Moderation and Revision Explained

There are two separate edit approval processes in the Drupal CMS used to run this site: Moderation, and Revision Control. These are handled by separate modules and in slightly different ways:

1. Moderation

New content requires moderation approval before it is published.

Moderation only applies to new articles. Consequently editors will rarely have to worry about moderation unless they are creating a totally new software category or writing a new article or tutorial.

Even then, new content created by category editors does not need moderation approval. Because they are trusted users their content is automatically approved.

Content created by registered site visitors does need moderation approval however and articles contributed by such users will not appear until approved.

All category editors can have moderation rights and can approve any content awaiting content.  However approving content contributed by site users is normally left to Gizmo and Peter.

In other words moderation is more or less irrelevant to category editors.

Revision Control

Every time you change an article you create a new revision.

New revisions are not automatically published. That includes revisions by category editors of their own articles.

To publish a new revision you need to go to the revisions page for the article and "Revert" the most recent revision.

Now I know it doesn't make send linguistically to "revert" forward in time but that folks, is the way it is.

Category editors have the authority to revert revisions forwards or backwards in time. Normal users cannot revert at all.

Category editors can also revert other editors revisions - not just their own. Normally you would not revert another editor's review just your own.

In summary, revision control is vitally important to category editors unlike moderation, which is largely irrelevant.