Moderation Tools for Users

Users on Royal Road have a number of tools to moderate their experience on the platform.

Explanation

On Royal Road, we value user experience highly. When thinking about the user experience on a web fiction platform, you might think about just the discovery features or just the reading interface itself, but what about the interaction with other users? We always valued user interaction highly as well and slowly released tools to help curate your experience with other users. This applies to both user-to-user interaction but also author-to-reader interaction, especially in the comment section on a fiction.

What tools are available?

There are two types of moderation tools, some can be used by everyone, while others are limited to the authors for their own comment section. The tools include things such as blocking another user, disabling private messages, hiding comments, hiding from the "reading this chapter list", which are tools available to everyone, as well as more tools that are specific for authors, such as comment moderation, blocking, locking and deleting comments as well as adding collaborators. 

We will start with the general measures that can be taken by anyone and then move on to the author exclusive options.

Blocking another user

If you no longer wish to interact with another user, but they are not breaking the rules. If for any reason, you just don’t want to see them on your screen or anywhere in the comment section. Then you can block them. 

These user-specific block functions can be found when clicking on the username of any member on Royal Road.

On said member’s profile page, in the top left (encircled with red in this screenshot), there is a block button. When clicking on this button, you will see the following three options presented.

Block Private Messages

The first option, ‘Block Private Messages’, is a user-specific block to private messages. Enabling this will make it impossible for this user to send you any private messages. The example below will illustrate it. Say someone is sending you unsolicited private messages like:

The sender will get the following notice and the private message will not end up in your inbox.

Hide Comments

The second option, ‘Hide Comments’, makes it so that you will not see their comments anymore on any fiction comment section, just the notice that blocked comments have been hidden.

Block Comments

The third and final option is to block someone from commenting on your own fiction entirely. This option is only effective for authors on their own fiction and prevents blocked members from commenting on your fiction entirely. The commenter that is blocked will not be able to comment and instead see the following instead of the usual editor.

Unblocking someone

In case you want to unblock someone, this is possible from the same location that someone was blocked from, the user profile page. Next to the big red block button, there should also be a blue unblock button that you can press to lift all restrictions. 

Editing a block

It is also possible to edit the blocks that you applied to another user. To do this, just click the red block button again and check/uncheck what you want changed and hit save again. The blocks will update accordingly.

In order to see what users you currently have blocked, the following page exists: https://www.royalroad.com/my/blockedusers

General settings

Where the previously described options are all user-specific, the following option will apply globally, so for all users that might interact with you or said feature. These options can be found here. The relevant settings are at the top under ‘general’.

Do not forget to hit save at the bottom of that page after changing these settings.

Blocking private messages

The first option should be checked by default, this allows anyone to send you a private message. Once unchecked you will not be able to receive any private message from anyone but the staff. Thomas Thomerus will be the test subject again.

At the top right, you currently see the PM button encased in red, this is to improve visibility.

After unchecking the option to allow private messages  this option is no longer available.

Becoming anonymous from the ‘Reading this Chapter’ list

Perhaps not the most obvious thing to want to hide from, but the option is available. This is possible and will list you as an invisible member instead of a named user. The reading this chapter list can be seen by the author of any given fiction and is updated live. 

To:

Moderating your comment section.

If you are an author looking to moderate your comment section you can read about it here.

Collaborators

Author Premium users are able to add collaborators to their fictions, with both crediting and permission control. This option can be found in the author dashboard.

You can give access to your editor, moderators, or co-author to your fiction to help edit or manage it, or you can add them just to include them in the credits. Please keep in mind that currently you can only add up to 10 collaborators.

You have granular control over what each collaborator can access. Additionally, you also have the option to have the collaborators’ names show up on the fiction page under your own with their designated role - even including users who do not have accounts on the website, such as an artist or an agent.

To avoid abuse, collaborator users have to accept your invitation before they gain access or can be added to the credits. We have added a page that lets you see all pending invitations for you into the author dashboard; or you can simply copy the invitation link from the “Collaborators” page and send it directly to the user in question. The invitation is tied to their account, so other users cannot accept it even if they have the link.

Please do note that we do not send any notification to invited users to avoid spamming them, so you will need to notify them yourself. Additionally, as we currently do not have a real-time collaboration feature in the editor, please avoid editing the same document at the same time, as it is entirely possible to overwrite your collaborator's work.

Issues not solvable with the normal tools?

While the provided tools should solve most common issues and annoyances on site, it is not an end-all solution. For comments or other content that breaks any of the rules please use the report button so a member of staff can take a look and deal with it as needed. If you are experiencing a more serious case of harassment that cannot be solved with the tools listed above, please open a ticket so we can take a closer look.