Skip to main content

YouTube no longer automatically publishes community contributions due to "spam and abuse"

Because of an "increase in abuse and spam" in Community Contributions, all contributions will be held for channel owner review.

As a YouTube creator, you can enable Community Contributions to allow your fans to add subtitles and translate the titles and descriptions of your videos. It's a great way to help reach viewers all around the world.

But, as with so many good things, spammers ruin it for everyone.
We’ve heard from top creators that they’re experiencing increased spam and abusive language in their community contributions. Contributions were always reviewed by your community, but now they’ll also be held for your review.

How Community Contributions work

1. Viewers submit contributions
2. YouTube moderates submissions for spam and inappropriate content.
3. If enough people have added translations to a video, the community is asked to help review them.

Previously, when a submission got enough reviews, it was automatically approved for the video. Unfortunately, this process was not working well enough, and contributions with spam and abusive language sometimes were published.

Now, all contributions are held for manual review by the channel owner before publication

Enable Community Contributions


If you would like your viewers to help translate your videos, you can enable Community Contributions for individual videos or your whole channel.

1. Sign in to YouTube and open Studio (studio.youtube.com)

2. Click Transcriptions on the left menu

3. At top right click the gear icon

4. Click the button to Turn On Community Contributions for all the videos on your channel.

To enable Community Contributions on a single video, first open your Videos list, select a video, then click Transcriptions on the left menu.  You will see the option to turn Community Contributions on or off.

Review and Manage Community Contributions

Currently you can only review Community Contributions in Creator Studio Classic.
1. Sign in to YouTube and open YouTube Studio (studio.youtube.com)

2. Click Transcriptions on the left menu

3. At the bottom of the left menu click Creator Studio Classic to open your Community Contributions tab

4.  You will see a list of contributions In review. Click the Review button to review the text.

5. YouTube will show you the original text, the contributed text and an automatic translation of the contributed text for you to review.
6. You can then manage the contribution
  • Edit the text
  • Approve and publish the submission by clicking the Publish button
  • Report spam or abuse by clicking Report
  • Ask your community for improvements by clicking Needs more work
Learn more in the YouTube Help Center: 

Comments