| Moderators help take some of the burden off of managing the forums (assuming, that is, that you're not the only moderator). Moderators generally make sure that the forums are being used appropriately, deleting inappropriate messages, and moving messages, if necessary, into a more appropriate forum. In the next topic, I show you how to make a user into a moderator, but keep in mind that, as the site administrator, you're automatically considered a moderator in the Forums module. Generally, only moderators have the ability to post stickies and announcements, two tasks I described in the previous topic. Moderators' other primary capabilities come from a set of four icons shown at the bottom of each topic. You can see them in Figure 58.1, underneath the link Watch This Topic for Replies. Keeping in mind that some PHP-Nuke themes replace these icons (so they might look a bit different on your site), here's what they do: The X icon deletes the entire topic, including the original post and all replies. The Arrow icon moves the topic into a different forum. When doing so, you have the option to leave a shadow topic behind in the original forum. The shadow topic shows up in the original forum's topic lists, as shown in Figure 58.2 (with the phrase "Moved" in the title), but it links to the topic in its new location. The purpose of the shadow is to help users who've been posting to the topic find it in its new location. Figure 58.2. Moving a topic and leaving a shadow topic behind. 
The Lock icon locks the topic, preventing future replies but leaving the topic in-place as a read-only reference for users. The Broken icon splits a topic. Sometimes topics will grow too large to read easily, or they'll diverge from their original subject. The split option allows a moderator to create a new topic, in a different forum or the same forum. The split topic can contain only selected posts from the original topic (thus moving off-topic posts into a new topic with an appropriate title), or the split can start at a specific post and contain all subsequent posts (thus moving posts that went off on a tangent).
Figure 58.1. Moderator options are shown below each topic. 
Additional, per-post moderator options are available in the header of each posting. There are three: An Edit button, which allows a moderator to edit a post. This is often done to remove or tone down objectionable content. An X button, which deletes just that post, leaving the remainder of the topic intact. An IP button, which displays the IP address of the person who posted the message. The IP display actually lists the total number of posts from that IP address and a list of all users who have been seen using that IP address. It's not unusual for multiple users to be associated with a single IP address; services like America Online frequently aggregate their users behind a relatively small pool of IP addresses. One cool option is the Look Up IP Address link shown next to each listed address: This option resolves the IP address and gives you some clue to who that address belongs to; the owner will generally be an Internet service provider (ISP) like a phone company, a cable company, America Online, Earthlink, or similar entity.
Moderatorsincluding youhave some great abilities to keep your forums organized. Try recruiting some trustworthy, active users from your site to be moderators. By moving topics or splitting them as appropriate, your forums will remain better organized, easier to read, and easier to use, all of which encourage your users to use the forums more frequently.  | Sidebar . FAQWhy is moderating necessary? Sometimes it isn't. If your users are well behaved and follow your rules, you might never need to use your moderating powers. On the other hand, moderating is sometimes needed to remove inappropriate posts, move posts that have gone off-track into a more appropriate forum, and so forth. How many moderators can I have? As many as you want. Some especially large, busy sites may have an assigned or volunteer moderator for each forum, allowing one person to keep on top of that forum to make sure it remains organized and that the discussion stays on-track. |
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