Photo moderation: approve, reject, pin, and delete

The moderation queue is where your team decides what makes the live wall. This article covers the workflow, the keyboard shortcuts, and how to staff it for an event.

The queue layout

The queue is a single page accessible from the event dashboard. Three sections:

1. Pending review — newest at the top. Each row shows the photo, the uploader’s name (if collected), custom field values, the upload time, and the moderator action buttons.
2. Approved — collapsible, sorted by approval time.
3. Rejected/deleted — collapsible. Rejected photos can be restored; deleted photos cannot.

Photos appear in the pending queue within ~3 seconds of upload, via the real-time connection. No refresh needed.

[SCREENSHOT: moderation queue with three pending photos, each with thumbnail, metadata, and action buttons]

The four actions

Approve

Photo goes live on the wall on the next refresh cycle (within 5 seconds).

Keyboard shortcut: A or → (right arrow).

Reject

Photo is removed from the live wall and the public gallery. The upload itself is preserved in the rejected-photos archive — you can restore it later if you change your mind. The guest doesn’t see anything different.

Keyboard shortcut: R or ← (left arrow).

Pin

Photo goes live on the wall AND is locked into a featured slot (top-left in mosaic, hero spot in magazine, next-up in slideshow). Pinned photos override the normal rotation — useful for the photo from the speech or the group shot at the entrance.

Keyboard shortcut: P.

You can pin up to 5 photos at once on most plans, 12 on Premier. Older pins automatically unpin as you add new ones.

Delete

Removes the photo from everywhere. Cannot be undone. Use for:

• Inappropriate content (slurs, nudity, etc.).
• Photos the guest later requested to remove via the photo removal form.
• Test photos uploaded during setup that you forgot to clean up.

Keyboard shortcut: D then Y to confirm. The confirmation step exists deliberately — deletion is irreversible.

Moderation strictness presets

Three presets on the event settings page:

• Manual review — every photo waits in the queue until a moderator approves. The right default for galas, weddings, corporate events.
• Auto-approve with optional after-the-fact review — photos go live immediately; the queue shows everything for retrospective moderation. Right for festivals and informal events.
• Auto-approve with on-detection filter — photos go live unless a built-in content filter flags them (basic NSFW + profanity in captions). Right for public events where review-after-the-fact isn’t fast enough.

Staffing moderation

A rule of thumb: one moderator can comfortably handle 60-80 photos per hour.

So:

• Small wedding (50 guests, ~150 photos total): one moderator, part-time. Often the planner has a laptop or iPad on a back table.
• Medium event (200 guests, ~600 photos total): one moderator dedicated for the first hour, then drops to part-time after the upload rush.
• Large gala or festival (500+ guests): two moderators on rotating shifts. One always on, one resting. Switch every 90 minutes.

The first hour after the QR is publicized usually accounts for half the night’s uploads. Staff up accordingly.

Multi-moderator etiquette

When two moderators are working the queue at the same time, the system prevents collisions: the moment a moderator opens a photo’s action menu, that photo is locked for the next 5 seconds. After 5 seconds the lock releases.

In practice, having two moderators on the same queue feels collaborative, not chaotic. The lock is short enough to not slow anyone down, long enough to prevent double-approving.

The 10-second triage rule

For most events, the right speed for a moderator is about 10 seconds per photo: glance, decide, click. Three seconds for sketchy edge cases; one second for obvious approves.

Resist the temptation to read every caption. The wall benefits from a steady throughput more than from a perfectly-reviewed photo every minute.

When the queue gets ahead of the moderator

If the queue builds up beyond ~50 pending photos, the rolling banner on the wall (visible to all moderators) shows “Queue backlog: 52 — consider switching to auto-approve.”

Two options:

1. Switch to auto-approve from event settings. The queue drains immediately; you can still review-after-the-fact.
2. Recruit a second moderator from the team panel. Even a temporary 30-minute moderator clears most backlogs.

What to do next

• How guests upload photos for the guest side.
• Customize the upload experience to reduce moderation burden by filtering uploads upfront.
• Audit log: who did what when for the record of every action.