[oldford]

Nevermind. I found the solution. I went 4 yrs back through my old emails and found that a VB.org member (Kaezul) had helpfully given me the code to do this.

This assumes you have the forum in question set to moderate all new threads.
Admin CP --> Forums & Moderators --> Forum Manager --> Edit Forum --> under Moderation Options check "yes" for Moderate Threads.

Now it's one code edit.

In functions_newpost.php find this:

else
{
$dataman->set('visible', 1);
$post['visible'] = 1;
}

and add below that:

if ($type == 'thread')
{
if ($foruminfo['forumid'] == X AND is_member_of($vbulletin->userinfo,
Y))
{
$dataman->set('visible', 1);
$post['visible'] = 1;
}
}


Replace X with the forum's ID and Y with the usergroup ID you don't want to moderate.