Blog moderation

Blog comments: approve or review?

When you’re developing a blog moderation strategy, you’ll need to make some decisions about how you want to deal with comments. This means drawing up some guidelines. These guidelines will make up the “Terms Of Use” policy, and it’s important that you’ve thought about what sort of site you’re producing — and who you’re producing it for.

Aside from deciding how to proceed with issues such as negative comment moderation, you also need to identify your preferred system for moderating blog comments. For example, should you check and approve all comments before they’re published?  Or do you simply review them once they’re live?

Pre-moderation and post-moderation

There are benefits and issues in both cases. By doing your blog comment moderation before anything goes live, you’re ensuring that all the content is suitable for your community audience and conforms to your Terms of Use.

Pre-moderation requires time and resources — plus, it can slow the flow of conversation, potentially killing topics dead if a large time lag develops. It is, however, a better option for blogs that deal with controversial topics, or target a younger age group. (Find out more in our free Child Protection Best Practice Guide)

Post-moderation relies on moderators spotting comments after they have gone live and dealing with them before the situation gets out of hand. While it comes with greater risk attached, combining it with a reactive moderation scheme (where community members can flag content as offensive or inappropriate) can be a great solution. Providing space for your users to self-moderate can help build a stronger community and create a real sense of ownership.

Blog moderating

There isn’t a ‘one size fits all’ approach to weblog comment moderation. A while ago, MediaShift wrote a piece asking how much should you moderate comments after the comment section was removed from the Washington Post. The general consensus from all the experts they spoke to was that your blog moderation strategy depends on your community, your content, and the time it would take to moderate.

Jim Brady, editor of Washingtonpost.com, said:

I think the answer depends on what kind of community you want to set up… There are a lot of people who want to be in communities that are debating the issues of the day and who want those debates to be adversarial but respectful, so you have to be willing to put the required resources toward enforcement… But, over time, I think the answer is to harness community members themselves to help keep things within the boundaries you set.

Brady goes on to make another important point: “Beyond the responsibilities of patrolling forums, I also think site staffers need to be involved in moving the discussions along.” We explored the delicate role a moderator can play in our post “Comment Moderation: when to step in?”

Oh, and don’t forget, it’s best to avoid correcting spelling and grammar if you’re pre-moderating: The High Court has ruled moderate user comments and you’re liable!

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