Google Group Moderation

Google Group owners are able to moderate the messages sent to their members to protect them from junk mail. Moderation is not active by default and should be set up as appropriate by the group owner.

Owners and managers are generally granted permission to determine which messages should be allowed to be sent to group members. Messages held for moderation will appear in the “Pending Messages” queue until a decision is made about their distribution.

Default moderation options:

  • Moderate no messages (all messages get sent to members)
  • Moderate all messages (all messages are placed in pending until approval)
  • Moderate messages from non-members (messages from members are sent through but messages from non-members are held pending)

Note: Any message that Google suspects might be spam will also be held in “Pending Messages”.

Rejected message settings:

The Rejected Author notification setting determines whether or not the sender of the rejected message receives a message notifying them that their message did not go through. Options include:

  • Do not notify
  • Default rejection message
  • Custom rejection message

Moderation Settings and Execution

Turn on message moderation

  1. Sign in to Google Groups
  2. Click My Groups and choose the desired group
  3. On the left side menu, select Group Settings
  4. Scroll to the “Message Moderation” section and choose the appropriate level of moderation
  5. Click [Save changes]

Approve or deny pending messages

To approve or deny pending messages, you must have a role with “Moderate content” permissions. Content moderators also get a “Moderator’s spam report” email that includes any messages held as spam.

To approve or deny pending messages:

  1. Sign in to Google Groups
  2. Click My Groups and choose the desired group.
  3. On the left side menu, see the Conversations > Pending 
  4. To read a message, click on the title
  5. At the top of the screen select one of the following options: Check the box next to the post(s).
  • Approve (check mark): approves the message
  • Reject (⊗): blocks the message
  • Reject author: bans the author from messaging the group and reports the message as spam

Note: 

  • Posts that aren’t approved are automatically deleted after 14 days.
  • Posts marked as spam (by Google) are automatically deleted after 7 days.

Posting and moderating permissions of the group

Owners and managers (when granted) are able to control members’ ability to post to the group. To set their posting permission:

  1. Sign in to Google Groups
  2. Click My Groups and choose the desired group
  3. On the left-hand menu, select Group Settings
  4. Scroll down to Posting Policies
  5. Set the moderating and posting privileges for each group membership level
  6. Click [Save changes]
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