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Knowledge Base entry

Why might a post be held for manual moderator review?

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FAQ Imported article

Posts end up in the manual review queue for a variety of reasons, most of which relate to automated systems being unable to make a confident determination about whether a post should be allowed. The mod queue is designed as a safety net between automatic approval and automatic removal, handling edge cases that require human judgment. The most common trigger is a new or low-karma account posting in a community with elevated entry requirements. Rather than reject these posts outright, some moderators configure AutoModerator to send them to the review queue instead of removing them. This allows a moderator to quickly check whether the user appears legitimate and, if so, approve the post — giving new users a fair chance without fully opening the floodgates to spam accounts. Posts containing links are another frequent candidate for manual review. External links carry more risk of spam, phishing, or self-promotion than pure text posts. Many subreddits configure AutoModerator to hold any post containing a link until a moderator has verified it. Similarly, posts that include certain flagged words — even innocuous ones — may be held if the community has configured its AutoModerator to capture them for review rather than auto-remove. Media posts — images and videos — are sometimes queued for review in communities with strict quality or content standards. A photography subreddit might want to manually approve every image submission to ensure it meets quality criteria. A community with strict NSFW rules might hold all image posts for a human to verify the content rating. Reddit's own site-wide spam filter, separate from community-level AutoModerator, can also send posts to the queue if the account displays patterns associated with coordinated behavior or spam. Being aware that these systems exist — and are largely invisible — helps you understand why a post might sit in limbo rather than assuming it was maliciously censored.

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