24/7 Moderation
Moderation is a tricky business that requires skill and experience. At its heart is the need to balance the need to provide a genuine opportunity for the individual to speak out with the necessity to ensure the conversation stays safe and on track.
Bang the Table has introduced an industry-best-practice three phased, five part, moderation system to help ensure that the discussions we host stay safe and on track while still giving the community a genuine opportunity to freely debate the issues that matter to them.
Phase 1 – Control of High Risk Comments
1. Automated Language Filter
The software will pick up comments that includes any of our “blacklisted” words. A message will appear on screen as follows… “Our system has picked up that their is some potentially bad language in your comment. We will need to review the comment before it goes live on the site.”
The following note will appear as a place holder within the forum until the comment has either been accepted or rejected by the moderator… “This comment is currently under review.”
2. Pre-moderation of Potential SPAM
Our software will recognise if an excessive number of comments have been loaded within a short time period. These comments will be automatically diverted to the moderators for review prior to going live.
NOTE: We do not pre-moderate comments under normal circumstances. We believe that it poor community engagement practice; that it presents a very low quality of service to forum users; and that it removes the ability to encourage dialogue within the forum space. It is contrary to our organisational values and is NOT a service that we offer.
Phase 2 – Content Testing
3. First Pass Review & Triage
One of our team of experienced moderators reads each comments. The comments are “triaged” as follows.
- Comments breaching our language, defamation, hectoring, spam rules are removed; or
- Comments that are clearly within the moderation rules are accepted; or
- Comments that the moderators are unsure about are left on the moderator portal for review by a senior moderator.
If a comment is removed two things happen:
- It is replaced on the site by a comment from the moderator notifying the rest of community that a comment has indeed been removed and reason for such; and
- An email is automatically sent to the Commenter notifying them that the comment has been removed and why, and inviting them to challenge the decision. Occasionally comments are reinstated if the argument for such is substantial enough.
4. Second Pass Review
Second review of comments by our senior moderators if required. This will generally be for “grey area” issues.
Phase 3 – Community Review
5. Community reporting
All of our sites include the “report this” button against each comment. The community of users have the option to “report” a comment if, for any reason, they don’t believe it should be on the site. The moderator then takes another look at the comment to see if they have missed anything. This feature can be useful for picking up on local context and user identification issues that we may otherwise miss.
