Collect and moderate suggestions

The suggestions board gives members a place to post ideas for your community, like a new job, a rule change or a website feature, and vote on each other's. Your staff can see what's popular, give each idea a status like Planned or Declined, and reply in public so everyone knows where things stand.

Members who post or follow a suggestion are told when its status changes or staff reply, so you don't have to chase people up.

Before you start#

• The Community Site module needs to be installed.
• To moderate suggestions and change their settings you need to be the owner or an administrator, or have a role with Moderate suggestions: set statuses, reply, lock, merge and delete or Edit the community site: pages, navigation and branding.

Turn on the board#

1. Open your control panel and click Suggestions in the left sidebar, under Community Site.
2. Click the Statuses, categories and settings tab.
3. Under Settings, tick Suggestions page on the site. It's on by default.
4. Choose the rest of the settings (see below).
5. Click Save settings.

The board is at your site's address with /suggestions on the end. To add it to your header, open Navigation, click Add link, choose Built-in page and then Suggestions, and click Save navigation.

What members do#

On the board, members can:

• Click New suggestion, give it a Title (up to 160 characters), add Details and pick a Category, then click Post suggestion. They follow their own suggestion automatically.
• Vote up or down (or only up). Clicking the same vote again takes it back.
• Follow a suggestion to hear when it changes.
• Comment, if comments are on, and delete their own comments.
• Sort the board by Top, New or Trending (most up votes in the last 7 days), and filter by status and category.

Members can't edit or delete a suggestion once it's posted. Ask them to comment instead, or delete it for them.

Moderate a suggestion#

1. Click Suggestions in the sidebar. The Suggestions tab lists every suggestion, newest first, with its status, category, score and comment count.
2. Use the filters to find what needs attention. No staff reply shows ones you haven't answered yet. You can search by title, or type a number like 12 or #12 to find one suggestion. Suggestions are numbered from 1 in your community, and the number shows next to each one.
3. Click a suggestion to open it.
4. Under Status and response, choose a Status and Category.
5. Optionally write a Public response. It's shown under the suggestion on your site, with who replied.
6. Click Save.

The author and everyone following it are told when the status changes or you reply. Clearing the response removes it from the site.

You can also reply as a member of staff in the comments on your site. Staff comments are marked Staff, and staff can delete anyone's comment there. Signed-in staff see Moderate in the panel on the suggestion's page on your site.

Lock a suggestion#

Click Lock voting and comments. Nobody can vote or comment until you click Unlock. The suggestion still shows on the board, marked Locked.

Merge a duplicate#

1. Open the duplicate.
2. Under Merge into suggestion #, type the number of the suggestion to keep.
3. Click Merge and confirm.

Votes, comments and followers move across to the one you keep. If someone voted on both, their vote on the one you keep stays. The author of the duplicate starts following the one you keep. Anyone who opens the old suggestion is sent to the new one.

Delete a suggestion#

Click Delete and confirm. The suggestion, its votes and comments are gone for good.

Statuses and categories#

You start with five statuses (Under review, Planned, In progress, Done and Declined) and three categories (Gameplay, Website and Discord). Change them on the Statuses, categories and settings tab.

Each status has a meaning: Open, Planned, In progress, Done or Declined. New suggestions start in the first status that means Open. A Done status makes the update to the author a good-news notification, and Declined a bad-news one.

To add one, type a name, pick a colour (and for statuses, a meaning), and click Add. To change or delete one, click it in the list, then click Save or Delete.

Deleting a status or category doesn't delete any suggestions. They stay, without a status or category.

Something not working?#

The board says "Page not found". Suggestions page on the site is turned off. The Suggestions tab in your control panel also says "The Suggestions page is switched off, so members can't see it."

Visitors see "Suggestions are for members". Who can read them is set to Anyone signed in. They need to sign in to read the board.

"There's no suggestion with that number to merge into." The number doesn't exist in your community, or that suggestion has already been merged into another.

"It can't be merged into itself." You typed the suggestion's own number. Type the one you want to keep.

"There is already a category with that name." Category names have to be different.

Members can't comment. Check Comments on suggestions is ticked, and that the suggestion isn't locked. Locked suggestions say "This suggestion is locked, so it can't take new comments."

New suggestions aren't posting to Discord. Pick a channel under Post new suggestions to Discord and save. The bot needs to be in the server and able to post there.