There are several ways in which you can find items that require approving. The first would be to look out for any yellow balls in the various list pages. For example, here a sighting that is pending approval can be seen.


Some of the list pages have an Approval Status option in the filters, and you can use this to show only those items that are Pending Approval.


Another way is to look for the View items awaiting approval link on the My Account page.


This page will show all items that currently have a status of Pending Approval, along with information about how many items are semi-approved. Click anywhere on any item to open its detail page.


Here I have clicked on the listing of 20007, the addition of which was covered elsewhere in this guide. To approve the listing, click on the View/Change Approval button.


The approval page will show the details of the item in the first box, with options in the second box. To approve the item, just click on the Approve this listing (or Approve this sighting etc) button. You can approve an item if you think it looks correct. You do not need to go and find out whether the information supplied is correct. However, if it does not look correct, don't approve it!


You will get another confirmation page. Clicking on Continue will take you back to the detail page.


Back on the detail page, the updated approval status will be visible.


If you then go back to the approval page, you will see that there are now no Approval Actions available. This may be reviewed in the future so that (for example) an item that has been manually approved can still be rejected.

There may be times when a contribution should be rejected. Examples could include an item that is offensive or completely inaccurate, which duplicates existing content, or which is no longer required. To illustrate the process, I have again used an example based on Listings. However, the same principles apply to Sightings, Notes and Photolinks.


As with Approvals, Rejections are performed from the Approval Actons area on the item's approval details page.


There is a Reject this listing button, but note the text field immediately above. You should use this to give the reason why you are rejecting the item.


In this example, I have stated that the listing is being rejected because the information is already in the database.


As usual, you get a confirmation if the process has worked.


Clicking on Continue will take you back to the item's detail page, where you will see the updated approval status. The line below shows who rejected it and when, and I should probably revise this so that the field heading is not 'Approved:'!


Back on the Listings list page, sorted by date added, the listing is no longer visible. I might revise this as well, so that a person who rejected an item will still be able to see that item.


The person who posted the item you rejected will be able to see the reasons you provided, so please don't be rude! This is what Thomas Smith sees the next time he logs-in.


Similarly, when Thomas Smith looks at the Listings list, he will see the listing, with a red ball to show it has been rejected. If he wants to, he can then add another listing (photolink, note or whatever) that will (hopefully) not have the issue that caused the rejection.