twopointouch

I’m opposed to this code of conduct for bloggers idea. I quite like the whole freedom of speech thing on blogs and believe in the ability of people, by and large, to do the right thing. There’s already legislation against threatening behaviour and I don’t think the proposed code, however it ends up, will do much to tackle anonymous bullies. It’s also allowed the newspapers to (predictably) characterise the whole activity as a chaotic wild west, perhaps an implication of the silly sheriff’s badge chosen by code-lovers (see yesterday’s Guardian for evidence).

However, that’s not quite the same thing as being pro-unpleasantness or against guidelines and controls anywhere. The whole thing was brought home to me at an event we ran earlier this week called ‘Goodness 2.0‘. It was about how charities and campaigning organisations might adopt Web 2.0 technologies to change and improve relationships with supporters and potentially change internally. One of the big problems that charities appear to have with the whole social media she-bang is the issue of moderation. I made a possibly flippant comment about moderation of forums being a voluntary activity - if you don’t moderate at all, you can’t be held legally accountable for a forum’s content, I understand. It’s the way a lot of magazine forums work - I think that some newspapers are the same - since publishers, by and large, aren’t going to pay for full-time moderators.

However, the flippancy of that comment was laid bare when another audience member, a representative of Youthnet, talked about the messages from very vulnerable and troubled young people that appear on their forum message boards. If there weren’t moderation, then (a) that youngster probably wouldn’t get the help they needed, rendering the whole thing pointless; and (b) it would lay them open to the potential for savage and uncaring comments from other teens on the board.

So moderation is a big issue in this sector. And they’re shot by both sides. On the one hand, if they don’t have forums, member-created media, blogs and so forth, they’re sometimes judged as boring, irrelevant, not keeping up with the times. On the other, moderation is so crucial that the costs attached to opening up to members’ input can be significant. If a member, perhaps, was going to talk about committing a crime, committing suicide or being abused, then the softly-softly, user-driven approaches taken by the likes of digg and YouTube are clearly irresponsible. Even a low-traffic messageboard could easily equate to a full-time position. Add into that equation the fact that often online marketing by charities is seen as a diversion from the core activity of the organisation and very quickly the fancy talk of an outsider like me about letting users upload their own videos and photos starts to sound a little hollow.

Anyway, given the level of interest and difficulties these organisations face, I’ve been looking into it today, with a view to producing a seminar on the subject to help organisations adopt best practices in order to do it as well and as cost-effectively as possible. I spoke to Tamara Littleton at eModeration, who hopefully will be helping with the proposed event and she pointed me towards a white paper they’d just produced with some great tips and advice. She also mentioned that brands that are dipping their feet into social media are facing exactly the same issues, although there it’s largely questions of reputation management and legal liability that drives the discussion. It’s an excellent read and gives advice on how to draft your T&Cs, implement algorithms to flag worrisome posts and recruit member-moderators, among other things. Very much recommended to anyone who faces these sorts of dilemmas, and a good read for anyone else interested in social media.