It’s great there’s an “approve new topics unless trust level” posting setting dropdown. However for my site, like a newspaper or magazine, I’d like to only publish approved topics. I can get around this by setting the dropdown to “Leader” before I promote anyone to that level. But it’d be good to have a level in the dropdown that no one can reach (say TL127 to leave room for new ones).
Is it an easy job to add this level to which no one gets promoted so that it just appears in dropdowns such as this?
Specifically the TL127, it seems TL4 Leader works well for this purpose already, or what is it that that TL4 doesn’t do well that you’d prefer a new TL for?
Can you ask the TL4s you promote to not start any new topics? If they’re trusted enough to be TL4 then they should be able to be trusted enough to follow your site’s policies?
Yeah, few TL4s are likely to go rogue. But if a simple addition can give me and others piece of mind that our curated masterpieces won’t be vandalised by the disgruntled, disturbed, or presumptuous, it’s preferable.
TL4s can do lots more damage to post content than start new topics if they decide to go rogue. Though most of it should be reversable through edit logs, etc.
If you had each category set to Watching First Post, you’d get a little notification every time a new topic was created. That would allow you to keep a closer eye on who was creating new stuff?
You can require either post, topics, or both to require approval. This will prevent posts or topics created by any users other than your site’s staff from being published before they have been approved by a staff member.
Yeah, a lock-out option would be great for such things as well.
I’d rather not have more things to worry about. I don’t like asynchronous notifications anyway. And even by email there’d be so many false positives from postings by editors that I’d ignore them like the boy who cried wolf.
Thanks Simon, that’s what I was after. Although I’ll have to set it manually on each normal category, it does allow certain categories to be unmoderated for staff or general users.
A “Nobody” trust level would still be worthwhile as well.
We could probably use this also. We have a few notorious banned users who try to sneak in with sockpuppet accounts and let them lay low and post innocuously for a couple of months so they don’t look new and build trust, then they do a full-evil mask off reveal “I’ve been here the whole time stupid Mods, muahahah!”
It would be helpful if we had a way to flag those suspected accounts individually so Staff is notified and has to approve first when they do eventually try to post. Per our Code of Conduct we can’t technically moderate them until they actually misbehave, but by then the damage is done.
Though most of it should be reversable through edit logs, etc.