[Web4lib] Allowing comment editing on blogs

[Alnisa Allgood]

At 1:46 PM -0400 6/18/05, Kathy Petlewski wrote:
>We started using Movable Type 3.1 blogging software because one of their
>features is the ability of a librarian to view a comment before it becomes
>public.  Since we were starting a blog for teens, this was a big plus for
>us.  The public comments don't show up until after we have thoroughly
>looked through them.  Because we somehow got spammed by a porn site, this
>proved to be a very good thing!
>

Comment moderation is a feature in most modern content management 
systems/blogging tools, including WordPress, Expression, Engine, and 
a host of others.  It's practically mandatory with the host of 
automatic comment and referrer spamming tools in use by porn, 
gambling, and other sites.  Though you'll probably find that other 
features maybe more useful, depending on if you want to encourage 
comments or not.

Basically, what I mean is a number of sites use comment moderation, 
but those that use it well are pretty well established or have a 
'desperate' community (massively under served, and you're the only 
game in town).  Typically, it takes good content, lots of time, and 
lots of energy to build a community where people (adults or teens) 
feel comfortable to post/comment. So typically you want the barriers 
to be fairly low. Some of the youth sites we've worked with, have 
found that membership works better than advanced moderation.

Membership is when someone has to give basic details about themselves 
before posting. Typically, just a name (which can be made up), and 
email address (which has to be legit or their membership is never 
confirmed), then anything they may want to encourage others to 
communicate with them, like AIM, IRC, url, etc.  How membership works 
is it creates an initial barrier to posting, but only once. So a 
random teen comes to your site, they find an article of interest and 
want to comment. Comments are member only, but you provide 
encouraging links to join for free, with info on respecting their 
privacy and such.  They sign-up, get a confirmation email, click the 
confirmation link, get returned to the site, and they can now post, 
and their reply shows immediately.  All future comments also show 
immediately, so it provides the feeling that they are having a 
conversation. All comments are still reviewed (at least at the youth 
sites), but they are done so after the fact, so that argumentive 
posters and non-automated spammers who got through are warned, 
removed, or banned from the site.

Advance Moderation stops conversations. Unless you have a staff 
member working 24hrs to insure that all comments that have come 
through are approved or disapproved within the hour. This is more 
true for teens than adults. Adults may come back 2-3 days later and 
see if their comment was posted and who replied, but teens will 
typically check again within the hour, sometimes every hour til the 
post goes live.  Think of this, a comment posted at 4:30pm, your 
review staff is off at 5pm, and not back until 8:30am.  The review 
staff doesn't see the comment before the end of their day. The teen 
comes back at 6pm, "my comments not there". Fine they go to dinner. 
They come back at 8pm, "comments still not there".  Frustration. 
They check back before bed at 10pm. Still no comment. They wake at 
6:30am to get ready for school, before they head out the door they 
check again. Still no comment. Your site has just become bogus. 
Though not unredeemable.  Your staff allows the comment through at 
9:30am. The quality of your community can redeem the site, a single 
good reply that's waiting with the original comment will give 
encouragement for the teen to return. No reply, or an off the cuff 
reply, has just pushed the teen to a different web site.

As someone else mentioned, there are Blacklist modules for a number 
of CMS applications, some have also implemented things like CAPTCHAs, 
memberships, or a combination of other alternatives instead of 
advanced moderation.

That's not to say that you couldn't get "advanced moderation"  to 
work for you. Some sites use it successfully, though a fair number of 
them implemented after the primary community was already established.

Alnisa