Moderation in Some Things

I’m opposed to this code of conduct for bloggers idea. I quite like the whole freedom of speech thing on blogs and believe in the ability of people, by and large, to do the right thing. There’s already legis­la­tion against threat­ening beha­viour and I don’t think the proposed code, however it ends up, will do much to tackle anonymous bullies. It’s also allowed the news­pa­pers to (pre­dict­ably) char­ac­terise the whole activity as a chaotic wild west, perhaps an implic­a­tion of the silly sheriff’s badge chosen by code-​​lovers.

However, that’s not quite the same thing as being pro-​​unpleasantness or against guidelines and controls anywhere. The whole thing was brought home to me at an event we ran earlier this week called ‘Goodness 2.0′. It was about how char­ities and cam­paigning organ­isa­tions might adopt Web 2.0 tech­no­lo­gies to change and improve rela­tion­ships with sup­porters and poten­tially change intern­ally. One of the big problems that char­ities appear to have with the whole social media she-​​bang is the issue of mod­er­a­tion. I made a possibly flippant comment about mod­er­a­tion of forums being a vol­un­tary activity — if you don’t moderate at all, you can’t be held legally account­able for a forum’s content, I under­stand. It’s the way a lot of magazine forums work — I think that some news­pa­pers are the same — since pub­lishers, by and large, aren’t going to pay for full-​​time moderators.

However, the flip­pancy of that comment was laid bare when another audience member, a rep­res­ent­ative of Youthnet, talked about the messages from very vul­ner­able and troubled young people that appear on their forum message boards. If there weren’t mod­er­a­tion, then (a) that young­ster probably wouldn’t get the help they needed, ren­dering the whole thing point­less; and (b) it would lay them open to the poten­tial for savage and uncaring comments from other teens on the board.

So mod­er­a­tion is a big issue in this sector. And they’re shot by both sides. On the one hand, if they don’t have forums, member-​​created media, blogs and so forth, they’re some­times judged as boring, irrel­evant, not keeping up with the times. On the other, mod­er­a­tion is so crucial that the costs attached to opening up to members’ input can be sig­ni­ficant. If a member, perhaps, was going to talk about com­mit­ting a crime, com­mit­ting suicide or being abused, then the softly-​​softly, user-​​driven approaches taken by the likes of digg and YouTube are clearly irre­spons­ible. Even a low-​​traffic mes­sage­board could easily equate to a full-​​time position. Add into that equation the fact that often online mar­keting by char­ities is seen as a diver­sion from the core activity of the organ­isa­tion and very quickly the fancy talk of an outsider like me about letting users upload their own videos and photos starts to sound a little hollow.

Anyway, given the level of interest and dif­fi­culties these organ­isa­tions face, I’ve been looking into it today, with a view to pro­du­cing a seminar on the subject to help organ­isa­tions adopt best prac­tices in order to do it as well and as cost-​​effectively as possible. I spoke to Tamara Littleton at eMod­er­a­tion, who hope­fully will be helping with the proposed event and she pointed me towards a white paper they’d just produced with some great tips and advice. She also men­tioned that brands that are dipping their feet into social media are facing exactly the same issues, although there it’s largely ques­tions of repu­ta­tion man­age­ment and legal liab­ility that drives the dis­cus­sion. It’s an excel­lent read and gives advice on how to draft your T&Cs, imple­ment algorithms to flag wor­ri­some posts and recruit member-​​moderators, among other things. Very much recom­mended to anyone who faces these sorts of dilemmas, and a good read for anyone else inter­ested in social media.

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