[Web4lib] Unmoderated posts on your site?

[Rick Mason]

Hi Colleen,

My suggestion, at least for your blogs, is to moderate.  I am inclined to agree with you about the group being able to handle most "mean people" (and extreme cases can be banned when needed), but there is another factor:  Spam.

Blogs are attracting spam like crazy.  Think about what you get in a standard e-mail account without spam filtering.  Certain medicinal substances, personal services, and overseas financial transactions dominate blog spam in the same way they dominate e-mail spam.

I suggest that you figure out what a reasonable turnover for moderating comments will be based on your staff workload, then incorporate a message letting users know that their comments may not show up for ##minutes/hours/days.

Hope this helps!

Rick Mason

http://blog.librarysupportstaff.org/

================================================
>  -------Original Message-------
>  From: brazic at myuw.net
>  Subject: [Web4lib] Unmoderated posts on your site?
>  Sent: 29 Nov '07 15:13
>  
>  
>  Do any of you that have blogs or social networking like ning on your Web sites allow unmoderated posts by your users? We are a public library system and I am inclined to recommend allowing unmoderated posts as I may not be able to find the staff to help moderate fast enough for the content to stay fresh. I tend to believe that the mean people will be shouted down by the majority of users. Is this a crazy idea? Am I being naive in thinking people will be nice?
>  
>  Your experience and thoughts on this will be most welcome as well as links to your sites so I can show others where this is working. Thank you!
>  
>  Colleen Brazil
>  Content Access Manager
>  Sno-Isle Libraries
>  www.sno-isle.org