Pre-moderation

Within ControlShift, once a petition has been launched, the petition creator can automatically begin running their campaign. This is the default behavior for ControlShift and it's used by almost all of our customers. We decided on this workflow because it allows petition creators 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 campaigns, petition creators can start gathering support for their cause right away.

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, all petitions must be approved by organization administrators before they are live on the site and before campaign creators can begin sharing the campaign with their friends and families. 

Because of this moderation requirement, after clicking to launch their campaign, the campaign creator is not brought to the manage page of the campaign; instead, they're shown a message explaining that they need to wait for approval before beginning to actively run their campaign.

In addition to this message, petition creators will also receive an email asking them to wait while their petition is reviewed by admins. Once the petition has been approved, they'll receive a second email, which informs them that their petition is live and gives them some tips for running a successful campaign.

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 expressed 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, send us a support email.