Get best of the week

Moderation of comments 2. And yet, can we trust users? (continued)

Why do site owners often disable users from discussing information on their resources? It would seem that a discussion on a published topic is great, because it reveals additional nuances, allows you to consider the topic from various angles. But, nevertheless, site owners limit the ability to comment. Why is this happening?


In a previous article, we discussed that the main reason leading to this is the complexity of human conversations and, as a consequence, the difficulty of maintaining a culture of online discussion. It is for this discussion that, despite the development of various kinds of automatic moderation tools, ultimately, they require the presence of a person appointed by the moderator, which is not always possible. Such manual moderation requires constant engagement and is often free of charge, so moderators are constantly lacking for the whole host of ongoing discussions. At the same time, the amount of information created by users is constantly growing due to the involvement of an increasing number of people in online communication.

Also, the article made the assumption that it is possible to attract users to independently maintain a culture of online discussions, if you learn to trust their ratings of other people's comments. A method was also proposed that allows an individual user to give an objective assessment of someone else’s comment. The method does not require the organization of collective voting.

The proposed method is based on the following:

  • In some cases (conditions below), the user participating in the discussion may be asked to check the set of comments for compliance with the rules of the discussion. Among the comments proposed to the user for verification, there are test comments, the ratings of which are already known, and by which the user's objectivity is evaluated. There is also a verifiable commentary whose rating is not yet known.
  • , , , , , , . , , , .
  • , , , . , .


Based on this simple method, a separate, new approach to moderating Internet discussions is emerging that does not require an appointed moderator or collective voting and allows you to organize users from different sites into a kind of community of moderator users.

On each site connected to the Community, conditions can be created under which it becomes unprofitable for the disputed users to break the rules, and they themselves can control the communication culture, namely:

  • An authorized user, if he does not violate the rules, comments without verification, as usual.
  • An unauthorized or violating user must check and repeat the rules, and the comment added by him is sent for verification to the Community (the so-called pre-moderation).
  • , . , , ( -).

For greater clarity, I would like to offer Habré readers a small test case in which this method is implemented. I hope that I did not violate the Habr rules, since the link does not contain advertising of anything or anyone, only an example of the method’s operation is shown. An example is a comment feed, in which it is possible to try the functions of user moderation.

Any reader can use the post-moderation function and send any comment from the feed to the Community to check the rules, of course, first he will have to pass the check and do the useful work of moderation himself. An unauthorized user can post a comment, also after doing a useful job of moderation. The comment he added will be sent to the Community for moderation.


Plans


In subsequent posts, it is planned to offer Habr readers a discussion of a possible scheme for implementing a web service that should coordinate the work of such a community of user-moderators. It would also be interesting to share the statistics of the test case, when it is still typed. In addition, it would be interesting to discuss some legal aspects of this approach in moderation :)

Thank you for the attention!

More articles:


All Articles