Every award has rules. Most awards keep them quiet, so that creators only discover the line after they have crossed it. We have decided to do this the other way around. This is what we remove, why we remove it, and what happens to your submission when we do.
WallMag runs ten awards this cycle. Five in photography — Mobile, Black & White, Creative, Wildlife, Wedding — and five in music: Vocalist, Guitar Player, Rap, Cover Artist, and Independent Music Creator. The work in each room sets the standard for the room. One bad-faith entry — a lifted image, an AI track passed off as a vocal — quietly devalues every clean submission around it. The removal policy exists to keep that from happening.
Here is what we promise. If we remove your entry, we will tell you within 48 hours, by email and by an in-platform notification. The notification will cite the specific reason. We will not remove silently. We will not remove because of taste. We will not remove because your community vote count is low — the jury reads every entry that clears our auto-removal floor.
This article is the long version of every removal note. If yours has cited a reason, scroll to it; you will find the thinking behind the line.
Removals we make without discussion
Some lines are bright enough that we do not need editorial judgement to draw them. These removals happen quickly, often before community voting has begun, and the reason cited will be one of the four below.
Copyright and intellectual property
If a reverse-image search matches your entry to someone else's portfolio, a stock library, or a brand's commercial archive, we remove it. If your music submission contains an uncleared sample — a recognisable hook, a melody from a copyrighted track, vocals lifted from someone else's release — we remove it. Cover art lifted from another release falls in the same group.
The reason is simple. Awards are public; published work attracts attention; attention attracts the rights holder. Leaving an entry up that is not yours to submit puts you, the original creator, and WallMag in a position none of us want to be in.
Brand safety
We remove entries that contain nudity or explicit sexual content, hate speech and slurs, glorified violence or drug use, content involving minors without verifiable consent, and material that exists to provoke a religious or political response rather than to be looked at as work.
This is not a comment on subject matter — see the closing section for what we do not remove on. It is a comment on use. Documentary photography of difficult conditions and music that names hard truths both belong on WallMag. Content that is built to inflame, intimidate, or shock without an editorial reason does not.
Submission integrity
If the media file is corrupt and will not load, the title is a placeholder like "test" or "asdf", the description is empty, or the ownership proof is missing on an award that requires it, the entry comes off. We do not chase these. The submission tools tell you what is required; an unsalvageable entry is removed and you can resubmit a corrected one.
Duplicates
An entry can live in one award. If the same project appears across multiple categories — Wedding and Creative, Vocalist and Cover Artist — we keep the one most appropriate to the work and remove the rest. The same applies to the same media uploaded twice under different titles in the same award. One entry, one room.
Removals we make after looking closer
The judgement calls take longer. We read the work, look at the metadata, look at the creator's other submissions, and sometimes ask a question before we decide. These are the categories where editorial review happens.
Category mismatch
A wedding photograph entered into Wildlife. A clean original composition entered into Cover Artist. A colour photograph desaturated in a single click and entered into Black & White with no craft behind the conversion. An EXIF audit on a Mobile Photography entry that returns a DSLR sensor and a full-frame lens.
Each award is a room with a shape. Entries that ignore the shape get pulled — not because the work is weak, but because it is being judged against the wrong peers. In most of these cases, the cleanest answer is to resubmit to the correct award.
AI and generative ambiguity
Undisclosed AI imagery in a photography award. An AI vocal clone of a named artist in a music award. An entry labelled "AI-assisted" where the assistance has done so much of the work that we cannot find the human hand.
WallMag awards exist for creators developing a practice. Prompt outputs are not a practice. We have no policy against disclosed AI tools used as part of a clearly human workflow — colour grading, mastering, retouching, generative fill on a small region — but the work itself has to be yours. If we cannot tell where you end and the model begins, we ask. If we still cannot tell, we remove.
Authorship and authenticity
A brand or agency account submitting as an individual creator. The same image surfacing under two different creator profiles. A portfolio that shows no evidence of practice in the style of the submission — a sudden stylistic leap with no working pictures, no precursor tracks, no learning visible.
We do not require a long body of work to enter; first submissions are welcome. We do require that the work be yours, and that we be able to verify it through reasonable signals.
Subtype fit
A zoo or captivity shot framed as wild without disclosure. A stock couple-portrait shoot entered into Wedding. Pure melodic singing entered into Rap. A creator signed to a major label entering Independent Music Creator. An original composition mislabelled as a cover, or a cover mislabelled as an original.
These are the cases where you and the award disagree about what the award is for. We remove and tell you why; you can revise the submission and resubmit to the right place.
Craft floor
Severely out-of-focus photographs with no artistic intent behind the blur. Phone screenshots passed off as photographs. A 30-second untreated voice memo entered as a Vocalist track.
This is the only category that touches the work itself rather than the rules around it, and we use it sparingly. The floor is craft, not polish. A handheld track recorded in a small room with one mic can clear it easily. A screenshot of an Instagram post cannot.
Removals that are not your fault
A few removals happen for operational reasons. They are not punitive, and we mention them so you know what you are seeing if it ever happens to you.
If a Razorpay refund or chargeback is processed on the submission order, the entry has to come off the public award page. We cannot leave a public submission attached to a payment that has been reversed. If you initiated the refund and want the work back up, pay the submission fee again and we will restore the entry.
If you delete your WallMag account, your entries come down with the account. If you email us at team@wallmag.io and request a withdrawal in writing, we honour it and the entry is removed from the public award page.
Signals we watch for
These do not trigger automatic removal. They trigger a closer look.
A sudden vote concentration from a single suspicious cluster — votes arriving from accounts that exist only to vote, with no other activity on the platform — gets reviewed. Spammy promotional or affiliate links inside the entry description get reviewed. Coordinated submission groups — multiple new accounts uploading interlinked work to the same award within the same window — get reviewed.
If the review confirms abuse, the entry is removed. If the review shows a creator with a clean signal who has a viral spike of real engagement, we leave them alone. The difference between the two is signal, not popularity.
What happens when we remove an entry
The flow is short and the same every time.
- You receive an email within 48 hours of the removal. It cites one of the reasons from the sections above and links to this article so you can read the long version.
- You receive an in-platform notification at the same time, so the email is not the only path to the news.
- There is no refund on removal. You can correct the issue and resubmit a fresh entry to the same award. The work you have done since the original submission is welcome back.
- If you believe the removal was a mistake, you can appeal. Email team@wallmag.io with your entry title, the award name, the reason we cited, and your case for why the removal was wrong. We review every appeal within seven working days and reply either way.
What we will not remove for
For completeness, here is what does not put your entry at risk.
- Style we personally do not like. Editorial taste does not get a vote in the removal queue.
- Low likes, low community vote count, or low view count. The jury reads every entry that has cleared the auto-removal floor; popularity is one signal among many.
- Niche subject matter. The room is wide.
- Bold, uncomfortable, or political subject matter presented with editorial integrity. A photograph of a hard reality, a song with a sharp position — these belong here. Provocation without an editorial reason does not. The difference is intent and craft.
One closing note
The room is open. The rules are public. Submit work you stand behind, in the room you want it judged in, and we will handle the rest with care. If something goes wrong, you will hear from us before you have to ask.
— The WallMag Editorial Team
