

And a community-created plugin that goes with it Category Moderators Enhancer

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