Visitor Submissions Workflow
End-to-end guide for collecting, reviewing, and publishing visitor-suggested locations
Updated February 24, 2026
This guide shows a practical workflow for using Visitor Suggestions: from enabling submissions to publishing high-quality community contributions.
Recommended Workflow at a Glance
- Enable suggestions on your public map
- Start in manual review mode
- Triage submissions daily or weekly
- Approve high-quality entries, reject low-signal ones
- Move trusted maps to auto-approve if quality remains high
Step 1: Enable Suggestions
Enable from either:
- Map settings on the map page
/dashboard/maps/[mapId]map management page
Settings to choose:
- Allow visitor suggestions
- Auto-approve suggestions (off by default recommended)
Step 2: Collect Better Submissions
To improve submission quality:
- Add clear map description/context so visitors know what belongs
- Keep categories clean and understandable
- Encourage signed-in submissions when possible (more metadata)
Signed-in visitors can submit richer data (description/category/tags/image), which reduces moderation effort.
Step 3: Moderate Efficiently
Use Dashboard > Submissions to process pending items.
Recommended process:
- Filter by map and status
- Review newest pending first
- Bulk approve/reject obvious batches
- Leave rejection notes when useful for internal consistency
Approval creates a real location on the map.
Step 4: Define Approval Rules
Use simple consistent criteria:
- Is it in-scope for this map?
- Is the location identifiable and correctly placed?
- Is naming clear and non-spammy?
- Is category/tag assignment sensible?
Reject when content is irrelevant, duplicate, low-signal, or promotional spam.
Step 5: Move to Auto-Approve (Optional)
Turn on auto-approve only when:
- submission quality is consistently strong
- map topic is narrow and well-scoped
- you still review recent additions periodically
For broad/public maps, manual review is usually safer.
Operating Cadence
- High-traffic maps: review daily
- Medium maps: 2-3 times/week
- Low-traffic maps: weekly
Keep a short backlog; stale pending items reduce community engagement.