How to Moderate Questions

Navigate to the question that needs moderation and click the Options link in the top-right corner.

Select Moderate from the drop-down menu.

This option will only be available to users with reputation over 100 points, as well as privileged site users.

Five community user votes are required for the question to be removed as "spam/offensive."

To remove a question as "spam/offensive," click on the Remove as spam/offensive button.

This deletes the post and docks the author's reputation 100 points.

This should be used as a last resort. Reputation is too hard to come by to punish someone for a one-time or innocent mistake.

Five community user votes are required for the question to be removed as "not related."

To remove a question as "not related," click on the Remove as not related button.

This deletes the question, but it does not remove reputation from the asker. If a new question is off-topic, just vote to remove it.

It is best to get these out of the way of relevant questions as quickly as possible.

Three community user votes are required for the question to be deemed "archive as not answerable."

To remove a question as "not answerable," click on the Remove as not answerable button.

Archived questions do not show up on any index page, but they do appear on a member's profile. If the question is edited, it will be reopened.

Controversial questions can be locked to stop all additional edits.

To lock a post, click on the Lock post button.

Only a site admins can lock a question.

A locked question cannot be edited, but its answers can still be edited.

Three community user votes are required for the question to be deemed "merge as a duplicate."

To merge a question as a duplicate, click on the Merge as duplicate button.

Duplicate questions are questions that ask the same thing and have the exact same answer.

Often two questions are very similar, but the person asking the second question has not searched for or found the first question.

The second person has a valid question, so we don't want to attack them for not understanding the system.

Marking the second question as a duplicate automatically gives it all the answers from the first question.

In this case, you must be able to accurately judge whether a question is truly an exact duplicate.

If you have Moderator or Administrator privileges for the site, you will see the Force vote to pass? checkbox under the moderation options.

To force a vote to pass, click the Force vote to pass? checkbox.

Checking this box means that you are using your privileges to bypass additional votes required to complete your moderation selection.