Moderation and Hosting - What? Who?

I ocassionally give presentations (see links to left) about online community building at universities and non-profit organisations. One of the things that I can't stress enough in those talks is the importance of discussion moderation and hosting.

If you have the resources to do so, and the community spaces of your website have more than a few hundred members, it probably makes sense to deliberately split the roles of moderator and host.

Moderators are a bit like the police. Most people don't really have much to do with the police, or even see them around very often, until they either break the law or someone infringes upon their rights. Moderators, like the police, keep a quite eye on things from a respectable distance until they are needed. Then they jump in, take action, and disappear until they're needed again.

Of course, not all communities keep the roles of moderator and host separate, so the description of the role of the host below may also apply to moderators who perform an expanded role in the community, which is more likely within online communities developing around personal websites and/or smaller organisations or groups.

Hosts are a bit like someone hosting a dinner party in their home. When you organise a dinner party you set the date and theme, invite guests, welcome guests when they arrive at your home, introduce guests who don't know each other, and get friends who might come from different walks of life started in discussions about the things they have in common. Well, that's the way a dinner party is supposed to work. When it doesn't work out well, the host might also jump in and tell someone not to drink so much, or ask one of the guests to quit talking about something that's upsetting the other guests - making a pre-emptive strike before a fight breaks out and the police have to be called! An online discussion host, sometimes called an "online facilitator", particularly in online education circles, has the same role within an online community as the person hosting a dinner party in their home: inviting guests, making people feel welcome and valued, kicking off discussions, feeding information into those discussions, and wrapping up discussions when they seem to come to a logical endpoint.

Above I recommended that the roles of host and moderator be deliberately kept separate. There are numerous reasons for this. If the host, who is generally friendly and accessible to users, and who is involved in discussions on a daily basis, also has to remove messages breaking the rules, ban users, etc it's often difficult for them to stay detached. Moderation mistakes become more likely and the community may very well take it out on the host since, afterall, they're the moderator too. Hosts, in the ideal situation, are people who know a lot about the topic(s) of discussion. Moderators don't necessarily need to have an indepth knowledge of the discussion, just an ability to ascertain meaning and ensure that users comply with the rules. Hosts are, more often then not, specialists in a particular content area whilst moderators can be generalists.

That's not to say that moderators are any less important than hosts. Moderation is one of several ways that websites can protect themselves from law suits, primarily relating to libel, contempt of court, incitement and copyright infrindgement. Moderators can also protect users from harrassment and watch for tell-tale signs that a user in a community area for teenagers or children might be an adult with horrific intentions.

Different websites use different types of moderation.

• Pre-Moderation: posts are reviewed before they are published
• Post-Moderation: posts are reviewed within a prescribed time after they are published
• Reactive/Alert Only: only posts that have been alerted by users are reviewed

Once you've decided what type of moderation you require from the list above, you'll have a better idea of how much time moderators are going to need to spend in your community.

If you use pre-moderation, you might want moderators to be available all the time unless, of course, your users are happy for it to take a while for each message to be approved. [Please note that some lawyers believe that pre-moderation increases legal liability for libellous posts since pre-moderated content is deliberately published by the website.]

If you use post-moderation, you might want to employ moderators to make sweeps of the new posts every __ minutes/hours. What's an exceptable amount of time? That really depends on the community, the users, and the risks involved.

Reactive/alert only moderation may save money because moderators need only "work" when they are called to do so. Some view reactive only moderation as quite dangerous as it does, in some instances, exposes users to a higher level of risk. Good hosting is particularly essential in reactively moderated spaces.

Most moderation companies will be able to provide any of the above types of moderation and should be able to come up with something that meets your requirements at a reasonable cost.

So where do you find moderators if you're a website or digital services provider in the UK? I personally know people from all but one of the following companies so, to avoid upsetting anyone, by way of recommendation I'll only say they they all offer a range of services and it's likely that one will be the perfect match for you. If you happen to know of other moderation services, please do post up a url in the comments to this entry.

ChatModerators Ltd

Cornerways

eModeration

Knexus

NeoOne

Tempero

If you are thinking of hiring an in-house moderator, or are interested in working as a moderator, try ModeratorsNet

Comments

[Ewan]

Robin - From a pre-moderation perspective, I've also heard it regularly commented that you take substantially more responsibility for content when you edit it, as apposed to either accepting or rejecting it. At the same time I've heard completely the opposite position from some laywers!

[Lee]

Great post Robin. Funny, I've used the dinner host analogy before too. "You can set the table and make the food, but you have to have someone to tell everyone it's time to eat."

Something that I might add to the "moderator" is the importance of the guidelines or terms of service. Without this in place, the moderator is somewhat powerless. They need a foundation for enforcing the rules. It makes the "policing" much less personal and more about keeping up with a standard of behavior.

[Robin]

Hi Lee. You're absolutely correct. Clear guidelines are really useful because they give the moderator something official to reference when they are making decisions and, when the do remove a message, something to point at that explains their decision. Without clear guidelines, users will lynch even a well trained and well meaning moderator - "you're censoring us!!!!".

[ilana]

A good overview. You look like a cowboy on your profile pick, too, which can only be a good thing.

[Mike Rowland]

Good starting point for the topic. I'd like to add our company to your list of moderation companies. Impact Interactions in the U.S. performs global moderation services and community strategy work for some of the largest online communities around the globe.

Also, if any of you are interested we are starting a new industry council for online community here in the U.S. if you'd like more information please contact me.

Mike Rowland

[Keith Bilous]

Robin - Great discussion you started even if I did come late to the party.

I wanted to offer up our company to the list of companies that provide moderation and community management services. We are ICUC Moderation Services, experts in providing digital content moderation, online brand protection, community management and online support services.

ICUC Moderation Services has a team of digital content specialists that manage and moderate user generated content for live television, text to screen, blogs, message boards, community forums and chat rooms around the world.

Keith Bilous