Pre-moderation

ControlShift's Default Moderation Strategy 

Within ControlShift, once a petition or event has been launched, the creator can begin recruiting signers or attendees immediately. This is the default moderation strategy for ControlShift, and it's used by almost all of our customers. We decided on this workflow because it allows petition creators and event hosts to run more responsive and agile campaigns. Instead of having to wait hours or days for a staff person to look at and approve their action, petition creators and event hosts can start gathering support for their cause right away.

Pre-Moderation

However, when they first started using ControlShift, a few of our organizations were concerned that the content created on their site would not be within their community guidelines. To allay this fear, we created a feature called Pre-moderation. With pre-moderation enabled, all petitions and events† must be approved by organization administrators before they are live on the site and before their creators can begin sharing the content with their friends and families. 

When pre-moderation is enabled, event and petition creators will not be immediately brought to their leader tools. Instead they'll be shown a message explaining that they need to receive admin approval before they can get started.

In addition to this message, creators will also receive an email confirming the creation of their event or petition and reiterating that they need to await staff approval. Once the petition or event has been approved, they'll receive a second email, which informs them that their petition or event is live and gives them some tips for running a successful action.

Recommendations

In general, we do not recommend using pre-moderation because one of the great aspects of online distributed organizing is its ability to respond quickly to emerging issues. With pre-moderation, the agility that is the hallmark of digital grassroots organizing is tempered.

Additionally, in our experience, while some of our organizations were wary at the thought of allowing campaigns to be created without their express permission, very few have had any problems with inappropriate or defamatory campaigns being created, and to our knowledge, none of our organizations have had any serious issues caused by campaigns created on their site.

Therefore, if you're new to ControlShift, we recommend trying the default workflow for a few months before making a decision. If you do decide that you want to turn on pre-moderation, you can do so by going to your org admin homepage > Settings > Options > Moderation.

† Regardless of whether pre-moderation is enabled or not, petitions and events sponsored by a local group do not require moderation. These events and petitions are created by already-approved local group leaders only.