How do I setup and Use the Submission Queue?

By eferraiuolo on 30 Jun 2005 at 18:19 UTC

I am not really understadning how to properly setup and use drupal's submission queue module. I have tried searching on this site, and looking through the handbook and there doesn't seem to be any documentation about properly setting-up and using the submission queue module. I could understand the lack of doumentation for this module if setting it up and using it were staight-forward, but when I was messing around with it I couldn't get the disired fucntionality.

Let me first explain what I am trying to do, then I'll explain what I setup and tried and issues I ran into.

What I want:

Anonymous users just have read access to content
A group of users that can add content to the site, but the content isn't published right away
A few users who moderate, edit, aprove, and make the content status published

What I did:

I setup a role, contributors, which can add content and edit their own content.
set the settings for the page content type (the only one used on my site) to be pushed into the submission queue
I setup another role, editors, which can do everything that the contributors can do, plus have access to the submission queue
I then created test users, 1 as a contributor, the other as an editor

What happened

When I logged in as the contributor I was able to add content like I intended. After submitting the content I got the message the the content was added to the submission queue. I then logged in as the editor, and viewed the submission queue. The new content entry was in the queue with a "vote" link next to it. After click the vote link I chose the option "+1". When I went back into the submission queue there were now 2 rows each with the same title referring to the same content entry. Next to 1 was the "vote" link which when clicked didn't allow me to vote (my guess is because I already did) the other entry in the queue which was referring to the same content entry had a "1" next to it showing my vote. Also the content wasn't published on the site, therefore not viewable to anoymous users.

Whats unclear to me

I don't udnerstand why 1 content entry had itself listed multiple times in the queue, and why when I voted to promote the content it didn't change its status to publish.

So if someone knows where I can read up on setting up and using the submission queue that would be great, or if you could post your thoughts in this topic specific to how I am trying to use the submission queue (which seems to be to be pretty common) that would be even better!

Thanks,
Eric

Comments

I am learning drupal, so

chris Albon@www.emodo.com commented 30 June 2005 at 19:39

I am learning drupal, so dont take what I say as definative.

For what you want (which is what I wanted), don't use the queue module. That module is to let the community decide what nodes to show, not a small group of moderators.

1. Turn off the queue module
2. Go to Access Control and make a "editor" type. Give him all of the permissions as a authenticed user PLUS "adminster nodes"
3. Go to administer » content» configure >> 'story' Content Type. Make the Default options:

Published NO
In moderation queue YES
Promoted to front page YOUR CHOICE
Sticky at top of lists NO
Create new revision NO

Now when all users go to add a story, it will be placed into the moderation queue UNLESS this person have the permission to "administer nodes" because they will be able to decheck "In moderation queue" and check "Published"

If I were to turn off the

eferraiuolo commented 30 June 2005 at 20:25

If I were to turn off the queue module, wouldn't the option "In moderation queue" also not show up because there would now not be a queue to put the content in.

I believe the moderation queue is the module I need to use to do everything I stated above. Also I like the fact that the moderation queue allows for multiple moderators to add their input about the content via their vote.

The moderation queue just wasn't working in the way I first thought, and some weird quirks were occuring when I was testing it out for a real-world senerio (at least these effects were odd to me). So I was looking for some insight on how to setup and use this module.

Chris thanks for your help, but I guess I should lay my questions out in a more straight-forward fashion...

When content is put in the moderation queue what is the criteria for it to become published on the site? a vote of +1 or something more?

Why after a users vote on content in the queue a duplicte entry for that content also appears in the queue?

Whats the best way to setup roles and permissions to use the moderation queue like I wanted to? Having limited group of content contributors who's content gets placed in the queue and has to be aproved by a small group of moderators who review, edit (if needed) and vote on the content to change its status on the site to published?

i have my queue module

chris Albon@www.emodo.com commented 30 June 2005 at 22:23

i have my queue module turned off and I still have a moderation queue.

I agree totally

ryooki commented 26 September 2005 at 01:57

I agree totally with your post. I want to do the exact same thing, but it's not working properly.
Here's the text on the admin/settings/queue page:

The queue provides a way for your users to vote on submitted content. This is called moderation. Users can moderate a post up (give it a point), or down (subtract a point). The settings below give you control over how many points are required for the status of a post to be automatically changed. See individual items for details.

Post threshold: **(number 1-100, I picked 1)**
When a post gets this number of moderation points, it is promoted to the front page automatically.

Dump threshold: **(-1-30, I left it on default)**
When a post drops below this number of points, its status is changed to unpublished.

Expiration threshold: **(1-100, left on default)**
When a post gets this number of points, its status is changed to unpublished.

Show comments: Enabled
Tick the box to show comments below the moderation form.

OK. So these are my settings. I set everything to default to publish, but be placed in the moderation queue. If I post something as a user, it's published but in the queue. Then, if I vote on it as a moderator, it gets 1 vote, but still doesn't appear on the front page.

I'd also like a quick an easy way to add content - stories, or whatever, to the book. Either from the moderator menu or something. Any ideas?

Did you find a solution to your problem?

Thanks!

I found my solution

ryooki commented 28 September 2005 at 11:32

Hey, I found my solution. I installed the Adminblock module. Now, all story, book, non-fourm/blog entries are not published by default.
Now, when user with Administer node permissions log on, they get a Adminblock which lists all non-published posts. They can edit those and status them to published, and put them where they belong.

Now I've made only blog / forum topics go through the submission queue to get promoted to the front page if they are really good.

same problem

ruroshin commented 18 November 2005 at 14:12

Hi Eric,

Did you ever solve this problem? Because I'm having the exact same problem, the queue appears with multiple row for one entry after its been voted on and even when it passes the threshold it isn't promoted to front page.

Has anybody solved this?

I'm having the same problem,

pbowser commented 1 February 2006 at 19:14

I'm having the same problem, and I'm frustrated at the lack of clear instructions.

I've created a events-enabled flexinode type called "community events". This is so that non-members (ie, anonymous users) of the site can post events, which will be moderated by the authorized users before being published to the front page & calendar.

If I adjust the settings for the content type to:

Published - YES
In Moderation Queue - YES
Promoted to front page - YES

Then the content gets published to the front page right away, bypassing the moderation.

But if I adjust it to:

Published - NO
In Moderation Queue - YES
Promoted to front page - YES

Then it never publishes, even after getting a sufficient number of votes (I only require a single vote).

So how exactly is this supposed to work?

Fix

pbowser commented 3 February 2006 at 18:15

Well, I've done a little hackery to make the queue work the way I wanted it to.

My first problem was that I wanted content in the queue to be promoted after a single positive vote. According to the module instructions, content should be promoted as soon as their vote score is equal to or greater than the score threshold, selected on the settings page. But when I selected a threshold of 1, it still required two positive votes before promotion. I think this points to a flaw in the logical flow of the module. However, I simply created a workaround by adding '0' as an option for the score threshold:

//added 0 as an element in the array
function queue_settings() {
$post_and_expire = drupal_map_assoc(array(0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100));
$dump = drupal_map_assoc(array(-1, -2, -3, -4, -5, -6, -7, -8, -8, -10, -11, -12, -13, -14, -15, -20, -25, -30));

Next, I wanted submitted content to not be published OR promoted to the front page until it was voted there. I solved this by making a small change to the function queue_vote. I simply added a line so that in addition to promoting the post, the post's publish status is also set.

// added $node->status = 1 so that post will be published
if (variable_get('queue_threshold_post', 4) score) {
$node->moderate = 0;
$node->promote = 1;
$node->status = 1;
node_save($node);
watchdog('content', t('Moderation: approved %title.', array('%title' => theme('placeholder', $node->title))));
drupal_set_message(t('The post is promoted.'));
}

So now, I adjust the settings for the content type to:
Published - NO
In Moderation Queue - YES
Promoted to front page - NO

and it works the way I want!

I got this error running your mod

TerrenceLP commented 21 April 2006 at 17:56

parse error in queue.module unexpected T_STRING on line 76

ok now what? I'm looking through it but nothing, can you upload your modded file?

Same problem...

sgwealti commented 23 April 2006 at 22:03

After click the vote link I chose the option "+1". When I went back into the submission queue there were now 2 rows each with the same title referring to the same content entry. Next to 1 was the "vote" link which when clicked didn't allow me to vote (my guess is because I already did) the other entry in the queue which was referring to the same content entry had a "1" next to it showing my vote. Also the content wasn't published on the site, therefore not viewable to anoymous users

I'm having the same problem...where it is listed twice after it gets voted on. Did anyone ever figure out a solution to this one?

Hopeless

miriaschka commented 28 April 2006 at 15:20

This seems to be a critical bug in queue, I have tried it too, and there seems to be no remedy (short of fixing it, that is ;). Note that the module is no longer part of Drupal 4.7, and people will point you to nmoderation, which does not use the queue (rather, it promotes or unpublishes already published content, for a configurable number of days). Nmoderation has a number of ciritical bugs too, although there is a working custom-patched installation at code0range.net, and you may have a look at what you would get after debugging...

The fabulous Jeff Eaton seems to be churning out new and updated versions of experimental voting tools every week or so, but currently there seems no out-of-the-box functionality for either 4.6 or 4.7 with respect to moderation queues. Buhuu.

If somebody manages to add this again into Drupal, this would be a hero.