A note on Mumbrella’s comment moderation policy
Life is never boring when you run a big site where comments are not pre-moderated.
However, I’m reaching the point where each morning is becoming a little too stressful as I log on to find out whether somebody posted a horribly libellous comment overnight.
I am, for now at least, opting for the quiet life – and switching to pre-moderation.
Of the 44,564 comments we’ve had over the last two years, the vast, vast majority have been absolutely fine. Unfortunately, it will be one of the tiny minority that gets us into trouble, and we’ve now grown to the size where even a minority of malicious comments is a meaningful number.
Good for you Tim.
Nasty little fuckers aren’t they?
Happy Christmas and thanks for the news in 2010.
Now that’s a cheap Xmas eCard.
A sad indictment of our character. Bah humbug.
An understandable move Tim. While it can be extremely entertaining to pass the time reading the anonymous reactions and cross-agency baiting, it is hardly edifying and casts a bad light upon the industry. I mean, what must clients think of those in an industry who don’t have the gumption to put their real name to the bile they spew into here and Campaign Brief and others?
Good work Tim
Next step is to get rid of those anonymous posting cowards
Merry Xmas
Tim, just add community moderation. You need to update your comment system to have more features. At the very least, a “Flag” function that will allow the community to flag something as being sensitive/offensive. One flag and it can be hidden until you un-moderate the flag (if you choose to).
Weren’t you talking a few months ago about getting someone to build you a new site?
The overhead of pre-moderation can easily become cumbersome, and the delays in comments appearing when you’re not around to moderate can suffocate the community.
Tim,
By strange coincidence I saw this in a tweet yesterday: http://www.monbiot.com/archive.....r-commons/ (re dodgy online forum opinion stuff)
You being legally liable for the trolls is, well, illogical, but who wants to go to court?
Onya Tim; everything in moderation, especially at this time of year. Season’s best to all.
I agree – community moderation should a treat. The people behind that “vast, vast majority” of good comments will easily outweigh the pesky few by being able to
1. vote bad comments down (with a view threshhold of, say, -3 so that anything rated below 3 is hidden)
2. vote good comments up (just a nice nod and balance)
3. flag offensive or suspect comments for moderation
In the spirit of the helpful Samaritan bystander from The Life of Brian, I say “Let us shoulder your burden, brother!”.
I agree with Tom. Surely the majority of Mumbrella readers want to do the right thing and are more than happy to clean up house for you, Tim.
As a client, I recognise that anonymity promotes honesty Craig (#3).
People bitch and moan in the accounting industry too….
it’s no more than human nature
Understandable. An alternative may be to just pre-moderate unauthenticated comments, while publishing comments instantly from people who use a Facebook ID or similar to login.
Smart move Tim. Anything that removes stress from your life is worthwhile. Cheers for running such a great site.
I note all the anonymous posters either left work early yesterday or haven’t arrived yet today.
This was the top 2 biggest reasons I came to this site. Love the instant updates!
Really like Tom’s idea, as not only does it promote more user interaction with the article/comments, it relieves the burden from Tim further.
But it’s a great site, and looking forward to many more comments in the future
As someone who also moderates comments for a website, I am staggered yours were ever unscreened at all! Cheers Tim, have a great 2011.
Tim, I wonder how many comment’s you’ll now have to moderate about pre-moderating 😉
There is sadly no alternative to premoderation as I have found out through close shaves. Outsource it to the phillipines?
I understand why you may choose to moderate more closely but keep an eye on your traffic, Tim. If I were a betting man, I’d put a fair sum on a slump.
Hey Tim,
Another suggestion for the comment threads is to allow readers to ‘like’ and comment on another readers comments – kind of like on FB/YouTube
Not sure how difficult it would be to implement though
I have to say I disagree that pre-moderation is the right way to mitigate the risk.
We employ a whole host of techniques which allow us to control comments on http://www.theroar.com.au/. This includes voting down poor comments, crowd control over poor comments, keyword sniffing, and direct commenter moderation.
With 20,000 comments monthly, there’s no way we could rely on pre-moderation for all users. And I don’t actually think it is as effective as the techniques we use, for a number of reasons.
BTW – the idea of outsourcing comments moderation is crazy IMO; context is the critical ingredient often in determining what’s allowed and what’s not. Understanding context doesn’t come at $5 p/h!
I think that’s so totally fair to moderate. I’m setting up my own blog at the moment and my main mission is to ensure that rude and inappropriate behaviour is moderated. It’s sad that people can behave this way. I see it much like road rage where otherwise nice enough people seem to have some false bravado and step over the line.
It’s so sad that there are so many that feel they need to damage others to lift themselves up. It comes from a need for significance that’s driven by fear and lack.
I was actually joking about outsourcing moderation Zac. If however I could get Indian and Philipino moderators to understand the concept of “worst letterbox” or “Brian Burke” It might be worth it. Not at $5 an hour though. 5 cents.
The Worst of Perth – yeah, though there are many firms starting up in this space which offer offshore moderation services.
If you want to look at a really bad unmoderated site check out tradeleaks. Though its pretty much primary school some of the comments are really funny. Im sure there will be a court case soon though.
troll’n troll’n troll’n keep those comment come’n