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 moderate other user's content. However normally this would be left to me. So, unless I am unavailable for an extended period, it needn't concern you.

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.

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

A Source of Confusion

There is a small catch to this otherwise simple schema.

When you edit an article you will see right at the bottom a heading called "Publishing options." If you click on this you get a series of headings with check boxes like this

X Published
   Promoted to front page
   Sticky at top of lists
X Create new revision
X New revisions in moderation In moderation queue

Shown with an 'X" are the default settings for category reviews.

These default settings should not be changed otherwise some very strange things will happen.