Moderation Suggestion for 3.0

[Mark Tay]

We coded an extra moderation option into our version of IPB 2.3 which was a simple change but allowed the following:

We wanted members to be able to have their posts appear immediately on the forum for all to see but the moderation team would still be able to moderate these items. Therefore we added a new database field called 'moderated' to ibf_posts. When a post was made/edited by a non-admin/moderator then this flag would be set to 0, otherwise set to 1.
Then the topics/post page would look at this flag and if it was 0 then those posts would have a coloured background only shown to admin/moderators. It also added a 'approve' and 'hide' option so that moderators could choose to approve that post (so the flag was set to 1) or hide it (where that post was made invisible). We also created a summary page of all non-approved posts so moderators could approve them all in one.
We've found this very useful as allowed moderation without putting off users becasue they had to wait before their question was shown to the public. It has meant however that every time we upgrade the forums we have to put our changes back in, which is a bit of pain.

Think this is a good suggestion?

[blackfalcon]

This may work, however, IPB likes to get as close to but not over step the feature overloaded line. Because moderators can already read and moderate threads, as moderated threads are still found in the forums, just invisible to members this is pointless, and even with a moderated post control panel, would cross the feature overload line.

[Mark Tay]

Because moderators can already read and moderate threads, as moderated threads are still found in the forums, just invisible to members this is pointless

Why is it pointless? It's not the same as moderating threads which are invisible to members. I know a lot of people, myself included, where if I post on a forum and it says i have to wait for moderation before my post is shown I'll just go somewhere else to ask the same question where I know I'll get a quicker response. We're one of the top technology companys in the world and keeping people using our official support forums is very important to us.