Moderating and Judging Photo Challenges

Overview

Use Manager to review photo submissions, record your judging preferences, and publish the winners you select. Open the organization that directly owns the challenge, select Challenges, and open your photo challenge.

Moderation, moderator votes, and final awards are separate decisions. Approving a submission does not make it a winner. Neither moderator ranks nor visitor likes automatically assign an award.

For challenge dates, rules, categories, and participation settings, see Creating a Challenge.

Set up Moderators

1. Create at least one photo category under Categories.
2. Open Settings, then find Moderators.
3. Search for a team member by name or email.
4. Select the person and choose Add Moderator.

The picker lists team members who have accepted access to the owning organization. If someone is missing, check their invitation under Organization > Team. See Team Members and Access.

Adding a moderator assigns them across the challenge's photo categories. Categories created afterward also receive the existing moderators. Use the trash button beside a moderator and confirm Remove Moderator? to remove those assignments across the challenge.

Moderator assignments do not create a separate organization role or restrict organization staff and admins to specific categories. Removing an assignment does not remove the person's organization access.

Review Submissions

1. Open Submissions.
2. Use Eligibility to choose Eligible Submissions, Excluded Submissions, or All Submissions. Eligible entries appear by default.
3. Use Status to select In Review, Approved, or Rejected. For challenges with multiple categories, use Category to narrow your review.
4. Select a photo and review its category, location when available, and current moderation status.
5. Enter a Note (Optional) to explain the decision, then choose Approve or Reject.
6. Wait for the save to finish before using Previous or Next. Navigation follows your filters and moves between result pages automatically.

Expand History to review earlier decisions and notes. Unsaved notes do not carry over when you move to another photo.

Rejecting an entry does not delete the visitor's social post or automatically remove it from the challenge photo gallery. A rejected entry cannot be published as a winner; rejecting an already published winner hides its winner card.

Choose Download Original Photo to save the original uploaded file without resizing, cropping, or additional compression.

Cast Moderator Votes

1. Open an eligible submission.
2. Find Moderator Ballot and select Choose Rank.
3. Choose a rank from #1 through #5, with #1 your highest placement.
4. Wait for the confirmation before moving to another photo.

Each moderator has their own ballot for each category. You can assign one rank to a submission and use each rank only once within that category. Choosing a rank you already used moves it from the previous photo to the current one. Changing a photo's rank also frees its previous rank.

Choose Remove Moderator Vote to remove your rank from that submission. This does not remove another moderator's vote. You do not need to use every rank.

Moderator voting is unavailable for excluded entries or submissions without a category. Existing votes are retained when a participant becomes excluded, and you can still remove your own vote.

Compare Moderator Votes

Use Moderator Votes to find Has Votes, No Votes, Voted by Me, or Not Voted by Me. The first two consider all moderators; the last two consider only your ballot.

The submission details distinguish three values:

• Your Rank: The rank you assigned to this photo.
• Best Rank: The highest placement assigned by any moderator; a smaller number is better.
• Moderator Votes: The number of moderator ballots that include this photo.

On a photo thumbnail, ★ 3 with Best #1 means three moderators ranked the photo and at least one gave it #1. It does not mean three first-place votes or a confirmed winner. For example, ranks of #1, #2, #2 and #1, #1, #2 produce the same badge. The badge summarizes the vote count and best rank; it does not show every moderator's rank.

Best Moderator Rank sorts by the best individual placement, then vote count. Most Moderator Votes sorts by vote count, then best placement. Neither calculates an average rank or a final winner.

For example, a photo with one #1 vote has a better best rank than a photo with three #2 votes. The second photo has more moderator votes. Use these views to inform your judging decision.

Understand People's Choice

Enable People's Choice when creating the challenge if visitor likes should inform this award. This option cannot be changed after creation.

Most People's Choice Votes changes the order of the photos. It does not create a separate category or moderator ballot. If you change a rank under Moderator Ballot while using this sort, you change your existing vote in that photo's category. Choosing All Categories also leaves those category ballots unchanged. You do not need to cast a second set of moderator ranks to count visitor likes.

Manager's Most People's Choice Votes count and sort include surviving likes recorded between the challenge start and end times, including both endpoints. A like recorded after voting closes does not count, including a like that reaches the server later after being queued offline. Removing a like removes it from the count; liking again after close does not restore the earlier vote.

Ordinary social likes can continue outside the challenge window. Visitor popularity counts can therefore differ from the qualifying totals you see in Manager. When People's Choice is disabled, Manager shows lifetime likes instead.

The People's Choice total is a judging reference. You still select and publish the final award yourself.

Check Participant Eligibility

Judging shows a participant's user ID and eligibility without showing their name or email. Open Participant Lookup to browse participants, or choose Check Eligibility on a submission to look up that participant.

Names and email addresses are available only when the challenge requires email sharing. Otherwise, use the user ID. Existing report access is unchanged.

Organization staff and admins can look up participants. Only organization admins can change employee email domains or manual exclusions.

When employee restrictions are enabled, staff and admins of the owning organization, participants matching configured employee email domains, and manually excluded participants are excluded from judging and awards. Their submissions, votes, and moderation history remain available for review.

To configure employee domains, open Info, find Employee Email Domains, enter exact domains, and choose Save. Separate domains with spaces, commas, or new lines. Do not include @, a URL, or a wildcard. List subdomains separately.

To change a manual exclusion:

1. Open Participant Lookup and find the participant.
2. Choose Exclude Participant or Remove Manual Exclusion.
3. Enter a Reason and confirm the change.

Removing a manual exclusion does not override an exclusion caused by organization membership or an employee email domain. Published results lock eligibility changes until you unpublish them.

Manager does not let you change a submitted photo's category or edit the visitor's submission information.

Select and Publish Winners

1. Wait until the challenge's configured end time has passed.
2. Open an approved, eligible submission and find Final Award.
3. Choose Moderator Pick, People's Choice, or Both. People's Choice options appear only when that award is enabled. Choose None to clear a draft selection.
4. Repeat for the winners you want to recognize. Multiple winners in a category are supported.
5. Choose Review Results to review the complete selection by category and award.
6. Use Review Submission to correct any flagged entry. Each winner must be approved, eligible, and publicly available.
7. Choose Publish Results and confirm to show the awards above Photos on Web, Android, and iOS.

Your contest rules determine whether a submission can receive both awards. Manager supports Both and does not automatically enforce a one-award limit. If your rules allow only one award per submission:

1. Select your category winners using Final Award > Moderator Pick.
2. Open Review Results to check those selections. Selected awards also appear as labels on the photo thumbnails, separately from the moderator vote badges.
3. Sort by Most People's Choice Votes and choose an eligible, approved photo that has not already received a category award. Category winners remain visible in this view; Manager does not automatically remove them from consideration.
4. Set that photo's Final Award to People's Choice, then check Review Results before publishing.

Use award selections to apply this rule. Exclude Participant affects the participant's eligibility for judging and all awards, including their category award; it does not exclude only their photo from People's Choice.

Selections remain drafts until you publish them. Once published, awards and eligibility settings are locked. Choose Unpublish Results to remove the winner display and make changes; your award selections are retained. Review and publish again when ready.

Publication records eligibility at that time. Later employee or account changes do not automatically replace winners. A photo that becomes private, deleted, rejected, or otherwise unavailable is hidden from public results without selecting a replacement. Unpublishing and republishing checks the current selection again.

Troubleshooting

• A teammate is missing from the moderator picker: Check that they accepted their invitation to the owning organization and are not already assigned.
• A photo is missing from Submissions: Check eligibility, status, category, and moderator-vote filters. Clear Filters returns to eligible submissions; choose All Submissions to include excluded entries.
• Your rank moved from another photo: Each rank is available once per moderator per category. Assigning it again moves that rank.
• A rank changed in another view after you voted under People's Choice: The sort uses the same category ballot. Return to the photo's category and restore your intended rank under Moderator Ballot. Each moderator must correct their own ballot; assigning an occupied rank moves it from its current photo.
• Final Award is unavailable: Check that an end time is configured and has passed, results are unpublished, and publication status loaded successfully. A winner must also be approved and eligible.
• A save or refresh fails: Read the error before retrying. A saved change can be followed by a failed refresh; reload the current state before making another decision.
• Another moderator changed the submission, or a moderation result could not be confirmed: Choose Refresh Submission and review the current status and history. Enter a new note if needed, then make your decision again. Manager blocks further changes until you refresh successfully.
• Publishing fails: Choose Refresh Results, then Review Results again. Resolve flagged entries and review any changes another moderator made before retrying.