Basics: Community moderation
Whether youâre promoting your brand, product or non-profit STEAM educational event aimed at inspiring children, you are going to have good, bad and ugly interactions with the Internet channels of your choosing. How you handle these reflects on you, and if you havenât chosen a specific institutional voice (e.g. intentionally irreverent Wendyâs Twitter), here is the section I compiled for our marketing and communications guidelines in its entirety.
Interactions
We want to use our channels to guide readers from awareness, through to advocacy. This requires that we be responsive to feedback, both positive and negative. Because it is impossible to predict every situation that may arise, you have agency in how you interact, but these are provided as a guide.
Positive responses
Compliments
Thank them by @name.
Wanting to learn more
Direct them to appropriate resource:
General information â Website
Exhibiting or Speaking â Kenny
Sponsoring â Don
Wanting to buy tickets
Until July 7, direct them to interest form
After July 7, direct them to Eventbrite page
Redirection
Spam / Link bots
Remove it.
Example: âIâm making $800 a day working from home. Find out more here.â
Off-topic self promotion
Ignore it.
Example: âIâm trying to get 1000 likes on my video.â
On-topic self promotion
Thank them. If it is good, share it on our channels.
Example: âI did something similar with blue LEDs. Check it out here.â
Negative responses
Hateful
Generally: If you wouldnât read it to a five year old, then remove it. Report threats.
Trolling
Ignore it. We also do not want to over-curate the conversation. This can be difficult because it is intended to irritate, but they spent 10 seconds writing that, so if you feel you need to âwinâ the encounter, you canât spend more than 9 seconds being annoyed.
Examples:
âHe has too much time on her hands.â
âThis is stupider than a screen door on a submarine.â
âThat looks like a bicycle that got wrecked twice.â
Criticism (including criticism disguised as âasking questionsâ)
This is the most difficult, because defending our stance or explaining the nuances of a complex issue will consume a lot of time, and is ineffective with someone who has already made up their mind against us / what we do. It wonât always be trollish enough to ignore, and leaving it unchecked risks undecided 3rd parties going to their side.
The ideal situation is for one of our advocates to debate on our behalf. Failing that, be polite, but only respond with a restatement of the positive aspects of the content. Donât J.A.D.E.âJustify Argue Defend Explain, because that will only lead to a circular argument on their terms.
Example:
Comment: âWhy are we pouring money into robotics education when our schools donât even have basic curriculum down!?â
Response: âThis program is funded by donations and provides interested students exposure to a growing field they wouldnât otherwise have.â
If all else fails: Disable comments
Popular Science went this route
From one study led by University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Dominique Brossard:
- Uncivil comments not only polarized readers, but they often changed a participant's interpretation of the news story itself.
- Those exposed to rude comments ended up with a much more polarized understanding of the risks connected with the technology.
- Simply including an ad hominem attack in a reader comment was enough to make study participants think the downside of the reported technology was greater than they'd previously thought.
- Another, similarly designed study found that just firmly worded (but not uncivil) disagreements between commenters impacted readers' perception of science.
The tradeoff is that we lose the relationship building of interacting with supporters, and it changes the tone from speaking with our audience, to speaking at them. This is not a choice to make lightly, but we and the analytics can determine whether it is worth it.