[Web4lib] Academic libs - allowing anonymous comments on your site?

[Bennett Ponsford]

We chose not to turn comments on automatically, but the content contributors can set up their subject guides so that comments are turned on.  At this point, very few librarians have chosen to do so, and I don't think anyone has actually posted a comment yet.  

However, we do not allow anonymous comments - people do have to be authenticated to be able to post.  That's primarily because of spam.  We also have a bulletin board where people can post comments about the web site as a whole.  We initially allowed anonymous comments on it, but the spam level just got too high.  

We've talked about using some kind of captcha-type product to weed out the spammers and turning on anonymous comments but, given the lack of traffic so far, it's not been a high priority.

Bennett


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Bennett Claire Ponsford
Digital Services Librarian
University Libraries
Texas A&M University
bennett.ponsford at tamu.edu

Mail Stop 5000  |  College Station, TX  77843-5000

voice: 979.845.0877

http://library.tamu.edu

>>> "Melissa Belvadi" <mbelvadi at upei.ca> 03/09/10 6:49 AM >>>

Hello. My library is about to engage in an internal debate regarding
whether we should enable the ability of anonymous users to post comments
to any of the pages of our web site. Our site is based on Drupal, so the
feature is very easy to enable. We are assuming that we will moderate
comments (they don't appear until approved), which is also easy with
Drupal. 

I have some practical concerns about how much staff time the moderation
process (including the inevitable internal debates regarding what should
and shouldn't be allowed through) will take up, as well as philosophical
concerns about librarians getting in the business of censoring and what
damage there might be if someone whose post we disallow makes a public
ruckus about how the library is anti-free speech. 

But my concerns may be unfounded, so I'd like to hear any experiences,
positive or negative, that other academic libraries may have had doing
this. 
Do any of you have anything like this on your sites now? Did you try it
and later remove the feature? 

Also if you know of any studies, conference presentations, or the like,
on the subject, pointers would be most appreciated. 

Thanks for any help and advice you can provide! 

---
Melissa Belvadi
Emerging Technologies & Metadata Librarian
University of Prince Edward Island
mbelvadi at upei.ca
902-566-0581 


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