I’m experiencing a strange issue on my Discourse forum. Every time a non-administrator user creates a new post, the “system” user automatically flags the post. The posts themselves are published, but they are immediately flagged for review by an administrator. The reason given for the flag is simply “needs review”
I’ve already checked all the moderation settings and lowered the thresholds as much as possible, but the problem persists. It only happens for non-admin users. Admin posts are not affected.
Here’s what I’ve tried so far:
Lowered all review-related settings (e.g., “min trust to post links,” new user restrictions, etc.).
Checked for any custom watched words or flagging rules.
I’m not sure what else to check. Could someone provide some guidance on how to troubleshoot this? What settings or logs should I be examining?
Posts in Discourse can be automatically sent to the review queue for a variety of reasons.
If you’re finding that every new post is getting sent to the review queue by your system user, it’s possible you may have the review_every_post site setting enabled, which requires all posts to be reviewed, regardless of user trust level. With this setting posts are published and visible after creation, but are still sent to the review queue for moderator attention.
Here are some other notable settings related to this that could influence the behavior you’re describing:
approve_post_count
Minimum number of posts by a user before they are no longer reviewed.
approve_unless_allowed_groups
Groups exempted from requiring post approval.
approve_new_topics_unless_allowed_groups
Groups exempted from requiring approval for new topics.
By default, Discourse does not automatically flag all posts, so you could also check your site settings page to view Only show overridden settings and see which settings may have been adjusted that are impacting this behavior. Specifically, the Spam and Posting settings sections contains settings that could be related to this.
We also have a few Documentation guide that you might find helpful related to troubleshooting this behavior on your site:
If a post contains a watched word, you would typically see a This post included a Watched Word. along with the post in the review queue, so it’s unlikely any watched word settings would be causing this situation.