I have just returned from the mad.co.uk Social Media Conference in Kensington, London, and after a day of listening to some fantastic speakers extolling the virtues of social media, online collaboration, blogging and user generated content (apologies to Lloyd Davis who stated very clearly that he wasn’t thrilled about being termed a ‘user’, what he wrote wasn’t ‘content’ and he never regarded himself as a ‘generator’), I have learnt a whole host of new things.
But rather than the usual conference round up, which can be a bit boring, I thought I would comment over the next couple of days specifically on those points raised which I thought were valuable.
Suw Charman gave us a great summary of the good and bad of taking part in online conversation. Overall, of course, she was an advocate of good, but one point she made about blog moderation was worth exploring further.
Most people who have a blog may have come across comment spam. Within seemingly nanoseconds of blogs becoming popular, the spammers were out in force like a swarm of locusts, filling comments with links to less than desirable websites and artificial bot-generated praise. Suw also mentioned a similar scourge, titled ‘ham’ (so like spam, only it seems genuine) which is actually someone commenting for the sake of getting a link and plugging their own site. Ham is a little more difficult to spot, but nevertheless can undermine the value of your blog.
One’s initial instinct is to leave comment moderation on. What this means is that whenever someone comments, an actual person has to read and approve the comment before it appears on the site. This ensures no spam (or ham) gets though, but it slows down conversation and can ultimately deter genuine people from commenting.
I think we get so caught up in trying to protect ourselves from the spammers, that we possibly don’t even realise that we are hindering the conversation – essentially what a blog is all about. Granted, if you turn moderation off, you then have to ensure that if you are spammed, hammed or any other kind of processed meat-ed, you keep an eye out and clear it where possible, but what it allows for is real time, genuine discussion. Suw even went so far as to say that you should be very careful about deleting anything. It wouldn’t help you for your readers to start thinking you are censoring them. Unless the comment is clearly bot-generated, read it carefully, and determine whether it needs a response.
I came back to my desk and the first thing I did was removed moderation. And I have to confess, the cold ham I had in the fridge also went in the bin.
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