Welcome to the community of moderators!

One of the main tasks of a moderator is to delete bad answers and questions or asking for their
correction. Please read this tutorial carefully. At the end, if you have any questions, dont hesitate to
send a message to the Administrator.

Moderator's panel
After the Administrator gives you the moderator's rank, after logging in again you will see two
columns: Statistics and Moderator's panel. You will see the Moderator's panel on the right side on
the main page.

In order to see both columns you have to enter your profile page
(they appear on the left side).
Statistics show the number of daily moderations, yours and those of other moderators in total,
and the ranking of moderators.
Moderator's panel:
1. Ask for correction you can see the content that is reported for correction: the one that
has already been checked and the one that is still waiting for correction
2. Moderating it's the part of the panel that you will use most. It has a list with many
functions for moderators. The most important ones are:
List of moderators you can see the group of moderators here. Among them, you'll see
programmers and moderators. The programmers' accounts are for the Brainly IT team, they can
run tests and other actions that improve the portal. You can also see accounts run by the
Administration, like TestMod, ModeratorTest, etc, used also for tests.

Moderate all it's the most important section for you. It's the first window you should open when
starting the moderation. You can see the reported content there (spam, copy, incorrect answer,
swear words etc.). Your task is to revise this content regularly and moderate it.
Holidays you can mark the days that you will not be able to moderate for a longer period of time
(e.g. a trip, illness, technical issues etc.).
That tab is very important this way we can avoid leaving the portal without supervision.
In order to enter your holidays date, click on Add holidays button. You'll see this:

Moderate all
On the top of each reported question/answer you can see a filter to choose the category and
reason of reporting.

You can also see 5 important symbols that help the moderators: The first one is determining if it's a
question (Q) or an answer (A). The second one shows the school level: elementary, middle
(if applicable) or high school. The next one is the subject icon next to the identification numbers of
the content; when clicking on them you'll go directly to the question page.
Below you can see two user names: the orange one is the reported user, and in blue you can see
the reporting user.
The most important is the green emblem on the top of each question on the right. You have to click
it in order to start the moderation. After clicking it, you'll see a top-layer (a pop-up window) with the
reported content.
The reported content is in pink, you can also see the rest of the answers and comments. You can
delete, ask for correction, give warning or confirm the content (when you decide it was genuine).

Moderation time limit

In order to avoid the situation when 2 or more moderators are checking the same content, there is
a time limit for moderation. The green emblem means that the content is available to take (later
you can see the clock counting your time left).

When you pick the content to moderate, it will turn pink so that other moderators know that
someone is working on it at the moment. If for some reason you don't want or can't moderate it,
just click the closing cross in the top right corner without taking any other actions other
moderators will see it again. If you need more than 5 minutes to moderate, you can prolong it
(right top corner).

REMEMBER!
You don't have to hurry when moderating, you can prolong the time as many times as you need.
You can also see who and why had reported something:
The question has been reported by ......., we can also see their rank.
In the brackets we can see:
T (Total) the total number of reported content by this user, e.g. T= 1.
W (Wrong) the total number of wrongly reported content by this user, e.g. W=3

If the reported content is genuine, you should click 'confirm'. If it's wrong (spam, incorrect answer,
copy etc.), you should click 'delete' or 'ask for correction' if it has minor errors. Always remember to
give the explanation if you are deleting they should know why it was deleted and learn what they
can and cannot do.

If you choose the ask for correction option, the user will have 24h to correct it. If they dont do it,
the content will be automatically deleted. In the For correction panel you'll see that this content will
change from waiting for correction to corrected.

The moderator has to check if the user had corrected it properly. If not, you can ask for correction
again or delete it. If it's ok now, you should click 'confirm'.

Some guidelines on how to use ask for correction button:

1. We use it only for minor errors, normally only for sciences like Maths, Physics etc.
2. We shouldn't choose this option when the answer is completely wrong.
3. For subjects like social sciences, we should use this option only in cases of spelling and
linguistic errors.

Deleting the content

If a question/answer/comment is not reported but you can see that it has to be moderated, click on
the top right corner on the letter M. You then have the moderation top-layer.
In the toplayer window, when you are deleting a question you have a space to put the reason of
deletion along with some more options:
Give a warning for the copy-paste answers and swear words answers, you should give it to
users so that they know it's forbidden. A warning disappears from the user's profile after two
weeks.

Don't give back points the author of the question will not regain his/her points that he/she used
for posting the question. The author can add the same question later if you do not do it. This option
guarantees that the users that answered it will keep their points.

Take back the points of the users who answered it's a good option when you picked Don't
give back points and at the same time you don't want the users that answered to keep their
points because their answers were incorrect. You decide who keeps their points and who does not.
After inserting the reason of deletion click confirm. Deleted content turns pink then.
Reasons of deletion
When informing the user about the deletion reasons, always introduce one, don't leave him/her
without a clear explanation. Here are some of the most popular ones:
Copy-paste answer/plagiarism (the most common, copies from other websites [you can
check that by pasting a fragment of the answer into e.g. Google search], copies of the
answers above, copies from other questions on the portal etc.);
Inadequate answer/question;
Incomplete question (when it ends suddenly and you don't know what it's about);
Links to other pages (prohibited in every single case!);
Indecent questions (sexual content, swear words etc.);
Wrong subject only if it's a clear violation, if it's already answered and it looks good,
don't delete it);
 Advertisement of other pages;
Incomprehensible question/answer;
Translator used (for foreign languages questions);
Too complex question;
Senseless/childish question (e.g. 2+2=? or httadfwhtfwhtfdw);
Request for sending the answer to an email address;
No explanation/too short answer (when e.g. There's an equation and the user only gives
the final solution with no steps how he/she did it);
Offensive content (mostly applies to comments).

And any other that are not allowed and violate the rules of our Terms of Use.

Deleting an avatar of a user

If you see that someone has an improper avatar (offending, violence, sexual content etc.), you
should delete it. Remember that the majority of our users are underage. You need to enter the
user's profile and click show more information. Then you should click 'delete avatar. You should
give a reason why it's being deleted to the user so that he/she does not upload it again.
Archive
You can moderate the content using the archive. You can choose the subject that you want to
check. You can go to archive by going to your profile page and it's on the top left tab. You can also
go there from the main page, scrolling down till the end of the site on the bottom next to How to
get points? you can see the button.

The search engine

You can also moderate using the search engine. You can find certain questions/answers with it.
You can also find bad content with it: links (when using www. or .com), names of other pages
(Wikipedia, Youtube, other educational sites from your country), swear words etc.
If you have any questions related to moderation, please let your Administrator know and he/she will
be more than happy to help you. It's you and other moderators that form the Brainly community
and it's because of you that people can learn something new and that this portal still improves and
gets bigger every day!

Thank you for your patience and help :)

Brainly team