DISQUS

AngelaConnor · 1 year ago

I supervise a team of moderators for WRAL.com and we moderate in real-time. It gets hectic on crazy news days. Actually, it's hectic most days but we hold bi-weekly conference calls to discuss issues and I tell them that we are to constantly evolve. The user experience is good. We went from no moderation to full moderation. And while we dealt with a lot of complaints at first, they've died down tremendously because we are committed to real-time. I am known to preach from the mountaintops about news organizations moderating comments. I just think it needs to be done right and done well. they have my support, and I give them a break when we've got a slew of major stories bringing in lengthy comments that range from tame to wildly controversial. You need to go in knowing your goals, and figure out how to make it work.

Perry · 1 year ago

Chris -

I agree with almost everything you say. The only thing I might take issue with, although I definitely realize I might be wrong on this, is the subject of off-topic posts. I find that often those are the best part of a discussion site, and a major part in how a community develops. That said, I can't expect Pepsi to pay for a site for me and my Pepsi buddies (assuming I had any "Pepsi buddies") to use if our thousands of posts about burps (which is likely something that would crack-up a "Pepsi buddy") obscure the discussion that they are trying to encourage.

Maybe the best solution is to have an "off-topic" section, where posts, or threads that degenerate off-topic, can be sent.

The other question (for any group) is how you define "inappropriate" comments. I used to have a "if it's acceptable before 9 pm on TV, it should be acceptable" (theoretically similar to your "6 yr old" test), but given some of the shows airing before 9pm, I think that might be too liberal. No proposed solution for this one, though.

Emily Williams · 1 year ago

Great point about the audience not getting to do whatever they want. I think it's easy for people online to feel like the internet is theirs and they should be allowed to act as they want, but different sites have different purposes. I wish more people would keep that in mind the next time they cry "censorship" when really it's just a case of certain postings not being appropriate for certain places.

It will be interesting to see how Pepsi moves forward from today, if they can grow from the feedback they could have a great thing going here.

Dan Thornton · 1 year ago

Good post, and as someone who spent 7 years moderating the forums/chat rooms for motorcyclenews.com amongst others, it's definitely important to set some boundaries if the forum/community is accessible to all ages. A simple swear filter generally catches the most offensive words, for example, and simple reminders work for most people...

But the line on off-topic posts is harder to judge a lot of the time - it's a fine line between keeping things 'on topic' and killing conversations, assuming there's any agreement between the founders and the conversationalists on what 'on topic' constitutes in the first place! For most applications, having an 'on topic' forum, and a 'general' one does a good job of allowing focus, without killing the more general noise a community will want to indulge in.

I'm more worried by the fact Pepsi appears to have imported it's own ToS to apply to the FriendFeed room!

Amber Naslund · 1 year ago

I rather look at my blog as hosting houseguests, and I think the same logic can apply to a corporation. I intend to put out content that's suited to my guests, and hopefully engage them in conversation around a topic. And the conversation can meander sometimes, but all in all, I try to be mindful that all my guests may not have my proclivity for profanity (band name?), so I edit for their sake. Plus, I want to make sure my point gets across and isn't clouded by my colorful language.

Same rules apply to them, then: You may disagree, even strongly. You may refute me, challenge me, challenge my guests. You may not be overtly profane, rude, defamatory, or vulgar. You're in my house, and I make the rules.

That said, I'm big on open conversation so my choice is to moderate only the major offenders, and only when they're really out of line (which again, is subjective). It's as much about respecting my fellow guests who *do* have some restraint as "censoring" those that don't.

Wesley · 1 year ago

This is a great post, Chris. Personally I think the best policy is to allow comments to appear immediately and if you don't want curse words on your blog simply have them automatically blocked out with asterisks. I can understand people who undertake the whole "guests in my home" thing but to me it seems arrogant. I'm not saying people shouldn't delete certain comments (obviously there are some, like "you suckckkkx omfg gezz" for example should probably be deleted) but I think it's worth the occasional annoying comment popping up to have the rest appearing as soon as they are made. As long as it doesn't become excessive, I'd probably just leave them up.

And I know this isn't related to the post, but why did the post vanish for five minutes then reappear? I'm just curious.

Gordon Holtslander · 1 year ago

I think you either have to let the comments go straight through and then moderate/edit/delete those that are completely inappropriate as a second pass or you have to moderate in real time. Either way, in a context like this one, it means someone who actually knows what's going on is going to spend their work day reading comments. I strongly believe that the conversation is either worthwhile doing, so you put someone on it to actively converse, or it's not. If it's not worth doing well, then just leave it off. Have a standard company blog that tells me what you are doing and it's purely FYI and makes not pretense of asking 'what do you think.'

You can't have it both ways which is the pain Pepsi is feeling right now.

Connie Bensen · 1 year ago

I'm going to play devil's advocate here. (thanks Chris for the call out!)

I don't moderate comments on my blog. And my opinion is that if you have a corporate brand with a solid brand & a strong community manager then the comments shouldn't need to be moderated. If the community manager receives the comments in their email, then they should be able to respond quickly.

When I took over the ACDSee blog I turned the comment moderation off. (no one noticed) And it was a good thing. These are my reasons:
1. When we leave a comment we like immediate gratification

2. I don't like leaving a comment, see that it's being moderated & then come back later & see 5 others ahead of me (if you do moderate - then I totally agree with Chris - keep up to it!!)

So if have a community manager that's on the ball I think it's cool to not moderate. What do you think of that?

Amber Naslund · 1 year ago

Hey Wesley - Not sure if you were specifically referring to my comment about the houseguests thing, but I wanted to clarify something. I don't moderate my comments, and in general I don't believe they *should* be moderated. If something happens to come through that's really out of line, I'll go back and edit out the expletives or the entire comment, contact the commenter, and tell them why I did it.

Only once have I ever had to do it. My reference to houseguests is not to be elitist, but rather to say that I believe that people are inherently good, and will do right by others as if they're hanging out with them in person. Most of the time. :)

Len Kendall · 1 year ago

I like the idea of a Connie Benson. Every forward thinking company should have one. If nothing else, make sure that a "normal" employee can be your Connie Benson for 2 hours a day. Online monitoring tools such as those offered by Radian6 or Collective intellect can help community managers know when to check in to respond to customer feedback.

Shannon Ehlers · 1 year ago

"Hi Chris, I really enjoyed your post and I think your blog aligns well with my own. I'd like to purchase links on your blog"

No no, not really, but this is an example of the type of comment I am seeing recently and which I simply ignore (right after I hit the "delete" button). I'm certainly not going to contact the author.

I do, indeed, moderate comments on my personal blog as well as the blog I am in charge of at work. I think that in many cases, comments are better made on the blog of the comment author, hence giving the author the credit or blame s/he deserves.

However, I am grateful that you don't follow this policy, instead allowing us to run roughshod over your work. How's that for a double standard?

Dan · 1 year ago

I completely agree. I have actually gotten tougher on comments over the years. I actually employ a standard similar to that you propose. Mine is whether I would care if my daughters (now 18 and 11) read my blog. Now I know my kids are way too cool to ever read my blog, but there have definitely been times where I have invoked the standard of "what if they did so."

David Caldwell · 1 year ago

Chris - picked up your blog a couple months ago, and just want to thank you for again putting some common sense thinking into a real issue -- you seem to do it a lot. We've been working on policies for a corporate blog and we found Southwest Airlines to have simple, helpful model. Keep the good stuff coming.

Craig · 1 year ago

Nice post, I agree company's should take commenting seriously and allow them to establish relationships with their everyday commenting users.

Craig
www.budgetpulse.com

Dan York · 1 year ago

Chris, When I started up Voxeo's corporate blog site about a year ago, the idea of having a "comment policy" honestly never occurred to me. After all, I'd been blogging for 7.5 years at that point and across all my blogs not a single one of them had a stated comment policy.

However, shortly after launching our blogs, we wound up inadvertently attracting some comments that used language that was "not safe for work". I realized, though, that while we could certainly delete those comments we had no statement on our site about what we deemed as "acceptable". We had no public rationale for our actions in removing/censoring comments - and while it was *our* site and so we didn't really *need* a "rationale", in the spirit of transparency and openness such a rationale would be helpful. I laid this out in a post here:

http://bit.ly/1SVJN0

and our comment policy is now at:

http://blogs.voxeo.com/comment-policy/

We do not moderate comments (but do run comment spam filters), but when you go to leave a comment at the bottom of a post, there is the statement right there that by submitting a comment you are agreeing to abide by the terms of our comment policy. Given that, I would feel very comfortable removing any offending comments should they occur.

The reality is that in the 10 months since we put the comment policy in place and linked to it from our comment submission form, we haven't received ANY comments that have needed to be removed or censored.

Good post, Chris.

Mike Proulx · 1 year ago

I agree with Wesley, and would take it a step further to look at a 3-tiered approach to moderation.

(1) The first is a visibly posted social media policy (which incorporates a comments policy) that clearly (and transparently) spells out what is/is not acceptable. The community manager, then, has the purview to remove any comments that aren’t appropriate per the policy.

(2) Second is to do automatic keyword filtering per Wesley’s comment that will quarantine any comments containing words or phrases that are commonly offensive (Love the living room analogy, BTW).

(3) Last, I’m a big fan of the community policing itself and being empowered to flag any content that they find offensive which would trigger an alert the community manager for review.

Generally speaking, I support moderation by “exception” and not tightly controlled queuing & screening of comments. Not only is it a resource-intensive (and costly) undertaking for companies to simulate anything close to an acceptable time-to-post but it seems to conflict a bit with the transparency of the social web.

Kathy Sierra · 1 year ago

I agree wholeheartedly! The only thing I'd add is that for some businesses, the "6 year old in the room" might be older. The corporate culture/audience might use a "16-year old in the room" guideline, and that would certainly be different. So, I completely agree on the "guests in my home" metaphor, and each company (or individual blogger) needs to decide exactly what kind of party/gathering they want.

We do know one thing... without moderation, most popular online forums devolve. It's a thousand times easier to start with a tighter rein and eventually loosen than to take up the reins of moderation later, as a reaction.

Thanks for the post (and your gazillion other thoughtful, useful posts).

Rebeca Trautner · 1 year ago

funny enough, i just had to address this topic this morning when pitching the corporate blog to my company. one concern brought up was with comments that hype up competitive products. there's a fear that some of our competitors will pose as unassuming readers and comment on our blog with information about their products. is there room to cover this in a comment policy so we can go ahead and deny those comments? if not, is there a way to publicly address those competitive product posts without shining more of a spotlight on them?

chrisbrogan · 1 year ago

I can't begin to thank everyone enough for your perspectives. As always, the comments are far better than the work I did. Dan York's ideas, and Wesley mashed with Mike are just great! I've got tons of thoughts off your ideas.

@Kathy - that's interesting. I like adjusting the kid's age to match the demographics of the business. What a great add-on to the metaphor.

Now it's like a meta-seven. : )

Tiffany Monhollon · 1 year ago

Great guidelines - I think the off-topic guideline is practical and necessary when it comes to corporate spaces, but here's a question - what if the comments are on topic but defamatory to other organizations or businesses?

When people start trashing other people in your living room, how do you propose to handle that?

We're in a business with both consumer and B2B ends going on, so things can get tricky!

Susan Murphy · 1 year ago

These are great tips, but I wonder how many businesses (particularly smaller ones where resourcing can be an issue) will be turned off by how much perceived work it is to do all of these things? How do we convince businesses of the value of allowing this kind of feedback, knowing that it's going to create (potentially) a lot more work?

frank · 1 year ago

I love the little kid being in the room as a measuring stick :)

I'd add that treating everyone with a health Respect is extremely important. A company should write with respect for it's readers and it's readers should comment with respect ... this doesn't mean that people should censor or hold back ... but it does mean people should choose their words with caution and thought (with a filter of respect).

--
http://twitter.com/franswaa

fd · 11 months ago

First, to the advocates of “unfiltered all the time,” I say bull—. Oh, did I censor myself? Meet me in person and you’ll realize that I curse like a sailor. I do it for effect some times. But do I curse on my blog? Not often, because I want your bosses (you?) to be able to read it and not get turned off.

How To Weld · 5 months ago

I don't believe that any company who puts a forum out there for discussion, should moderate the comments (apart from blatant lies).

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