When community members submit ideas, questions, or feedback through your participation tools, you control whether those submissions go live immediately or need to be reviewed first. This is called moderation.
The three moderation options
Every participation tool with public-facing submissions has a moderation setting. There are three options:
| Option | What happens |
| Publish immediately | Submissions go live on the public site as soon as they are submitted. No review step. |
| Automatic moderation | Submissions are automatically checked against community guidelines. If they pass, they are published. If they fail, they are rejected. |
| Manual moderation | Submissions stay hidden from the public until a team member reviews and publishes or rejects each one. |
For a full breakdown of how each moderation workflow functions — including what happens when a submission fails automatic moderation — see View, moderate, and export participation tool submissions.
Which tools use moderation
Moderation applies to participation tools where community submissions are publicly visible to other visitors:
| Tool | Has moderation? | Why |
| Idea boards | Yes | Ideas are displayed publicly and can be voted on |
| Q&A boards | Yes | Questions are displayed publicly with official responses |
| Map feedback | Yes | Feedback pins are visible to other visitors on the map |
| Surveys | No | Responses are private — only visible to your team in the admin |
| Polls | No | Votes are aggregated — individual responses are not displayed |
| Budgets | No | Participants allocate a budget — individual allocations are not displayed publicly |
Setting your site-wide default
You can choose a default moderation setting that applies automatically whenever a new participation tool is created. To update it:
- Click Settings in the left-hand menu.
- Under Configuration, click Participation.
- Find the Default submission moderation dropdown.
- Select your preferred option: Publish immediately, Automatic moderation, or Manual moderation.
- Click Save.
This default is applied when creating new tools. You can always override it on a per-tool basis.
For more on the Settings page, see Settings.
Setting moderation per tool
Each participation tool can have its own moderation setting, overriding the site default. To change it:
- Open your project and navigate to the participation tool (e.g. Q&A boards).
- Click the ellipsis next to the tool and select Edit, or click into the tool and select the Edit tab.
- In the right-hand sidebar, find the moderation dropdown (labelled Question moderation on Q&A boards, or similar on other tools).
- Select your preferred option.
- Click Save or Publish.
Reviewing submissions
When moderation is enabled (automatic or manual), submissions will appear in the tool's Submissions tab for your team to review. To review a submission:
- Open your project from the Projects menu.
- Under Participation, click the tool type (e.g. Q&A boards).
- Click on the tool to open it — you'll land on the Submissions tab.
- Find the submission in the list and click View.
Approving or rejecting a submission
From the submission detail screen, you can moderate the submission:
- Review the submitted content under Moderate question.
- To approve it, click Publish. The submission becomes visible on the public site.
- To reject it, click Reject. The submission will not appear publicly.
- Add a revision message if prompted and click Confirm.
You can also tag submissions with sentiment labels (Positive, Negative, Neutral) and add tags for categorisation — helpful for reporting later.
Responding to a submission
Some tools — like Q&A boards — allow your team to write an official response that appears publicly alongside the community member's submission. To respond:
- Open a submission by clicking View from the submissions list.
- Scroll to the Submission response section.
- Write your response using the rich text editor.
- Click Publish to make the response visible on the public site.
When you publish a response on a Q&A board, the person who submitted the question receives a notification. Only the first publication triggers a notification — editing an already-published response does not. For more, see Create and edit a Q&A board.
How it looks on the public site
Once a submission and response are published, they appear on the public project page. On a Q&A board, visitors will see:
- The community member's question with a timestamp.
- A vote button so other visitors can up-vote the question.
- Your team's official response, labelled with your team name and an Official Response badge.
The team name displayed on official responses can be customised in Settings → Configuration → Comment. See Settings for details.
Viewing moderation logs
Every moderation action is recorded. To view the history for a submission:
- Open the submission detail view.
- Click the Logs tab.
This shows a timeline of all status changes and actions taken on that submission.
For a complete guide to viewing, moderating, and exporting submissions, see View, moderate, and export participation tool submissions.
What's next?
Now that you know how to manage submissions, the next article covers how to use reporting and analytics to understand your community's engagement.