Moderating your Outpost

You’re a moderator on this Outpost if any of these are true:

• You own the Outpost.
• You have a role in the Outpost’s chat with the Manage messages or Administrator permission.

If so, a Moderation chip appears in your Outpost header next to Follow and Settings. Tap it to open the queue.

What’s in the queue

The Outpost moderation queue at /app/outposts/<slug>/moderation pulls reports from three surfaces into one stream:

• Posts — anything reported via the ⋯ → Report post menu.
• Comments — anything reported via the flag icon on a comment.
• Chat messages — anything reported from a channel in your Outpost’s chat.

Each row shows: a content preview, the report category and reason, when it was filed, and the action buttons.

Triaging a report

You have three actions on every open report:

1. Dismiss — close the report with no action. Use when the report is mistaken, retaliatory, or the content is fine on review.
2. Delete — remove the offending content and close the report. A copy is kept for the record; the content disappears from the feed / chat / wherever it lived.
3. Escalate — flag the report for PostRoll staff review. Use this when:
   • The report involves illegal content (CSAM, doxxing, fraud, etc.).
   • It’s a personal conflict you’re part of and shouldn’t decide.
   • It needs platform-wide judgement (a repeat offender across multiple Outposts, a serious safety issue, anything beyond your Outpost’s purview).

When you click Escalate you’ll be asked for a short note explaining why — PostRoll staff see this verbatim as context. The report stays in your queue too with an escalated badge so you can follow up.

Tip

Escalation isn’t a hot potato — it’s a signal that PostRoll judgement is needed. If you can resolve a report yourself, do. Escalating everything dilutes the signal and slows down the cases that genuinely need staff attention.

Resolved + Dismissed views

Toggle the queue header from Open to Resolved or Dismissed to review previously-actioned reports. Helpful for spotting patterns — “this user has been reported 5 times this month, all dismissed”.

What gets audited

Every action you take (dismiss / delete / escalate) is recorded in your Outpost’s moderation audit log: who acted, what they did, when, and any note they left.

Owners and moderators can browse the full log at Outpost admin → Audit. The page lists every recent action with a filter chip strip (deletes, dismisses, suspensions, etc.), each row showing the moderator’s avatar, the action label, the target id, and the reason note where one was provided.

Adding a moderator

Moderation rights piggyback on your Outpost’s chat roles:

1. Open your Outpost, click the Admin tab, then pick Roles & permissions.
2. Either pick an existing role or create a new one (e.g. “Mod”).
3. Enable Manage messages (and optionally Administrator for full powers).
4. Assign the role to the member you want to make a mod.

They’ll see the Moderation chip in the Outpost header on their next visit.

What PostRoll staff see

Staff have a separate queue at /admin/moderation that defaults to escalated reports only — your escalations land there. Staff can also toggle into All reports mode for oversight (auditing, spotting patterns) but day-to-day they focus on escalations.

Staff resolutions follow the same dismiss/delete model. Once they close a report you’ll see it move into your Resolved or Dismissed view.

Moderating people, not just posts

The report queue is about content. Removing and banning happen in Steward → Members, and the two are different actions with different consequences.

Remove deletes someone’s membership. Their posts, comments and chat messages stay up. They can rejoin under whatever your Who can join setting is — so on an open Outpost, removing somebody is a pause, not a door.

Ban deletes their membership and every role they held, and blocks every route back in: the Join button, an invite link, and an approved join request all refuse. It doesn’t touch what they wrote — delete that separately if it’s the problem.

Both are gated twice: you need the permission, and you can only act on someone whose highest role sits below your own. A moderator can’t remove the owner, and can’t ban another moderator ranked above them.

Unbanning

The banned list lives in Steward → Members. Lifting a ban lets them join again — it doesn’t put them back in. Coming back is their decision to make, so they’ll need to join, ask, or use an invite as normal.

Note

Approving a join request from a banned person is refused rather than quietly working, so un-banning stays something you did on purpose.

Blocking is not banning

If a member blocks another member, that’s a personal safety setting between the two of them and nothing to do with your Outpost. You won’t see it and it doesn’t affect membership. Banning is the community-level action, and it’s yours.

Edge case: I dismissed something I shouldn’t have

The audit log records every action. Email hello@postroll.app and we’ll review. For now there’s no in-app “undo” — being deliberate is the safety mechanism.

Related

• Reporting content — what members see
• Joining an Outpost — the door, and approving requests
• Managing your Outpost