moderate.php - moderate a new field - how?

[MacMorag]

I have a hack which writes an additional field to the post table whenever a new post is made. And all works ok.

Except if I attempt to "moderate" one of these new posts - and I will want to moderate at some point.

What happens: when the new post is submitted by newreply.php the new field is populated in the post table - this is prior to moderation.

Once I moderate the post, in AdminCP, the value of the new field is deleted.

I suspect that this is happening because of the way moderate.php works. It looks like the entire post is read in to moderate.php, and if validated, the entire post is REPLACED in the database (rather than just the "visible=n" being set).

Correct?

So it would appear that I somehow need to tell moderate.php to output the new field too - but how?

I really am stuck with this

Thanks for any help.