Did some reading and asked Mr. Bot and it seems this has come up before but isn’t possible.
This is for a technical forum with a high level of computer skill in general. Active and retired electrical engineers mainly so we have a lot of level 4s. That part has worked out very well taking a load off of the moderators. The problem came when we started getting lots of spammers. It was easier to queue all first posts than clean up after them. Knowing their posts won’t be seen unless approved seems to have worked quite well.
The downside is that even though we have 5 mods world wide in staggered time zones, some new people looking for help can be stuck in the queue for hours. It would be nice to let one of the level 4s release it if it seems legit. This would be ‘release only’. No access to anything else would be needed.
It’s not an exact solution, but if those new users tend to get be concentrated within the same few categories, maybe looking into making some T4’s category-moderators is the way to go?
Alas, they are scattered. The forum would seem a tad friendlier if we had more that could just green light a first time post so the new member didn’t wait as long in some cases.
Spammers love to ruin things for every one though. Greed knows no bounds.
