A moderation workflow for a small team

Short answer. Sort every submission into approve, decline, edit or escalate before deciding anything. One admin can handle the first three; an escalated item needs two admins to agree, and a tie means it is not published. Add a rota with cover, a response time for each kind of item and a decision log, and three to five volunteers can keep a queue of fifty submissions a day moving.

A queue of fifty anonymous submissions a day can be handled by three people in a few minutes each — or it can consume an entire team, breed resentment, and still let the wrong posts through. The difference is rarely effort. It is whether the team has agreed in advance how decisions are made.

This is a workflow for a volunteer team of three to five. It assumes nobody is paid, everyone has exams, and nobody wants a meeting.

Sort before you decide

Reading every submission with full attention, in the order it arrived, is the slowest way to work. Most submissions are easy. Sort first, and spend your attention on the ones that are not.

Each submission goes into one of four groups:

Three of the four groups can be handled by a single person in seconds. Only the last needs discussion, and being strict about what counts as "escalate" is what stops every decision turning into a group conversation.

If your submission tool screens content automatically, use its output as the first sort — but as a sort, not a verdict. What automated checks are and are not good at is covered in How AI content moderation works.

What should always be escalated

Agree a short list of triggers that take a decision out of one person's hands:

• the submission names or clearly points to a private individual;
• it makes an accusation of fact against anyone;
• it mentions self-harm, abuse or a crime;
• it involves someone under 18;
• the admin reading it knows, or thinks they know, who it is about or who wrote it;
• the admin's first reaction is strong — amusement, anger or discomfort are all signs that judgement may be off.

The last one matters more than it sounds. A post that makes an admin laugh out loud is exactly the post that gets approved too quickly.

The two-person rule

For escalated items, a second admin must agree before publishing. In practice:

1. The first admin marks the item as escalated with a one-line note — "names a lecturer, critical but about teaching, not personal".
2. Any second admin replies with agree or disagree and their own line.
3. If they agree, it is done. If they disagree, the default is do not publish.

That default — a tie means no — is the most important rule in the whole workflow. An anonymous page loses very little by declining a borderline post. It can lose a great deal by publishing one.

Do this in whatever channel the team already uses. A dedicated group chat with one message per escalated item, replied to in a thread, is enough.

Share the reading

Without a rota, the work falls on whoever feels most responsible, and that person burns out. Two arrangements work for small teams.

By day. Each admin owns the queue on set days. Simple and predictable. It suits pages with a steady flow.

By shift. One admin clears the queue in the morning, another in the evening. This suits pages where submissions arrive in waves and waiting a full day would be too slow.

Whichever you choose, write down who covers when someone is unavailable, and make swapping easy. A rota that cannot bend around exams is abandoned within a month.

Agree how fast

Decide what submitters and complainants can expect, and tell them.

• Ordinary submissions: reviewed within a day or two. Say so on the form, so people do not resubmit.
• Escalated items: decided within two days. An item still unresolved after that is declined.
• Removal requests: acted on within 24 hours. These jump every other queue. See How to handle a takedown request.
• Anything suggesting someone is in danger: immediately, by whoever sees it first. See When a submission mentions self-harm.

Keep a decision log

A shared document with one line for each non-obvious decision: date, what the item was in general terms, what was decided and why. Do not paste the submissions themselves into it, and never record guesses about authors.

The log is worth the small effort for three reasons:

• Consistency. When a similar item arrives next month, you can look up what you did. Readers notice when a page allows on Tuesday what it refused on Monday.
• Handover. New admins learn the page's standards from real cases. Nothing else teaches it as quickly.
• Accountability. If a decision is challenged — by a reader, the institution, or a lawyer — you can show that it was considered and by what reasoning.

After a term, patterns in the log will tell you which rules need rewriting.

Conflicts of interest

On a campus page, admins will regularly know the people involved. Make it an explicit rule:

• An admin who recognises the subject or suspects the author passes the item on and takes no part in the decision.
• Admins do not submit to their own page and then approve the result. If an admin wants to submit, another admin handles it.
• Admins never speculate about authorship, in the team chat or anywhere else.

A page that is suspected of settling its admins' scores does not get its reputation back.

Declining well

Declined submissions outnumber complaints about them, but how you handle them still matters.

• Do not publish rejections or mock them. A "worst submissions of the week" post tells every future submitter that you laugh at what they send.
• Delete declined items on a schedule. A queue of old rejected submissions is a store of sensitive material you have no reason to keep. Thirty days is plenty.
• Notice patterns. If a quarter of submissions are being declined for the same reason, the rule is not reaching people. Fix the wording on the form.

Look after the people doing it

Reading other people's unfiltered thoughts every day has a cost. Some of what arrives is distressing: descriptions of abuse, expressions of despair, cruelty aimed at people the admin knows.

• Limit sessions. Twenty minutes at a time is more sustainable, and more accurate, than two hours.
• Let people pass. Any admin can hand any item to someone else without giving a reason.
• Talk about the hard ones in general terms, in the team. An admin carrying a disturbing submission alone will not last.
• Rotate the worst jobs. If one person always ends up handling removal requests and angry messages, share it out.
• Make leaving easy. An admin who wants to step down should be able to say so without guilt and with a few weeks' notice. Teams that make leaving difficult end up with members who simply stop reading.

Three numbers worth watching

You do not need a dashboard, but check these once a month:

1. Age of the oldest item in the queue. If it keeps growing, you need another admin or a slower intake.
2. The share declined, and the commonest reason. This tells you whether the rules are being understood.
3. Posts removed after publishing. Each one is a decision that should have gone the other way. Read them together and ask what would have caught it.

Common questions

How should a small team share a moderation queue?

With a rota. Either each admin owns the queue on set days, which suits a steady flow, or one admin clears it in the morning and another in the evening, which suits pages where submissions arrive in waves. Write down who covers when someone is unavailable, and make swapping easy.

What should always be escalated to a second admin?

Anything that names or clearly points to a private individual, makes an accusation of fact, mentions self-harm, abuse or a crime, or involves someone under 18. Also any item where the admin knows, or thinks they know, who it is about or who wrote it, and any item that provokes a strong first reaction.

What happens when two admins disagree about a submission?

It is not published. A tie means no. An anonymous page loses very little by declining a borderline post and can lose a great deal by publishing one.

How quickly should submissions be reviewed?

Ordinary submissions within a day or two, and say so on the form. Escalated items within two days, after which an unresolved item is declined. Removal requests within 24 hours, ahead of every other queue. Anything suggesting someone is in danger, immediately, by whoever sees it first.

What is a decision log, and why keep one?

A shared document with one line for each non-obvious decision: the date, what the item was in general terms, what was decided and why. It keeps decisions consistent, teaches new admins the page's standards from real cases, and shows the reasoning if a decision is challenged. Do not paste submissions into it or record guesses about authors.

How do you keep volunteer moderators from burning out?

Limit sessions to about twenty minutes, let any admin pass any item to someone else without giving a reason, talk about the hard ones in general terms within the team, rotate the worst jobs, and make it easy to step down with a few weeks' notice.

The workflow on one page

• Sort into approve, decline, edit, escalate
• Escalate anything naming a person, making an accusation, or involving harm, minors or someone an admin knows
• Two admins agree before an escalated item is published; a tie means no
• A rota with cover, and a response time for each kind of item
• A decision log with reasons and no speculation about authors
• Declined items deleted after thirty days
• Monthly look at queue age, decline reasons and post-publication removals