Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Who Moderates the Moderators?

Huffpo has had a community moderation system in place for a while. I think in principle the idea of community moderation has some merit. However, as practiced at Huffpo it seems we may be creating a bunch of Lord of the Flies petty tyrants. The following is just one example. User Artist-53 posted a comment about how Huffpo's advertising had a serious effect on her epilepsy and a "Community Moderator" Hoodoo X replied with a heartless comment that I doubt would have made it past JuLiA for a normal user. Here is a screen shot of the interaction: (click on the image to view it full size)



2 comments:

  1. That's a very valid question: who keeps the moderators in check when they misbehave? Site owners can probably do routine check-ups, or the most they can do is hire decent moderators in the first place.

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  2. Well the scary thing is that these people with moderator badges aren't hired at all. They earn their badges by flagging a significant number of comments. If someone has enough time and interest I think it would be fairly easy to get a level 2 moderator badge.

    ReplyDelete

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