[development] Moderation bit behavior

[Laura Scott]

I don't see it announced on this list, so I'll just note that  
pwolanin just announced (to the docs list) a contrib module to handle  
workflow issues we've been discussing on the docs list, including  
some of the concerns about moderation, publication and node_access.

http://drupal.org/project/content_moderator

> This module allows you to give a "moderate nodes" permission to a  
> user role. Users with this permission may see a list of content  
> (restriced using the node access table so they cannot see content  
> they are normally prohibited) at /admin/content_moderator. Within  
> this list they can either approve posts to move them out of  
> moderation, or put them into moderation to remove them from public  
> view.
>
> Also, uses hook_nodeapi to prevent nodes from going back into  
> moderation (if that's their default setting) when edited by a user  
> with this permission.
>
> A block is also made available to show the most recent ten posts in  
> the moderation queue.
>
> This module is intended to be useful for a site like Drupal.org  
> which has a handbook where all users can add book pages, but those  
> pages go into the moderation queue. This modules allows the work of  
> reviewing and approving those posts to be delegated to additional  
> users without giving out the all-powerful "administer nodes"  
> permission.


-Laura



On Jul 4, 2006, at 10:53 AM, Dries Buytaert wrote:

>
> On 04 Jul 2006, at 17:11, Neil Drumm wrote:
>> Right now we have an inconsistency with our moderation bit. Is it
>> supposed to control the visibility of posts, or is that solely  
>> dependent
>> on status? 13 queries say it should have an effect and /up to/ 38
>> queries say no.
>>
>> The issue for this is over at http://drupal.org/node/71730.
>>
>> I think the underlying problem may be that published (status) is not
>> mutually exclusive with moderation.
>
> The original context of the moderate bit is the queue.module.  With  
> the queue.module, nodes that have both the moderate and published  
> bit set were shown to authenticated users, but not to anonymous  
> users.  Nowadays we have node-level permission, something which  
> wasn't avaiable when I originally wrote the queue.module.  If the  
> same can be achieved with a node-level permission module (and I  
> think it can), it is probably best to take the moderation bit  
> behind the barn, and to shoot it through the head.  It's been a  
> pain for years.  :-)
>
> Taking out the moderation bit should be both easy, fun and  
> rewarding.  SQL queries get less expensive, the user experience is  
> likely to get better, and the code becomes easier to grok.
>
> Maybe check with the workflow people; I believe they had some  
> concrete suggestions about this.  Either way, the workflow people  
> figured out a mechanism to build arbitrary workflows with complex  
> transition schemes, and I'm pretty sure they don't need the  
> moderate bit for that.  The workflow module is the way forward.
>
> --
> Dries Buytaert  ::  http://www.buytaert.net/
>