Forum Discussion
Can we get more guidance and feedback on the moderation being done on the messages
Community ManagerGood afternoon everyone,
Firstly, thank you m_tarler it’s clear you invest real time helping others, and it’s completely understandable that it feels discouraging when a reply appears to “vanish” with no explanation.
On transparency: we can share the broad shape of how moderation works, but we generally avoid publishing the specific “signals” or thresholds that drive moderation decisions. That’s simply to help protect the community and keep the platform resilient against spam and abuse patterns. (In other words: we want to be transparent without making it easier to game the system.)
Thank you Surya_Narayana for the thoughtful response — you covered the key point well: moderation is a combination of automated protections and human review, and certain content can be held briefly in a review queue before it appears.
To address Hornblower409 point: the Microsoft Learn Q&A site and the Microsoft Tech Community are separate properties, with different operating models and moderation implementations — so issues seen there don’t always map 1:1 to what’s happening here.
Where I completely agree with you all is the lack of feedback/visibility when something is held for review. That gap can create exactly the behaviour you described — duplicate posts, because people reasonably assume the first attempt failed. We take that seriously, and we’re actively looking at how we can improve the user experience and communication around “held for review” states in upcoming sprints.
On attachments for newer accounts: this restriction is primarily a security safeguard. File upload is a permissioned capability (for example, “new community member” style restrictions can apply, and capabilities like file/link/video posting are granted via roles/permissions). We also grant file upload automatically to Microsoft employees and to community members once they’ve established some history/rank on the platform.
We do keep the balance under review, and your suggestion about file size/type constraints is a reasonable one — but for now, the current approach remains in place because it reduces risk to the broader community.
Finally, combating spam and security threats in online communities is a bit like keeping antivirus definitions up to date: it’s continuous, adaptive work. We’re also working on better ways to leverage AI to reduce how often legitimate posts require manual review, so that human reviewers can focus on higher-risk content and (ideally) speed up review times for everyone.
Thanks again for raising this and for continuing to contribute your expertise to the Microsoft Tech Community.
Allen Smith
Administrator
Hi Allen I first want to thank you for that thourough and thoughtful response. I completely appreciate that the challenges you must have with maintaining and combating spam and security threats in an online community are vast and ever changing. I do want to f/u on a couple points and hopefully not beating a dead horse:
I do hope you will further consider the issues with blocking all file attachment because as I note, users will just provide links to online storage and sharing platforms (and in fact volunteers in the community regularly ask and suggest for them to do this) and instead of knowing that we are downloading a low risk .xlsx file we could instead be getting something much higher risk not to mention what site we are going to or may get redirected to. I know microsoft can claim that is outside their control and they are 'protecting the community' by not allowing those files, but if you are then pushing people to using and allowing links and web addresses in those same posts, are you really protecting them or pushing and exposing them to something more risky?
On a different note, do the algorithms take into consideration the account itself. So does an account with hundreds or thousands of posts and hundreds of likes and solutions get more benefit of the doubt than a basically new account? if not, can it?
As for the notification of being on hold and why I totally understand the why has to be limited but getting notified about some basic reasons would be very helpful, like attachment vs link vs language, etc... As for notification I'm sure you are aware of the all the options and I'm sure there are challenges on each but even a PM or a notification in the alert panel would be great.
Again thank you for all your work and listening,
-Matt
Hi Allen I first want to thank you for that thourough and thoughtful response. I completely appreciate that the challenges you must have with maintaining and combating spam and security threats in an online community are vast and ever changing. I do want to f/u on a couple points and hopefully not beating a dead horse:
I do hope you will further consider the issues with blocking all file attachment because as I note, users will just provide links to online storage and sharing platforms (and in fact volunteers in the community regularly ask and suggest for them to do this) and instead of knowing that we are downloading a low risk .xlsx file we could instead be getting something much higher risk not to mention what site we are going to or may get redirected to. I know microsoft can claim that is outside their control and they are 'protecting the community' by not allowing those files, but if you are then pushing people to using and allowing links and web addresses in those same posts, are you really protecting them or pushing and exposing them to something more risky?
On a different note, do the algorithms take into account the account itself. So does an account with hundreds or thousands of posts and hundreds of likes and solutions get more benefit of the doubt than an account that is basically new? If not, can it?
As for notification that your message was held and why. I understand you can't give too much information about why to prevent 'gaming the system' but basic information like it having to do with the attachment or language or link would be helpful. As for how to notify, I'm sure you are well aware of the many options and understand a immediate message in that thread may be challenging but what about a message to your PM or an alert in your notifications?
In any case, I appreciate you looking into this and sharing what information you are able to share.
-Matt
