[Web4lib] Unmoderated posts on your site?

[Tim Spalding]

The solution to spam is simple. Turn on whatever automatic
stumbling-stones you have (eg., captchas) and get the comments sent to
your email. Now and then you'll have to delete some spam comment. The
two blogs I run are pretty high-profile (Page Rank 6 in Google-speak),
and I probably get 2-5 spams per day. You'll probably get fewer.
They're easy to get rid of—the price of doing business. Now and then
you have to chip gum off the bottoms of the tables; you still have
tables.

I don't think you run that much risk of other abuse. And by not
moderating you send a powerful message of openness. Conversely, by
moderating comments you hobble or kill what you're trying to do, and
certainly reinforce a lot of bad stereotypes.

Tim

On 11/29/07, Rick Mason <rcmason at rsproductions.net> wrote:
> 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
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