# Add moderator for specific category or subcategory
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/add-moderator-for-specific-category-or-subcategory/35761
**Category:** Feature
**Tags:** completed, category-moderators
**Created:** [November 18, 2015, 6:07pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/add-moderator-for-specific-category-or-subcategory/35761 "2015-11-18T18:07:20Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@MZainDamlag](https://meta.discourse.org/u/MZainDamlag)
#### Post date: [November 18, 2015, 6:07pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/add-moderator-for-specific-category-or-subcategory/35761/1 "2015-11-18T18:07:20Z")
Hello All,
I wanna ask about how to make a moderator only for specific category or subcategory.
Thanks in advance.
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### Author:  [@envieme](https://meta.discourse.org/u/envieme)
#### Post date: [April 24, 2016, 4:50am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/add-moderator-for-specific-category-or-subcategory/35761/3 "2016-04-24T04:50:34Z")
Wondering if this has been implemented? I have searched and also tried to edit a category to try give moderator privileges to an user but couldn’t find any way to do it.
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### Author:  [@Falco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Falco)
#### Post date: [April 24, 2016, 5:03am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/add-moderator-for-specific-category-or-subcategory/35761/4 "2016-04-24T05:03:28Z")
Not yet.
You can watch the #releases category for news.
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### Author:  [@lokendra](https://meta.discourse.org/u/lokendra)
#### Post date: [April 19, 2017, 11:38am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/add-moderator-for-specific-category-or-subcategory/35761/5 "2017-04-19T11:38:02Z")
Hello,
Is there any idea when this feature will be launch ?
Please reply asap.
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [April 19, 2017, 8:08pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/add-moderator-for-specific-category-or-subcategory/35761/6 "2017-04-19T20:08:47Z")
Not for a year or possibly multiple years.
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### Author:  [@Y2K](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Y2K)
#### Post date: [July 24, 2017, 9:51am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/add-moderator-for-specific-category-or-subcategory/35761/7 "2017-07-24T09:51:29Z")
Was this finally implemented? This is something too important for a community driven forum!
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [July 24, 2017, 10:01am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/add-moderator-for-specific-category-or-subcategory/35761/8 "2017-07-24T10:01:52Z")
You should use different free software if this is a requirement.
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### Author:  [@Y2K](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Y2K)
#### Post date: [July 24, 2017, 10:20am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/add-moderator-for-specific-category-or-subcategory/35761/9 "2017-07-24T10:20:40Z")
Discourse has many futures that make it superior to others software, and this particular functionality alone is not the reason to move a forum to another system. However, I see lots of requests for this feature. Therefore, it seems like the majority would like it to see it implemented.
I saw somewhere said it could take some $100k to achieve this, this is obviously the kind of money that not just anyone could afford. **But we could collectively donate and make this happen. Like some go-fund me campaign or something.** Just an idea.
_I know this is free open source software, something we are getting for free. I am not demanding a particular feature, and I don’t believe anyone is. But I think we all together can make it happen._
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### Author:  [@Berto](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Berto)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2017, 12:57am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/add-moderator-for-specific-category-or-subcategory/35761/10 "2017-10-30T00:57:28Z")
Whoa this feature doesn’t exist?!?! Yikes. I just assumed it did.
What’s the bounty for this?
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2017, 1:21am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/add-moderator-for-specific-category-or-subcategory/35761/11 "2017-10-30T01:21:23Z")
> [@Berto](#):
>
> What’s the bounty for this?
There is no bounty for this, it’s a gigantic feature that would incredibly expensive to implement.
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### Author:  [@schungx](https://meta.discourse.org/u/schungx)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2017, 11:01am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/add-moderator-for-specific-category-or-subcategory/35761/12 "2017-10-30T11:01:02Z")
I wonder why it is a gigantic task…
It is just admin access for some people right? Sure somebody is to go thru the code base and figure out whether it breaks anything, but I suppose the actual code changes should be few…
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### Author:  [@zogstrip](https://meta.discourse.org/u/zogstrip)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2017, 11:26am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/add-moderator-for-specific-category-or-subcategory/35761/13 "2017-10-30T11:26:59Z")
Are you offering to do it? 😉
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### Author:  [@schungx](https://meta.discourse.org/u/schungx)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2017, 11:28am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/add-moderator-for-specific-category-or-subcategory/35761/14 "2017-10-30T11:28:14Z")
_THE HORROR_ 😱 God forbid!
Okok, you got me. I agree. It is a _gigantic_ job. 😅
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### Author:  [@Kimfucious](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Kimfucious)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2017, 1:10pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/add-moderator-for-specific-category-or-subcategory/35761/15 "2017-10-30T13:10:36Z")
Ha ha! I suggested this a couple years ago for a specific use case that I’ve yet to fulfill (dream project).
To ask that the Discourse lads are able to whip this out of their butt is a far, far reach.
While I do have a very specific desirement to see this in action, I’m not going to hold my breath.
Iprobably my best choice if/when it happens; I’ll say that with no money on the table.
Discourse is great. Long live Discoursre!
Aloha,
Kim
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### Author:  [@Berto](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Berto)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2017, 1:16pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/add-moderator-for-specific-category-or-subcategory/35761/16 "2017-10-30T13:16:30Z")
We’re eventually going to have a very segmented audience on our forum, which is why I asked.
But ultimately, if you have a mod, you need to trust them _everywhere_, not just in their one area. So even if we’re crazy successful, I don’t see myself paying tons and tons of money for this. But I’d no doubt throw in.
But still, it seems like an oversight that will eventually need to be done if any Discourse site is going to be come a SERIOUS player. Dream big, folks!
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2017, 9:50pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/add-moderator-for-specific-category-or-subcategory/35761/17 "2017-10-30T21:50:25Z")
@angus’s proposal / plugin for controlling moderator attention is the piece I see core adopting.
> [@Moderator Extension](https://meta.discourse.org/t/category-moderator-lite/67305):
>
> This Plugin is no longer supported. If you’re looking to do category-specific moderation, please see: [Category Group Review/Moderation](https://meta.discourse.org/t/category-group-review-moderation/116478) This plugin allows you to create a category-specific workflow for moderators. It’s a work in progress. I’m posting it here now, as there are probably aspects to moderation I don’t understand or appreciate and I’m hoping to get some feedback. This plugin does not, in any way, restrict a moderator’s powers to specific categories. Restricting moderator powers t…
It is a smaller bit of work and something that should resolve the bulk of the request.
Having a ton of moderators you don’t trust on a forum is a toxic state to be in anyway.
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### Author:  [@jwheel](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jwheel)
#### Post date: [March 28, 2019, 6:21pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/add-moderator-for-specific-category-or-subcategory/35761/18 "2019-03-28T18:21:04Z")
> [@sam](#):
>
> Having a ton of moderators you don’t trust on a forum is a toxic state to be in anyway.
This is a valuable feature for larger communities. In larger communities with over a few hundred thousand registered accounts and a range of topics, I participated in communities where moderation was guided by some forum-wide principles, but sub-category senior moderators laid out further moderation guidelines for a collection of categories and monitored it with a team of junior moderators. This distributed community moderation structure worked well for scaling the community with central guiding principles but leaving autonomy to groups of moderators to make the best decisions for their discussion topics or categories.
I know this is an old thread, but this was something I missed in 2014 when considering forum options for our community. I think this feature allows larger, more established communities to consider Discourse as an option for migrating from dated forum software. It would be nice to see this implemented in Discourse in the future.
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### Author:  [@j.jaffeux](https://meta.discourse.org/u/j.jaffeux)
#### Post date: [March 28, 2019, 6:34pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/add-moderator-for-specific-category-or-subcategory/35761/19 "2019-03-28T18:34:49Z")
Can’t you just say “Bob, you have the rights to moderate any category, but you are only in charge of this category, don’t touch the others, OK? Thanks” ?
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### Author:  [@tanius](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tanius)
#### Post date: [March 28, 2019, 7:21pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/add-moderator-for-specific-category-or-subcategory/35761/20 "2019-03-28T19:21:14Z")
Here’s an approach how to solve it with existing Discourse functionality.
> [@Berto](#):
>
> We’re eventually going to have a very segmented audience on our forum, which is why I asked.
We had a similar usecase for a “moderator per category” feature, and solved it by splitting the forum into [multiple Discourse platforms with a common login](https://edgeryders.eu/t/9567). And then you can assign different people to be moderators in each of the forums. It’s quite similar to how the different parts of the [Stack Exchange Network](https://stackexchange.com/) are linked together – with a common login and a site switch menu in the top right.
That’s quite straight-forward to do as Discourse comes with integrated single-sign-on (SSO) provider and client code, so you can dedicate one Discourse platform for signup, the others as federated forums, and have a dropdown menu in all that allows to switch between them. Managing the codebase is also quite straight-forward as Discourse comes with the option of doing a multisite installation (one codebase serves multiple domains and databases) and, best of all, a multisite Discourse installation does not eat more server memory than a single-site installation as the server processes are shared. Very much unlike multiple single-site installations in parallel.
The manual I linked above describes how to set this up and has a link to our codebase as well. Expect it to take some time to get this done, but then it works quite smoothly, including the login flow (not perfect yet, but smooth). We have it in live use on [edgeryders.eu](https://edgeryders.eu) since a few months. (It’s ok if you register there just to test out how the login and site switch process works.)
Beyond “moderators for specific categories”, the approach above has some other benefits that we needed:
- configuration settings (frontpage look and feel, badge system, anti-spam measures) can be adapted in each of the federated forums separately
- forum operators get their own domain, own design and own admin status, which is important for a sense of ownership and a proper “community feeling” in their respective online community
- plugins can be enabled on the different federated forums independently (even though they will be installed on all of them due to the multisite’s shared codebase, they don’t have to be enabled on every site)
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### Author:  [@Dannii](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Dannii)
#### Post date: [March 28, 2019, 10:40pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/add-moderator-for-specific-category-or-subcategory/35761/21 "2019-03-28T22:40:45Z")
The team have said category specific moderators are in the pipeline. But I don’t know when they expect to have it finished.
> [@Can I create a new group which can and can only manage specific categories?](https://meta.discourse.org/t/can-i-create-a-new-group-which-can-and-can-only-manage-specific-categories/112342/2):
>
> Per category moderation is coming, but it’s not here yet.
[Next page](https://meta.discourse.org/t/add-moderator-for-specific-category-or-subcategory/35761.md?page=2)