If your posts seem slow to appear in a community, it may not be your computer or a glitch...

If your posts seem slow to appear in a community, it may not be your computer or a glitch...

Originally shared by John Skeats

New Google+ Tip: Why Your Posts Might Be Take a While to Appear in Communities

Your posts used to appear in communities immediately unless they were flagged as possible spam. That might not be true anymore in some communities. Google recently introduced a new option called "Hold posts for review" to help community moderators fight spam. You could see a delay before your posts appear in a community if the community's moderators enabled this option for the community. (It is off by default.)

Depending on a choice made by the moderator when the option is enabled, "Hold posts for review" treats either all members or only new members as "Limited members." Posts by limited members are put into a special new queue (not the same queue as posts flagged by the spam filters) until a moderator reviews them and decides whether they are appropriate for the general membership to see.* How long this takes obviously depends on how promptly the community's moderators review posts in the queue. Posts for regular members (ones who are not limited members) do not get held for review.

If a moderator decides that a limited member has demonstrated that their posts are of high enough quality to do so, the moderator can promote the person from being a limited member. Of course, Google+ also provides moderators the ability to demote members to being limited members, as well.

* Note: If a post by a limited member is detected as probable spam by the Google+ spam filters, it would go to the spam moderation queue rather than the "Hold for review" queue.