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SAP Community moderators ensure that the content on our site and that our members comply with our rules of engagement, as well as with other policies and guidelines (such as the Digital Services Act). They review content submitted to the site (particularly content from new members) and respond to reports about rules violations. They also monitor the site for potential violations.
Upon discovering violations, moderators may remove content, alter content (to bring it into compliance), ban members (either temporarily or permanently, depending on the severity of the violation), or issue warnings. Where necessary, they’ll ensure that all actions follow the Digital Services Act (DSA). Whenever possible, they’ll coach members to help them understand and follow our rules, as their primary goal is to create a positive environment where members can contribute and grow.
The moderation team follows several processes -- based on the type of content submitted or the nature of a violation.
Pre-Moderation for New Members
Questions, answers, discussions, and comments from newer members (not employed by SAP) pass through pre-moderation. This pre-moderation ensures that this content complies with our rules of engagement and reduces the likelihood of spam and other inappropriate content appearing on SAP Community. (To learn about moderation for blog posts and knowledge-base documents, please see the next section.)
When newer members submit questions, answers, discussions, and comments for SAP Community, their content will enter a pre-moderation queue, where it will be reviewed to ensure compliance with our rules. They will also receive a message informing them that their content requires pre-moderation.
Upon submission new members will be notified that the post is in moderation, and will be released if it is approved:
You can find your queue of unmoderated posts and their status here. If the content is appropriate, it will be published. If it isn’t, it won’t. Spam will be removed from the queue before reaching the site, and anyone caught attempting to publish spam will be banned.
Pre-moderation takes up to two hours, Monday through Friday. New members who submit content over the weekend will need to wait until Monday before pre-moderation takes place.
To bypass pre-moderation, newer members will need to demonstrate that they understand our guidelines and are willing to comply with our rules. Over time, once they’ve shown that they wish to contribute positively to SAP Community – by submitting content that consistently passes through pre-moderation successfully – they’ll gain the ability to post directly to the site. We won’t share any details beyond that, as we don’t want to give spammers information that will help them work around pre-moderation. Also, we don’t reveal details about gamification, the rank ladder, and privileges because per our FAQs, we want to “keep members focused on general quality participation.”
Note that the pre-moderation process doesn’t apply to established members who have been contributing regularly to SAP Community. It also doesn’t apply to knowledge-base documents and blog posts – just to other types of content (e.g., questions, answers, discussions, comments/replies in threads). The process for blogging and document moderation remains unchanged.
Blog and Document Moderation
To blog, members (whether employed by SAP or not) must first complete our SAP Community tutorial, ensuring that they take all of the actions outlined in the tutorial.
Curators or owners review all blog posts submitted to their groups. They decide whether the content is appropriate for a group’s audience. They conduct these reviews, and make their decisions, independently of the SAP Community moderation team.
Elsewhere in SAP Community, our moderation team reviews submissions from new bloggers for the various “by members” and “by SAP” blog boards. After review, a moderator either approves the post or sends it back to the author with feedback. Blog reviews from our moderation team can take up to five business days for each submission. In other words, if a moderator sends a post back to an author with feedback, and the author makes the necessary changes and submits the post again, it may take up to another five business days before the second review occurs. This process occurs each time the author submits a post for review, so if a member wishes to go through moderation more quickly, he or she should take the time to ensure that the post complies with standards and guidelines, as outlined in the tutorial and the rules of engagement.
To notify our moderators that your post is ready for them, please make sure that you click the “Submit for Review” button in the blogging tool. Save as a draft if you’re still working on the post. Please don’t submit a post for review if you plan to keep working on it. Also, please only submit one post at a time for review. Once the moderation team works with you and approves a post, you may work on another and submit it for review.
To check on the status of your submission, navigate to the Blog Dashboard for the blog board where you submitted your post for review and click “View All Drafts.”
After clicking "View All Drafts," you'll see the status, version number, and other information for your submission:
By clicking on the submission's title, you can check the history of the submission to see whether a group owner, curator, or moderator provided feedback – explaining that the post has been rejected or outlining what steps are necessary to qualify for publication. You just need to click "View History" to get these details:
To bypass blog moderation, members need to move up the rank ladder, although groups curators and owners must always approve blog posts for their groups, regardless of the author’s rank. Members can climb the ranks through consistent, positive activity and contributions. You can learn more about the various SAP Community ranks (and how to climb the rank ladder) in this post.
To publish a knowledge-base document in a group, members require the approval of a curator or owner for that group. Curators or owners review documents submitted for their knowledge-base boards, determining whether the content is a good fit, just as they review submissions for their blog boards.
Note that this moderation process doesn’t apply to questions, answers, discussions, comments, and other content from newer members. This process only applies to the moderation of blog posts and documents. To learn more about the pre-moderation process that applies to questions, answers, replies in threads, etc., please refer to the previous section above.
Moderation of Content/Members Reported as Inappropriate
Members can report other members and their content for violations. When they do so, our moderation team will review the report and determine what steps are required (if any).
You’ll find the option for reporting inappropriate content from the dropdown menu next to posts, answers, comments, etc., throughout the site. Here’s what you’ll see when reporting a question, for example:
Selecting this option will bring you to a series of menus, as well as a text field, allowing you to provide details about why you’ve reported the content.
When reporting content, it’s important to indicate whether the content violates the Digital Services Act (DSA), as DSA violations require additional actions from our moderation team (versus reports for common moderation activities, such as fixing tags).
In most cases, you’ll simply choose “Other alert to moderators” for the reason – as this selection applies to the majority of reports that our moderation team receives (for requests to move content to another area, remove/correct a tag, and so on).
If you pick “Other alert to moderators” as the reason, the “DSA Specification” menu will remain grayed out. (Since the reason is unrelated to a DSA violation, no additional selection is required.) You’ll still have the option to enter additional information (in the “Details” field). For example, you can point out an incorrect tag (and propose a better one) before submitting the report by clicking the “Notify Moderator” button.
This information helps our moderators understand the nature of the issue and work with members quickly to fix the problem, minus the formality of DSA steps that require stiffly worded messages and legally sounding explanations. For non-DSA cases, the moderators can work with members in a capacity that doesn’t feel overly official, creating a much friendlier experience for the members involved.
In situations where something does violate the DSA, our moderation team follows the procedures outlined by this act, including messaging the member reported as well as the member who submitted the report – making sure they are aware of the nature of the violation, what steps have been/will be taken, how they can protest a decision, and so on. Given the complexity associated with the management of DSA violations, we ask that you make certain that it’s a true DSA offense before reporting it as such.
When alerting the moderation team about a DSA violation, you’ll need to select one of the reasons beneath the dashed line (underneath “Other alert to moderators”), such as “[DSA] Illegal Or Harmful Speech” and “[DSA] Unsafe And/Or Illegal Products.”
This action opens the “DSA Specification” menu, where you’ll need to select the item related to the reason. There are several to choose.
Since we have mapped these reasons and specifications to DSA systems (which is where we need to upload data about our DSA-related activities), we must make sure that we open and submit every DSA case accurately. You can help by selecting the right reason (distinguishing between non-DSA and DSA alerts) and DSA specification (in the event of actual DSA violations) carefully when reporting content that requires moderation.
Not sure which selection to make? You’ll see some helpful suggestions right next to the menus, providing guidance about what to select and why for common scenarios. (Note: We are in the process of updating the "Reason Menu" column to match the reasons in the reporting tool, but you should still be able to determine the corresponding selection.)
As an example, if you want to report spam, select “[DSA] Violation of Terms of Use” for the reason and “Other” from the “DSA Specification” menu. (Remember to add some information in the details to help our moderators understand why you’re reporting the content.)
In addition to reporting content, you can report members. In fact, if a member has published multiple pieces of content that violate our rules, we recommend that you report the member instead of his or her individual posts. That way, our moderation team only needs to process one report (for the member) versus multiple reports (for all of the content). You can report members by clicking on their name anywhere in SAP Community (such as in a byline for a blog post), finding “Options” on their content page, and clicking “Report User.”
One last piece of important advice: Negative feedback and curt comments aren’t against the law, and they don’t qualify as harassment and hate speech under DSA regulations. To be more specific, as an example, DSA defines hate speech as “illegal incitement to violence and hatred based on protected characteristics.” Therefore, before reporting member comments as misconduct under DSA, consider whether they can be categorized as illegal speech. Per our Basic Etiquette and Tips for Participating in SAP Community guidelines, members should keep discourse civil and try to work out differences, reporting member comments only when they are truly harmful and in violation of DSA regulations. Disagreements and criticism are not grounds for moderator action – especially under DSA.
Contacting the Moderation Team
You can learn more about our moderation team on our Points of Contact page. If you have specific questions about moderation actions, please contact moderators@sap.com.
Bluesky