The Road to "Dublin": All things in Moderation

This post continues our series of articles on our upcoming "Dublin" release. Unlike our other releases, "Dublin" will be released throughout these next two weeks, starting later today. We’ll try to have each article precede the actual release of the feature, though it is quite likely that more features will be released before we can write about them.

The topic of discussion today really is, well, "Discussion." We released the Communities into the wild a little more than a month ago as part of our massive "Cork" release. What we didn't provide, at the time, was a moderation package for the Communities. With "Dublin," however, Communities are about to get a few features to help manage growth to large sizes. You, being the person who established a community, could already set up other admins, but aside from purchasing achievements and uploading a photo, you couldn't do much. Now, as the person who established the community you will be able to do the following:

* Set up Moderators: From the "Members" list, choose to make anyone a "Mod." Please note that Mods cannot upload a photo, purchase Achievements or Approve New Members to a personal private community. Those are still "Admin Only" functions.

* Remove Posts: Admins and Mods will be able to remove any thread from the Discussion area.

* Block Posting: Admins and Mods will be able to block any person from posting in the Discussion area, as well as reverse these blocks at any time.

* Pin a post: Admins and Mods will be able to choose up to six posts to "Pin" to the top of the Discussion area so that they don't get lost.

In addition, we've fixed up some of the more common complaints about Communities. The fixes include:

* Ability to expand the list of Discussion threads beyond the first page
* Ability to page through the Members list
* Allow hard returns and new lines to be displayed in a thread

All of the above will be available to Personal Private Communities on the release of "Dublin". In the case of official City and Interest/Brand Communities, we're working through getting all the rules set up to invite moderators to start overseeing these communities!

We'll let you all know when that will happen post-"Dublin"!