Anonymous Q&A Moderation Checklist (2026)

How to run anonymous Q&A: the 3-sentence answer

Stack two safeguards that do different jobs: AI screening, which runs automatically and catches harmful content, and a manual approval queue, where a named moderator taps yes on their phone before a post reaches the screen. Only the second one catches a question that is merely unwelcome.

Before the event: Set a clear moderation policy, turn on the approval queue and pick an AI sensitivity level, and seed 2-3 example questions to set the tone.

During the event: Work the approval queue as posts arrive, remove anything already on screen that should not be, and surface top questions to leadership for answers.

After the event: Export submissions, anonymize quotes if sharing publicly, follow your retention policy (90 days for raw data, indefinitely for anonymized summaries), and route unanswered questions to appropriate teams.

The moderation layers, and what each one does not catch

Most moderation failures at town halls are not failures of the filter. They are a question that broke no rule and should still not have gone on a screen behind the CEO. Here is what each layer covers, what it misses, who has to be awake for it, and what it costs.

Layer	What it catches	What it does not catch	Who operates it	Plan
Written moderation policy	Arguments after the fact about what should have been shown. It is the rule the other layers are set to.	Anything in real time. A policy nobody configured into a setting is a document, not a control.	HR, comms or legal, before the event	Not a product feature
AI moderation	Harmful content in messages, photos and video clips, screened before the post reaches the screen. You choose one of 5 sensitivity levels.	The clean-but-unwelcome question. It scores harm, not awkwardness — "this reorg was handled badly" passes every filter, correctly.	Nobody. It runs automatically once the level is set.	Professional ($19.99/mo)
Manual approval queue	Everything else. Every post waits for a one-tap yes on the moderator's phone before it is displayed, so nothing reaches the wall unread.	Nothing — but it only works while someone is actually looking. An unattended queue is a stalled wall, not a safe one.	A named moderator, from their phone	Professional ($19.99/mo)
Remove a post from the display	A post that is already on screen. Your last resort, and it is instant.	The seconds it was visible. In a room with phones, that can be enough.	Host or moderator, from the dashboard	Premium ($10.99/mo) and Professional

The Free plan is not a moderation plan

A free wall ($0, forever) has no AI moderation and no approval queue: a post goes up when it is sent, and there is no way to take a single post down once it is up. It also shows just the 5 most recent posts, so older questions scroll off the screen rather than being reviewable on the wall. That is fine for a party. For a town hall where a bad post is a real risk, the approval queue on Professional is the floor.

The 13-point checklist

Pre-event (points 1-5)

1. Establish a clear moderation policy

What to define: What content will be filtered (profanity, personal attacks, off-topic), who moderates (HR, comms team, designated moderator), and what happens to flagged content (hidden but logged, deleted entirely, escalated to legal).

Sample policy language:

"Questions must be related to company strategy, operations, or culture. Personal attacks, profanity, and confidential information will be filtered. All submissions are logged for compliance. Anonymity is respected unless content violates policy or law."

Write the policy so that each line maps to a layer in the table above. "Personal attacks will be filtered" is an AI sensitivity setting. "Off-topic questions will not be displayed" is a human judgement, so it is the approval queue or nothing.

2. Configure technical safeguards

What each plan gives you:

Free ($0): No AI moderation, no approval queue. Posts appear as they are sent and the wall carries the 5 most recent. There is no per-post control either: removing a post from the display takes Premium, and the approval queue and AI moderation take Professional.
Premium ($10.99/mo): Still no AI moderation and no approval queue. Every post stays on the wall instead of the 5 most recent, and you can remove any of them from the display instantly.
Professional ($19.99/mo): The manual approval queue — every post waits for a one-tap yes on the moderator's phone before anyone in the room sees it. This is the only safeguard that catches a question that is unwelcome rather than harmful, which at a town hall is most of them. Professional also adds AI moderation across messages, photos and video clips with 5 sensitivity levels. Run it alongside the queue, not instead of it: the AI thins the queue so your moderator is tapping through questions rather than triaging abuse.

If you are running a genuinely high-stakes session — an investor Q&A, a layoff announcement, an open-to-the-public event — turn both on and accept the approval delay. That is what it is for.

3. Seed prompt & example questions

Why this matters: The first 1-2 submissions set the tone for everyone else. Bad examples ("What's for lunch?") invite off-topic noise. Good examples model thoughtful engagement.

Good example questions to seed:

"How do the new revenue targets affect next year's headcount planning?"
"What's the timeline for the pricing changes discussed in the roadmap?"
"Can leadership clarify the hybrid work policy changes?"

4. Display the QR code & instructions prominently

Best practices: QR code on every slide throughout the presentation (not just at Q&A time), clear text: "Scan to submit questions anon or with your name", and mention it verbally 2-3 times during the presentation.

Sample speaker script:

"You'll see a QR code on every slide. Scan it anytime to submit questions — anonymous or with your name, your choice. We'll address top questions at the end, and I'll monitor the feed as we go."

Guests scan with the phone camera and post from the browser — no app, no account, no join code. Say that out loud; a good share of the room assumes there is a download and never scans.

5. Establish a fallback communication channel

Plan B if technology fails: Backup Slack channel, email alias ([email protected]), or designated person collecting written questions on index cards.

Why this matters:

If your interactive wall goes down mid-event, you need a way to collect questions without losing momentum. Test your fallback before the event.

During the event (points 6-9)

6. Put one named person on the approval queue

Assign a moderator, and a backup: With the approval queue on, the queue is the wall — if the moderator steps out, nothing new appears on screen. Name a second person who can pick it up, and have both signed in on their phones before the doors open.

Moderator responsibilities:

Approve or decline each submission as it arrives (3-5 second review)
Decline it, and remove it from the display if it is already up
Tag recurring themes ("pricing", "hybrid work", "headcount")
Mark top questions for leadership to address

The approval tap happens on a phone, so the moderator does not need a laptop open and does not need to be at the front of the room. Sitting in the audience is better — they can read the room's reaction as well as the queue.

7. Choose the view that fits the risk

Three views, switchable from the dashboard mid-event without anyone rescanning:

Slideshow — a scrolling stream of recent posts. The default, and fine for most sessions. On every plan.
Grid — a mosaic showing everything at once. Good for a break slide when people want to browse what has been asked. On every plan.
TV — full-screen, one post at a time, new posts jumping the queue. The safest for a high-stakes town hall: a single question is on screen at a time, so removing one is a clean cut rather than a gap in a wall of tiles. Paid plans.

This is also a cognitive-load decision — an audience cannot read 200 questions at once. Whatever the view, every submission stays captured and reviewable in the dashboard and in the post-event export, so nothing is lost by showing less on screen.

8. Use the approval queue as your pause

When to reach for it: a sensitive segment is coming up, the room is heading into a 15-minute break, or something has already landed that you would rather nobody else saw. Switch the approval queue on and nothing new reaches the screen until a moderator taps yes.

What the pause actually is:

Queue on → posts keep arriving and keep being collected → nothing appears on the wall until someone approves it → work through the backlog when you are ready and it lands. There is no separate freeze or read-only control, and there does not need to be: the queue does the same job and leaves you a record of what you held.

This is safer than telling the room to stop posting, because you don't lose momentum — questions keep flowing, you just control when they display.

For a single post that is already on screen you do not need the queue at all: remove it from the display and it is gone. That works on Premium and Professional.

9. Decide how photos and video are handled

Options: Disable image uploads entirely (text-only mode); allow them behind the approval queue, so a moderator sees every photo and video clip before the room does (Professional); or add AI moderation on top, which screens photos and video clips as well as messages before they reach the screen (Professional).

Recommendation:

For sensitive corporate town halls: text-only, or media behind the approval queue. For casual events (team offsites, alumni reunions): allow media with AI moderation on. For public events where you do not know who is scanning: both layers, and text-only if you cannot staff the queue.

Guests can record short video clips from their phone, and the TV view plays them full-screen as they arrive. That is a lovely thing at an offsite and a thing you want reviewed first at an all-hands — which is the whole argument for the queue.

Post-event (points 10-13)

10. Export & anonymize data

Two exports: Raw data (names + questions + timestamps) for internal analysis, and an anonymized public export (questions only, no names) for sharing broadly.

Know what you actually collected:

On QR Wall, posts are anonymous unless you turn on attendee contact capture (Professional). That feature asks each phone for one contact field, once, before its first post, and shows the guest a clear notice that the host will receive the details; the deduplicated list exports as a CSV alongside the content.

So the "raw data with names" export only exists if you chose to create it. If you did not turn contact capture on, there is no identity attached to a question to anonymize — which is the cleanest possible answer to a retention question, and worth writing down in the policy.

Anonymization rules:

Remove all names and email addresses
Generalize roles ("Director of Operations, 5,000-person SaaS company" instead of a real name and employer)
Remove identifying details from questions ("our Denver office" → "one of our offices")

On paid plans you can download every message, photo and video as one archive, plus a shareable gallery link that needs no login — which is what you send to the people who missed the session.

11. Follow a retention policy

Recommended retention windows:

Raw submissions (with names): 90 days for follow-up context, then delete
Anonymized summaries: Keep indefinitely for trend analysis
Flagged/inappropriate content: Keep logs for compliance (1 year minimum), then delete

These are common practice, not legal advice — have your own counsel set the windows that apply to you.

12. Route unanswered questions to action owners

Close the feedback loop: Tag each unanswered question by theme (compensation, benefits, hybrid work, product roadmap), assign to the appropriate department, and set a 2-week deadline for a written response.

Sample routing:

Compensation questions (12 total) → HR + Finance, respond within 2 weeks
Product roadmap questions (8 total) → Product team, include in next changelog
Office policy questions (5 total) → Facilities, post FAQ to intranet

13. Publish a follow-up summary

48-hour recap: Post a follow-up in Slack or the company wiki with top themes, answers to top unanswered questions, action items based on feedback, and a link to the full anonymized Q&A.

Sample follow-up template:

Subject: Q4 All-Hands Recap: Your Questions + Our Answers

Top 3 themes: Compensation (32 questions), hybrid work policy (24 questions), next-year headcount (19 questions)
Action items: HR will publish updated comp bands within a month, Facilities posting a hybrid work FAQ today, Finance sharing the headcount plan at the next all-hands
Full Q&A: [Link to anonymized document with all questions organized by theme]

Copy-paste moderation runbook template

Use this template for your next town hall:

PRE-EVENT CHECKLIST (48 hours before)

☐ Moderation policy approved by Legal/HR
☐ Approval queue switched on (Professional)
☐ AI moderation sensitivity level chosen (Professional)
☐ Moderator + backup signed in on their phones, tested with a dummy post
☐ Photo/video policy decided (text-only, queue, or queue + AI)
☐ 2-3 seed questions prepared and loaded
☐ QR code added to all presentation slides
☐ Fallback channel tested (Slack/email)
☐ Display link tested on the presentation laptop or TV

LIVE EVENT PROTOCOL

☐ Moderator opens the queue 10 min before start
☐ Speaker mentions QR code 3x during presentation
☐ Approve or decline each submission as it lands
☐ Approval queue on, both moderators signed in on their phones
☐ Tag recurring themes in real-time
☐ Mark top 10 questions for Q&A segment
☐ Keep the queue on through breaks so nothing lands unwatched

POST-EVENT (within 48 hours)

☐ Download the full archive (save to secure location)
☐ Export the attendee CSV if contact capture was on
☐ Export anonymized version for public sharing
☐ Tag unanswered questions by theme & owner
☐ Route to departments with 2-week deadline
☐ Post follow-up summary in Slack/Wiki
☐ Schedule next check-in on retention policy (90-day calendar reminder)

ESCALATION PATH

If inappropriate content appears:
1. Remove it from the display immediately
2. Turn the approval queue on if it was off
3. Screenshot for log (don't share)
4. Alert HR if content is threatening/discriminatory
5. Resume approving once the room has moved on

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you moderate anonymous Q&A at corporate town halls?

Stack layers that do different jobs. AI moderation (Professional, $19.99/mo) screens messages, photos and video clips automatically at one of 5 sensitivity levels. The manual approval queue (Professional) puts a human in front of the screen: every post waits for a one-tap yes on the moderator's phone. On Premium and Professional you can remove any post from the display with one tap. Set a clear policy before the event defining what is filtered, and make sure each line of it maps to a setting or a person.

What happens to anonymous questions after a town hall?

Export all submissions within 48 hours — paid plans download every message, photo and video as one archive plus a shareable gallery link. Keep raw data (with names, if you used attendee contact capture) for 90 days for follow-up context, then delete. Keep anonymized summaries indefinitely for trend analysis. Route unanswered questions to appropriate departments with 2-week response deadlines. Post a follow-up summary showing top themes and action items.

How do you prevent inappropriate content in anonymous Q&A?

Turn on the manual approval queue so nothing reaches the screen unread, and add AI moderation on Professional to screen messages, photos and videos before they even reach the queue. Assign a named moderator and a backup, and remember that on Premium and Professional you can remove any post from the display with one tap. Note that a free wall has no AI moderation, no approval queue and no per-post removal, so posts appear as they are sent and stay up until newer posts push them off.

Is AI moderation enough on its own for anonymous Q&A?

No, and this is the thing most teams get wrong. AI moderation scores harm — slurs, abuse, explicit imagery — and it is good at that, across messages, photos and video clips. It cannot judge whether a question is unwelcome. "Why did we lose the Acme account?" is perfectly clean text and may still be the post you did not want behind the CEO. Only a human gate catches that, which is what the manual approval queue is: a one-tap yes on a moderator's phone before anything is displayed.

Should you use manual approval or automatic display for anonymous Q&A?

Automatic display is the better experience — posts arrive over a WebSocket and appear on screen in about a second — and with AI moderation on, it is safe against harmful content. Manual approval costs you the moderator's reaction time on every post, and a queue nobody is watching means an empty screen. Use automatic display for celebratory or low-stakes sessions. Use the approval queue whenever the risk is a clean question you would rather not project: investor Q&A, restructuring announcements, politically sensitive topics, or any event open to the public.

Are questions really anonymous?

Posts carry no identity unless you turn on attendee contact capture, which is a Professional feature. When it is on, each phone is asked for one contact field once, before its first post, and the guest sees a clear notice that the host will receive the details; the deduplicated list exports as a CSV. When it is off, there is nothing attached to a question to identify. Say which one you chose in your pre-event announcement — attendees can tell the difference, and trust in the answer is what makes the honest questions arrive.

How long should you keep anonymous Q&A data?

A common tiered policy: raw submissions with names (90 days for follow-up context, then delete), anonymized summaries (keep indefinitely for trend analysis), flagged/inappropriate content logs (1 year minimum for compliance, then delete). Never keep raw personal data longer than necessary per GDPR/privacy best practices. These are common practice rather than legal advice — set your windows with your own counsel.

What should a town hall moderator do in real-time?

The moderator works the approval queue from their phone throughout the event: approves or declines each submission as it arrives (3-5 second review), removes anything inappropriate from the display, tags recurring themes in real-time ("pricing," "hybrid work," "headcount"), marks the top 10 questions for leadership to address during the Q&A segment, and keeps the queue on through breaks so nothing lands unwatched. Name a backup who can take the queue if they step out.

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Anonymous Q&A Moderation Checklist for Town Halls (2026)