Community Chat

Every event has a community chat in the Sway app: the Community tab of the event page, split into topics. Four default topics appear the first time somebody opens the event in the app (Chat with everyone, Anyone going solo?, Afterparty and Meetup), and anyone signed in can open more.

The Community chat screen, in the Community section of the event's sidebar, is where the event's team looks after them: what is said, who may speak, which topics exist, and what the organizer has to say.

Open the screen

Click Community chat in the event's sidebar. It has three tabs: Topics, Banned and Activity.

The screen needs the Moderate community chat permission on the event, in the Community chat group of the Team and Permissions screen. Owner, Admin and Manager hold it; Editor and Viewer do not. Without it the sidebar row is greyed out, and opening the address directly shows Access Denied.

Reading the topics needs no permission at all: they are public in the app.

Manage the topics

Topics lists the event's topics on the left, and the open topic on the right. On a phone you see the list first, and All topics takes you back to it.

Each topic shows its emoji, its name, how many messages it holds and when the last one was posted. A lock marks a read-only topic, a crossed eye a hidden one.

• New topic, at the top of the screen, opens a topic of your own. Give it a Name (100 characters at most) and an Emoji, then click Create topic.
• Edit, at the top of an open topic, renames it or changes its emoji. It works on every topic, including the default ones and those opened by fans.
• Read-only, in the same panel: only the event's team posts there, everyone else reads. Useful for a topic of practical announcements.
• Hide from the app, in the topic's menu, takes the topic out of the app: nobody sees it in the list, nobody can read it or post in it. Show in the app again brings it back with its messages.
• Delete topic deletes a topic for good, with its messages, its followers and its participants. A confirmation asks first.

Moderate the messages

The open topic reads like the chat in the app: bubbles in time order, the newest at the bottom, the people of the event on the left and what your team posts as the organizer on the right, with a line for each day. It follows the conversation live: what people post in the app appears without reloading, and New messages brings you down when you were reading further up. Scroll up, or click Load older messages, to go further back.

Each message has a menu, the three dots beside its bubble:

• Remove blanks the message for everyone at once, in the app's open screens and in what phones had already loaded. The bubble stays, with who removed it, and What it said unfolds below it for your team only.
• Restore, under a removed message, puts the text and the images back. It is the undo: a removal never asks for confirmation.
• Pin to the top shows the message above the topic in the app. A topic holds one pinned message; pinning another replaces it, and Unpin takes it down. Removing a pinned message unpins it.

Post as the organizer

The box at the foot of the topic posts in it under a promoter's name: the app shows the promoter's name and photo with an Organizer badge, not your own account. Pick the promoter beside Post as when you can post as more than one, write your message, then press Enter or click the send button. Shift + Enter starts a new line.

You can post as a promoter when it is one of the event's promoters and you hold Moderate community chat on that promoter's page as well as on the event. Otherwise the box explains why it is not available. Read-only topics take your posts; hidden topics do not, until you show them again.

Banned tab

A ban stops a member from posting or opening a topic anywhere in the event's community chat. They keep reading.

1. Open the menu of one of their messages, under Topics, and click Ban the author.
2. Add a Reason if you like. Only your team sees it.
3. Leave Also remove their messages in this event's topics ticked to remove everything they posted here in one go. Each message can still be restored on its own afterwards.
4. Click Ban.

Banned lists the members currently banned, with the reason, who banned them and when. Lift ban lets them post again; the messages the ban removed stay removed until you restore them. A member of the event's team who holds the permission cannot be banned.

Activity tab

Activity lists every moderation act on the event's community chat, newest first: removals and restores, pins, posts made as the organizer, topics opened, edited, hidden, shown or deleted, bans and lifted bans. Each line says who did it and when, and a removal shows the text it took.

What the audience sees

• A removed message reads Message removed by the organizer in the app.
• A post made as the organizer shows the promoter's name and photo, with the Organizer badge.
• The pinned message sits at the top of the topic.
• In a read-only topic, the message field is replaced by a note saying that only the organizers post there.
• A banned member sees that they can no longer post in the event's chats.
• A hidden topic is simply gone from the list.

Where the rest lives

• Team and Permissions hands out the Moderate community chat permission, on the event and on its promoters.
• Push Notifications reach the event's followers outside the app's chat.
• News publishes longer posts on the event page.
• Messages holds the private conversations: your chats from the app, your crews' channels, and your pages' conversations with other pages.