Maya runs Acme Café, and its board asks one question: "What would make your visit to Acme Café better?" For the first few weeks she read every idea herself on Monday mornings. Then the board got busier, and new ideas started to wait in the review queue for days.
The people who wrote them noticed. That is usually the sign to bring someone in.
When to bring someone in#
A board feels alive when ideas are published soon after they are written and someone answers them. A few signs that one person is no longer enough:
- Suggestions wait in the review queue for more than a few days.
- Questions in the comments go unanswered.
- You are away for a week and the board stops moving.
Maya asked Sam, the barista who hears most of the ideas at the counter anyway. He knows the regulars and the menu, and he can tell a real idea from a complaint about a cold flat white.
Invite by email#
Moderators are invited one board at a time, from the board's Team page. Maya typed Sam's email address and sent the invitation.
A few things worth knowing about the invitation:
- It is for this board only. Sam can moderate Café ideas, not the café's other boards. To add him to another board, invite him from that board's Team page too.
- The link works once and lasts 7 days. If Sam misses it, Maya can resend it, which starts the 7 days again and turns off the old link. She can also revoke it while it is open.
- Sam needs no account yet. The invitation is tied to his email address, not to an existing account.
What Sam sees#
Sam gets an email that says who invited him, to which board and account, as what, and until when the invitation is open.
The button opens the invitation page. Because Sam was not signed in, the page offers to send him a sign-in link to the invited address and bring him back. One click on that link, one more on Accept invitation, and he is a moderator.
If someone opens the invitation while signed in with a different address, the page says so and asks them to log out first. An invitation only ever works for the address it was sent to.
What moderators can do#
Sam's home page now shows what needs him: the ideas waiting for review on Café ideas, with a button that goes straight to the queue. The board also appears under Moderating in the sidebar.
On the boards they moderate, moderators can:
- Review the queue: publish a suggestion, request changes with private feedback, or reject it with a reason (duplicate, out of scope, against the guidelines, or another reason).
- Set statuses with a short public explanation, and use the status board to see every published idea by status.
- Hide and restore ideas and comments.
- Set a participant's level to Trusted, Normal or Blocked, and remove a person's votes from the board when they look wrong.
- Merge duplicate ideas, keeping every supporter.
- Write the board's announcement.
- See the board's insights and preview the board as visitors see it.
- Answer in the comments. Their comments carry a Team badge.
They also get the team's notifications: new suggestions waiting, ideas sent back for review, and requests to correct a published idea.
What stays with the owner#
Some things are for the owner only:
- The board's settings, and archiving or deleting it.
- The team: inviting, resending, revoking and removing moderators.
- Exports, billing and the account itself.
One voice for the team#
To the people who write ideas, the team speaks as one. An author never sees which moderator published, rejected or asked for changes: the feedback comes from the account. A status explanation appears as a note from the team, not under anyone's name.
Inside the team, it is clear who did what. A hidden idea says who hid it, and the announcement says who wrote it. That makes it easy to ask "why did we hide this?" without anyone having to defend themselves in public.
Seats on each plan#
Moderators come with the paid plans:
- Free: no moderators. You review everything yourself.
- Plus: 3 moderator seats, shared across all the boards in the account. Each person counts once, however many boards they moderate, and an open invitation holds a seat until it is accepted or revoked.
- Pro: as many moderators as you need.
Acme Café is on Plus, so Sam uses one of its three seats. If the café ever moved to a plan with fewer seats, the extra moderators would be paused rather than removed, and they would come back on an upgrade.
When someone leaves the team, the owner removes them from the Team page and their access ends right away. What they did stays on the board: published ideas stay published, and the team can still see who hid what.
See what each plan includes on the pricing page. When Sam starts saying no to ideas, how to decline an idea and keep people's trust is a good next read, and collect feedback in one place covers how a team keeps duplicates from splitting the votes.
