Moderating Community Content moderating-community-content

Overview overview

Community content, also known as user-generated content (UGC), is created when a member (signed in site visitor) posts content from a published community site through interaction with one of the following community components :

Moderation of UGC is useful for recognizing positive contributions and limiting negative ones (such as spam and abusive language). UGC can be moderated from several environments:

Moderation Actions moderation-actions

The actions which can be performed on posted content (UGC) varies depending on the user identity and the environment. The table below uses the following terminology to describe the various roles according to user identity :

Edit / Delete edit-delete

After a post has been made, it may be edited or deleted by the creator, an administrator, or community moderator.

When UGC is deleted, it is removed from the repository and may not be recovered.

Cut cut

It is possible for an administrator or community moderator to move one or more forum topics or QnA questions from one location to another. This includes from one community site to another community site, provided the same member has moderation privileges on both sites.

By selecting the Cut action, the content is copied to a clipboard. Multiple posts may be copied and moved as a group to the new location.

At the other location, when content is present in the clipboard, a Paste button is visible next to New Post with a number identifying the number of posts that will be pasted. The Paste button includes an option to clear the clipboard instead of pasting.

Deny deny

A moderator may disallow UGC to remain visible on the published site. To administrators and community moderators, the post is still available and is annotated as spam.

Close / Reopen close-reopen

The Close action operates on the entire thread of conversation (a forum topic or the initial comment) and it includes all subsequent posts or replies.

When closed, not only are no further replies possible, no moderation actions are allowed either.

To perform any operations, the topic or comment must be Reopened.

The Close/Reopen action may be taken by administrators or community moderators.

Flag / Unflag flag-unflag

Flagging is a means for any signed-in member, except for the creator of the content, to indicate there is an issue with the content of a post. Once flagged, an unflag icon appears, allowing the same member to unflag the content.

In-context moderation can be configured to allow members to select a reason when flagging a post. The list of selectable flag reasons is configurable including whether a custom reason can be entered. The flag reason is saved with the UGC but the reason does not trigger any particular action. Only the number of flags triggers a notification. Flagged content is annotated as such, so that moderators may act on it.

The system tracks all the flags, who flagged, and the flag reason and sends an event when the threshold has been reached. If the UGC is Allowed by a community moderator, these flags are archived. After allowing and archiving, if there are subsequent flaggings, they would be archived as if there had been no previous flaggings.

Allow allow

The Allow action is an option for UGC that has been Flagged, Denied, or has not been approved in a pre-moderated system. The Allow action clears any flagged or denied/spam status present and archives any flagged data.

Common Moderation Concepts common-moderation-concepts

Premoderation premoderation

When UGC is premoderated, the post does not appear on the published site until approved by a moderation action. During creation of a community site, checking the box Content is Premoderated enables premoderation for the entire site. When components are placed on a page, components which support moderation can be configured for premoderation using a setting in their edit dialog:

Spam Detection spam-detection

Spam detection is an auto-moderation functionality, which filters out undesirable pieces of submitted user-generated content by marking them as spam. Once enabled, it identifies whether a user-generated content is spam or not based on a pre-configured collection of spam words. The default spam words are provided at

/libs/settings/community/sites/moderation/spamdetector-conf/profiles/spam_words.txt.

However, to customize or extend the default spam words, create a set of words in the /apps directory following the structure of the default spam words with overlay.

A user-generated post (across all the content types, for example, blogs, forums, and comments) containing spam words is marked with the text “This post was classified as spam” above the post.

Moderator can see such a post and mark the same to allow or deny from appearing on the site. Moderation actions on these posts can be performed either in-context or through bulk moderation UI.

To enable spam detection engine, follow these steps:

Sentiment sentiment

Sentiment is calculated based on the number of positive and negative keywords (watchwords) present in a post (UGC).

The sentiment analysis uses a set of pre-configured rules and calculates the sentiment of the UGC. The default rules are at /libs/cq/workflow/components/workflow/social/sentiments/rules.

The value the rules generate are from 1 (all negative, no positive words) to 10 (all positive, no negative words). A sentiment value of 5 is a neutral sentiment and is the default.

The rules defined in the /libs component are:

To overwrite or add rules, create a set of rules in the /apps directory following the structure of the default rules. Edit the sentiment configuration so you can identify the location of the rules.

Once analyzed, the sentiment is stored with the UGC.

From the bulk moderation console, it is possible to filter and view UGC based on whether the sentiment is negative, neutral, or positive.

Watchwords watchwords

AEM Communities provides a watchword analyzer as a step in the process to evaluate sentiment. The contribution to the sentiment value provided by watchwords is due to a comparison of negative and positive watchwords used in the posted content, and forbidden words.

Configure Sentiment and Watchwords configure-sentiment-and-watchwords

The list of positive and negative watchwords can be customized as can be the sentiment rules.

The default list of watchwords may be entered as properties of a node in the repository, similar to the default or by overriding the default by configuring the OSGi service sentimentprocess.name with the list of words.

The sentimentprocess.name may also be modified to reference the location of a custom set of sentiment rules.

To configure sentiment and watchwords:

Following is an example of a custom entry for the default watchwords, when Explicit Path to Watchwords Node is set to /libs/settings/community/watchwords/default.

Moderator Permissions moderator-permissions

The following permissions, when assigned to the same resource, are collectively referred to as moderator permissions: