Moderation types

Whenever companies want to publish user generated content (UGC) they need to look into moderation, which usually consists of the following three types:

Pre-moderation:

Some sites operate on the principle that every piece of UGC should be moderated before it’s displayed on the website. This is the approach Amazon takes for their reviews, for example, and what the BBC use for their message boards for children. It’s usually used for content that isn’t specifically community based, or content that’s potentially dangerous (from a legal perspective). Some message-boards, particular those that concern themselves with topical issues or celebrities, are prone to libel and can be a source of legal anxiety for the organisation that hosts them. Pre-moderation is probably a good idea in those cases. The drawback is the lack of instant gratification to the user (when they don’t see their content displayed immediately) and the negative impact that can have on your comunity.

Post-moderation:

One of the drawbacks of pre-moderation is that it can cut down on the conversations within online communities, especially if the content takes some time to moderate. One solution to this is moderate everything after it has gone ‘live’ – which means you can still have effective community conversations while keeping objectionable content at bay.
There is a legal issue in this method though, as the operator of the site assumes responsibility for any content that appears, even if that content is subsequently removed by moderation. It’s worth noting too that the less time that offending content appears online, the fewer people will see it – and that could impact on liability or reduce an award of damages.

Reactive-moderation:

This type of moderation is fairly passive, and relies on the users to flag objectionable content – for you to then review and, if appropriate, remove. The advantages of this approach is that it scales with your community and it’s easier to avoid liability for anything that is defamatory, infringing or otherwise unlawful as long as you provides a process for removing offending content expeditiously upon being made aware of it (generally considered to be 48 hours). The downside of this approach is that abusive content can appear in front of your users, and you’re relying on your community to tell you about it. This might not be acceptable to all organizations, particularly the highly brand conscious.

A recent court case in Italy may have grave consequences for reactive-moderation and the idea it’s a legal safe harbor. If the case is not defeated – the implications could be huge.

SocialMod:

We’ve been developing a moderation platform called SocialMod, which is in a private beta at the moment. We’ll be blogging about this subject more in the future.

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Based on Everything in Moderation’s “Four Types of Moderation“.

Links:

• out-law.com – Moderate, liability and terms of use
• techradar.com – Why the UK doesn’t moderate UGC
• promomagazine.com – Top Legal Issues to Watch with User Content