Why do some posts get queued up for approval by moderators, and others get published straight away? Seems a bit inconsistent. Ones that end up being queued up can take hours to appear on the Forum.
I believe it is due to spam checking, so some posts must trigger checking. I read somewhere that the forum was inundated at some point so more posts are subject to checking now.
One of the issues we face is that when somebody tries to post & it isn’t published, they often attempt to post again. All the attempted posts wind up in the moderation queue, and then ALL those attempts get mixed up with the spam.
Sometimes, one post can apear up to 9 times in the queue. That will be alongside another multiple post of about 4 times…and another that appears 12 times.
Of course, this isn’t the fault of the poster- and is an indication of their huge frustration.
If myself or the moderators look away for as much as 5 minutes, one can return to a 40 spam posts and 23 multiple posts from the same person, each one with a slightly different title and message, but essentially the same post.
Of course, it would easier for me and the long suffering mods if we just published ALL the posts that aren’t spam, even if they are just repeats from the same person, on the same subject.
Unfortunately that would be very confusing for the forum users.
If, for example a new user starts a thread with, ‘Does anybody else take Tysabri?’ and it doesn’t get published, they might then start another thread asking
‘Is Tysabri a good idea?’ (which then waits to get moderated) then they try again, with another thread asking,
‘Tysabri, anyone?’
Essentially it’s the same question, just asked in different ways usually in a very short time frame.
We COULD publish all of them, which would be much easier for us, but then which one would you answer?
It would be bad for the person asking the question, because they would then have to check the responses to perhaps six different threads. Not a nice expereince for a new member and quite irritating for everyone on the forum, who would then be asking, us and them- why are you asking the same thing on so many threads?
So, we sift and sort, delete and publish, check the content of each post, check how long they’ve been a member.
Also, when we ‘publish’ a post- it can take 10-15 minutes to appear, so it’s hard to confidently delete the other multiple posts, because one wants to check it’s ‘live’ before deleting all the others.
That’s just one of the reasons why it can be a bit inconsistent.
I have no doubt that while I’ve been typing this response, there will be an array of spam and unpublished posts that have stacked up and now require swift attention. Once I’ve sorted those, I’ll return and explain some of the other reasons why the publishing can appear inconsistent.
Once again, I’m very sorry for any inconveneience and any irritation caused. I’ll also take this opportunity (and liberty) to also apologise on behalf of the other moderators (who I cannot praise and than enough), that we aren’t more efficient in working through this issue. I can assure you, it’s quite upsetting for us that we can’t deliver the service and standards that we would like to adhere to.
I hope that goes some way to explaining our predicament
Cheers
Stewart (admin)
Well it`s good to know you our doing your best to protect us from nasties.
Thankyou very much.
pollx