Moderation

Because the system is open to everyone, it is possible that some content is added to the system which is not suitable. In this case the content has to be hidden from the website. The reason for hiding the content can be that it is illegal, insulting, or spam. Content hiding is done through moderation.

Moderation always starts from a participant's notification. The moderation process is built to work as a so called after-moderation, which means that the added content is instantly added to the website, but it can be hidden later, if it does not follow the system's guidelines. The process works for the two following reasons:

• By allowing participants to add content to the site, they assume that there is not a long delay adding the content. For example in Facebook or Twitter, where people can freely share content, the people assume that their content is instantly for others to read.
• The process as a whole is more transparent when the added content is published instantly. This allows people to for example take screenshots and the added content will stay in particular service's cache. This reduces the possibilities of an official (for example a city or municipality) to censor the content so it matches their political agendas.

Because of these reasons every moderation requires a notification from a participant. The notification can also be done by an admin if some other user has not done it before. Content reporting is described more in depth in the section "Reporting content to moderators". At this point it is possible to report comments and proposals in the system.

When the content has been reported, it appears in the moderation -view. Moderation for each subject is typical which means that in a specific subject you can only see its related moderations. In this context subject is used to describe a process or an assembly, under which users can add content. In this documentation as an example moderation of a process was used. The same documentation can be applied to assemblies.

A moderation of process is done in the section "Moderation". This is found in the process's bottom dropdown selection, when a single process has been selected to be managed.

When selecting the Moderation section, the system shows all the reported content which is still on the website by default. For access to already moderated and hidden content you can choose "Hidden" from the whole list's actions. You can also find a "Not hidden" link, which shows the active moderations which are waiting to be moderated.

Moderated content can be managed with their action buttons. The following action buttons can be found for moderated content:

• Unreport - This button deletes the report made by a user as unnecessary. Which leaves the content shown on the website. If the content has previously been hidden already, deleting the report returns it back to the website as shown, but leaves it on the active moderations page, if you press it again, it will dissappear from the view.
• Hide - This button hides the content from the page, and moves the report to the hidden section list. Only content that is shown can be hidden, so this button is not shown on already hidden content.