Response publishing - what is moderation?

In this article we’ll discuss the following:

• Why moderate responses?
• What is moderation?
• What can be moderated?
• When to moderate

Why moderate responses?

All qualitative (text) and quantitative (multiple choice, tick box, radio buttons) answers can be published.

To publish responses to an activity, response publishing must be set up by the owner (or a Dept Admin or Site Admin) before the activity goes live. Responses must then be moderated (redacted, approved, or rejected) before they can be published.

What is moderation?

Moderating responses includes approving and rejecting individual answers from a response, as well as redacting inappropriate or unpublishable sections of text before publishing. (Read more about how to moderate).

What can be moderated?

In Citizen Space, only qualitative answers are moderated whereas quantitative responses will automatically be approved.

This set-up creates a workflow for moderating responses.

The respondent's answer to the consent question determines what will be published. (Find out more about how to set up a consent question).

If a respondent approves their response to be published, this response will enter the moderation queue, or workflow. If they decline, the response will not enter the moderation workflow.

Note:  Please note that file uploads (if you gave respondents the opportunity to provide supporting documents via a file upload component) must also be moderated but via a different moderation process - you can read more about response publishing for offline responses and documents..

When to moderate

Moderation can happen at any time after responses have been received. In response publishing settings you can choose whether to have ongoing response publishing, which will allow you to publish approved responses whilst your activity is open, or to publish them once the activity is closed.