How to deal with comments is an issue faced by every publisher when they open up their site to the community. One approach fits with the traditional editorial ethos: review and approve before publishing. That may be necessary in South Africa, where editors told me there was no way they could open up to unmoderated comments. But in most parts of the world, standard practice is to allow commenters to post directly. That's what users expect, so anything else is likely to alienate them. Publishers police the comment threads, using a variety of software tools to help reduce and eliminate malicious comments.
Lines of defense
1. Word filter. Ubiquitous but also easily evaded. Buck Fush, sh*t.
2. Block IP address. Kick someone off. It helps, but the determined easily find a way to come back.
3. Registration required. The single biggest deterrent to garbage. Also easy to circumvent with free email accounts, but it cuts out the impulsive spewers.
Comments are native to blogs, so blogware comes with these basic admin tools. Plugins provide additional layers of protection (only install plugins that are widely used and tested). Like many security systems, it's not about a single hard wall but many layers that add up to do the job.
The content management systems used by mainstream publishers often don't come with comments functionality, so it has to be bolted on. The most powerful solution is Pluck, which combines powerful comment moderation tools with user registration and multiple ways to connect and sort comments and authors. They they advertise themselves as "powering social media." Key features:
1. Report abuse: Let your readers play Guardian Angels. Interestingly, this feature is not much used in practice.
2. Rank comments: Nice to give people the ability to reward stars and sort by top ranked
3. Invisible block: The commenter sees his bile published online, but if you've blocked him this way, no one else does. He can stay occupied for hours. Beautifully nefarious.
Pluck is an industrial-strength solution but also very expensive; we deployed all of its comment-moderation features on Think Progress, using a combination of plug-ins and custom programming.
Let me stress that comments moderation is not about quelling dissent, but to block individuals who are deliberately disruptive, generally through the use of blatantly offensive language and tactics (we had one guy who started posting in the name of a dead soldier who had been memorialized on the blog). The goal is to create an atmosphere where community and free speech can thrive.
Keep in mind that even with these powerful tools it requires someone to moderate the comments, even if it is not a full-time job.
VF5KWt Excellent article, I will take note. Many thanks for the story!
Posted by: 1267795390 | March 06, 2010 at 06:59 AM