Moderation Guide

Moderating a Dead Simple Chat room means four things: releasing messages that are waiting for approval, deleting messages that should not stand, keeping people out who should not be there, and masking words you never want to see. This page is the map — what each tool is for, who uses it, and where the detail lives.

Start with the Moderation Dashboard

Dashboard -> Moderation is the quickest way to moderate, and the place to start. It needs nothing beyond the login you already have, it covers every room on the account from one screen, and it does several things that are not possible from inside a room at all. You do not have to create a moderator or join a room to use it.

Open the Moderation Dashboard guide

There are two places moderation happens. They share the core job — approve, delete, ban — and each can do something the other cannot:

	From your account	Inside the chat room
Who does it	You, at Dashboard -> Moderation	A moderator signed in to the room
Needs	Nothing beyond your dashboard login	A moderator, and their sign-in details
Covers	Every room on the account, from one screen	The one room they are in
Sees	The room's full stored history	What the room has loaded
Reacts	Refreshes on a timer	Instantly, as messages arrive
Detail	Moderation Dashboard	What a moderator can do in the room

Most accounts want both: the console for everyday work and anything spanning rooms, and a moderator in the room for a live session where seconds matter.

Moderating from the dashboard

Dashboard -> Moderation is a moderation console for the account owner. Pick a room from the selector and you get its message history, who is online, who is banned, and its channels, polls and moderators — without joining the room and without a moderator's sign-in details.

Everything a moderator can do in the room, you can do here: approve held messages, delete messages, ban a person, ban an address. On top of that it does four things the room cannot:

• Work through the room's full stored history, not just what the room has loaded.
• Delete every message from one person in one step.
• Post into the room as one of your moderators, including attachments, polls and direct messages.
• Create and remove moderators.

One thing to know before you rely on it for a live event: the console refreshes on a timer rather than streaming, so a busy room updates in the console a moment behind the room itself. Your actions reach the room straight away — it is only the console's own view that lags. For a fast-moving session, put a moderator in the room as well.

See Moderation Dashboard for the whole console, panel by panel.

What a moderator is

You need a moderator for two things: to have someone acting inside the room in real time, and to post into a room from the console, which sends as a moderator rather than as you. If neither applies, the console alone is enough and you can skip to Choosing your controls.

A moderator is someone who can act on other people's messages in a chat room. They are not an account login — they cannot see your dashboard, your billing or your other settings. Their powers stop at the room, or rooms, you assign them to.

There are two ways a moderator can exist on your account, and in the room they behave the same:

	Created where	Signs in with
A member with the Moderator role	A room's Members tab, the Users page, or the member and user REST APIs	An access token
A username and password moderator	The Moderators tab of the Moderation Dashboard, or the Create Moderator API	A generated sign-in email and the password you set

The difference matters in one place. The Moderation Dashboard posts into a room as a moderator, and its Send as Moderator selector lists the moderators assigned to the room you are looking at, plus any assigned to All Chat Rooms. So if you want to answer questions, run polls or send direct messages from the console, make sure at least one moderator covers that room.

Creating Moderators covers both routes step by step.

Assigning a moderator to rooms

A moderator's powers are tied to the rooms you give them, and the two kinds are scoped differently.

• A member with the Moderator role holds it in that room. They can still join your other rooms — they are simply an ordinary participant there — so give them the role in each room they should moderate.
• A username-and-password moderator is assigned to one room, or to All Chat Rooms. Assigned to one room, signing in to any other is refused: You are not the moderator of this chatroom. Assigned to all rooms, they moderate every room on the account, including ones you create later.

How a moderator signs in

Moderators join the room like anyone else, through the join screen, a URL parameter, or the SDK — they just cannot use a unique user identifier. That route is refused for them, in every permission level.

• With an access token. Paste it into the Access Token field on the join screen, pass it as the accessToken URL parameter, or call join with it. This is the route for a member with the Moderator role, and the one to use for a scripted or single-sign-on setup — see SSO using Auth Token and Login Moderator via SSO.
• With the generated email and password. For a username-and-password moderator, sign in by calling join with the email and password, or from the join screen where the email and password fields are offered. Those fields can be hidden — see Hide Elements.

info

The sign-in address generated with a username-and-password moderator, which ends @mod.deadsimplechat.com, is a login name and nothing else. There is no mailbox behind it: mail cannot be delivered to it and nothing is ever sent from it, so hand the moderator their details yourself.

What a moderator can do in the room

A moderator inside the room reacts instantly and needs no dashboard access, which is what makes them worth having for a live session alongside the console. Once signed in, a moderator sees the room as everyone else does, plus these:

Control	Where it is	What it does
Approve	On each held message, in a pre-moderated room	Releases the message to everyone. See Q&A mode
Trash icon	On every message	Deletes it for everyone, along with its attachment, and closes a poll attached to it
ban	Beside each name in the online users list, and on each message	Bans that person from this room and closes their connection
Banned Users	Button at the bottom of the sidebar	Lists who is barred, unbans them, and bans an IP address for this room
Poll button	In the message box, when the room has polls on	Creates a poll. See Polls
Heart and celebration buttons	Above the message box	Sends hearts or confetti across the room — moderators only

Two limits worth knowing. There is no mute and no timeout: the ladder is delete the message, ban the person, ban the address. And an IP ban added in the room covers that one room. For an address you want blocked across every room, use Settings -> Global IP Ban — those entries show in the room's banned list as Globally Banned and can only be lifted from Settings.

Choosing your controls

If you want to	Use
Keep certain words out of every room automatically	Profanity Filter
Let nothing appear until someone has read it	Q&A mode / Pre-moderated chat room
Decide who is allowed into a room in the first place	Chat Room Permission Levels
Deal with a person rather than a message	Ban them from the Moderation Dashboard, or from inside the room
Clear a room out completely	Delete all messages and Eject all Participants on the room's General tab — see Chat Room Settings Reference

These stack. A typical public room runs the Profanity Filter account-wide, uses the Moderation Dashboard for day-to-day work, switches Q&A mode on for sessions that need everything checked first, and adds a moderator in the room when a session is busy enough to need someone reacting live.

Moderating from your own code

Everything above has an equivalent in the SDK or the REST API, so a moderation panel of your own can do the same work:

Approve	approveMessage, approveChannelMessage
Delete	deleteMessage, Delete Chat Room Message, Delete all messages
Ban and unban	banUser, unBanUser, banIp, unBanIp, getBannedUsers
Create moderators	Create Moderator, Create User, Make or Update Member
Hear what happened	Webhook events — message posted, approved and deleted

The SDK methods that act on other people's messages are refused unless the signed-in user is a moderator of that room, so the same rules apply whether the click comes from the room or from your code.

Related

• Creating Moderators — every way to create one, and how they sign in
• Moderation Dashboard — the console at Dashboard -> Moderation
• Q&A mode / Pre-moderated chat room — holding messages for approval
• Profanity Filter — masking words across the account
• Creating and Managing Users and Chat Room Permissions — users, members and roles